← The Focus Group Podcast
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- [00:01]
Adam Genelson
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- [00:07]
Sarah Longwell
Come join our sweat sesh on TikTok.
- [00:14]
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- [00:27]
Adam Genelson
If you want to bring in additional people that you're going to need to build a super majority to build a Big Ten coalition, you're going to have to say, I will be a more responsible steward of taxpayer dollars. It's really funny to be sitting here talking about this because it's not a moderate who is out there making the strongest case for fiscal responsibility right now. It's Zoran.
- [00:45]
Focus Group Participant
Mom.
- [00:46]
Adam Genelson
Dummy.
- [00:50]
Sarah Longwell
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the focus group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and this week I want to revisit a debate I have spent long time begging Democrats not to have. But they do insist upon it, especially on the interwebs, whether the Democratic Party should become more moderate or more progressive. But that's there's no stopping them. So personally, I think it's the wrong debate to be having. Everyone in Democratic politics agrees in theory that you need to have a big coalition to win elections. And there are a lot more moderate and progressive and completely heterodox Democrats who are models for the future. Yet everyone in the Democratic Party also has some people they wish were not in the tent with them. This week we're going to look for some synthesis in this moderate progressive debate because our focus groups have a fair bit of it and because I listen to voters, it is why I reject this moderate progressive frame. Because if you listen to a lot of voters, you know that is just not the world they live in. I also want to look at some of the limits that Democrats place on their big tent because part of having a big tent and is knowing how to manage it. Well, my guest today is Adam Genelson, founder of the Searchlight Institute and author of the forthcoming book Super Majority How Democrats Can End Republicans Dominance and Build Lasting Power. It comes out on September 15th. Adam, what's up?
- [02:13]
Adam Genelson
What's up, Sarah? It's great to be back.
- [02:15]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, so I'm so pumped to have this conversation in part. My book comes out September 8th, yours comes out September 15th, and it sounds like we are having a very similar conversation. Mine is called how to Eat an Elephant One Voter at a Time. And it is filled with focus groups that basically says, okay, how are we going to take down this toxic version of the Republican Party? And of course it means building a big broad coalition that is essential to doing this. Are you able to talk about your book like, do your publishers get mad if you give away spoilers for your analysis? Because to otherwise, tell me, tell me what's in there.
- [02:50]
Adam Genelson
They might, but let's just do it anyway. You know, look, the point of the book is thinking about, you know, how do we get out of this era where the best you can hope for, really, for either side, but I'm looking at this as a Democrat, is to win a narrow majority. Like we, we've gotten locked into this idea that every election is going to come down to a white knuckle question of do we barely beat the fascists, Right? And it's going to hang by a few thousand votes. We might wait for a week for the election results to be called. We need to break out of that mindset and start thinking about how we build not just a narrow majority, but a super majority. And the way to do that is exactly what you were talking about in the intro, which is to think about how do you assemble a big tent coalition? How do you link arms with people who you may disagree with on some issues, but have a lot of areas of common ground? The first half of it looks at sort of recent history of how we lost the most recent supermajority that Democrats won under President Obama. And then it goes back through history and looks at times throughout history when Democrats have been able to build super majorities under FDR and lbj and what lessons we can draw from then filtered through the modern era that we live in. And a lot of things that are different now, but there are still lessons that we can draw from history to understand how we can build a super majority today.
- [03:57]
Sarah Longwell
I'll just say for myself, as somebody who is not native to the Democratic Party, I'm an immigrant to wanting the Democratic Party to win. And obviously, so much of that is like, I came up as kind of like McCain person. And when Donald Trump took over the party, I said, well, this isn't anything. This, this reflects none of the values that I hold. How can the Republican Party go along with this? And in my search to figure out how to defeat Don Trump, and in my early years, we're going back almost a decade now. In the beginning, right when I was thinking about how to save the Republican Party, it's like, okay, well, how do we primary Trump? How do we get rid of him? And so part of my book is chronicling my journey from somebody who was a Republican to just listening to voters and like the listening to voters was basically like a scales from the eyes moment for me. Not just because I realized how much a lot of Republican voters wanted Donald Trump, but how much they rejected the old sort of version of the Republican Party that Mitt Romney and even somebody like John McCain represented. Like, they didn't care about free markets that much or American leadership in the world. In fact, they were growing increasingly skeptical of American leadership in the world. And so, you know, when I started listening to voters, what became clear is voters are just like a weird salad, man. They are not linear thinkers. They don't think in partisanship the same way that people in Washington do. Like, I just realized how much time I was spending in think tanks listening to people talk about education policy or whatever, and how much those conversations did not connect to the conversations that actual voters were having. And so when I think about building a big, durable majority, I think about it in terms of, okay, now that I've listened to thousands and thousands of voters, I realized that it's a little from column A and a little from column B, not more moderate versus more progressive, because those are both sort of have their own kind of coherent worldviews. But, like, that's not how voters are. And so I really want to sort of tease that apart today because I think it will be really useful for people who, especially political nerds, they still think about things in terms of partisanship, teams, you know, the polling numbers on different issues. And I don't know that they've thought about as much about the way that you think about things, which is, what does it mean to have. We say we now use the word heterodox. Right? Right. People who are. They're just. They're. They're not the same as, like a regular politician. They're not just carrying water for one party or another. They got a bunch of different issues. And how do you get those sort of set of issues to align with the American people? You want to take a stab at that first before we start?
- [06:39]
Adam Genelson
Absolutely. I mean, I go back to that word that you just used, heterodox. I've stopped using the words moderate and progressive when we talk about which direction the party needs to move, because it's neither. It's heterodoxy. And, you know, there is a meaningful difference between heterodoxy and moderation. And that is that, as you said, heterodoxy means combining things from different ideological traditions. Right. And the issues that you combine or the issue stances that a voter might combine might be immoderate. Right. The positions themselves might even be extreme. You know, you could have a voter who says, you know, I want to throw every CEO who was involved in the 2007 housing crisis in jail and I want to deport every illegal immigrant. Right. Neither of those is a moderate position. Those are both rather extreme positions. But when you put them together, what you have is heterodoxy. And I think that's a meaningful distinction. And we, we get hung up on this vocabulary of moderation because often it's the only category that is offered to voters in polls and focus groups that isn't either Democrat or Republican or liberal or conservative. So it's sort of this catch all category where voters say, well, I don't see myself as being rigidly liberal and I don't see myself as being rigidly conservative. So I'm going to call myself a moderate. Even though what they're actually describing or the way they actually approach the world is much more closer to heterodoxy. And I'll say one more thing, which is that I do think you get these crazy mixes of positions, right? And you obviously want to try to align as closely with the electorate that you're trying to win as you possibly can. But there's like, there is a, there is a sort of bigger picture thing that comes from being heterodox, which is this impression that you think for yourself, that you're not going to be captured by the interest groups or by the corporate interests on either side, that when you are in a decision making position, you are going to have, you're going to think for yourself, you're going to think independently and you're going to have the voter's best interests at heart. So even if you don't match up with them on their own personal mix of heterodox positions, the fact that you're heterodox means you are an independent thinker and that's going to increase their level of trust in you to make the right decision when the moment, when the moment comes down.
- [08:46]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. The most modern heterodox political official I can think of is Donald Trump. Right? Donald Trump was not a conservative by any stretch of the imagination. He's not a traditional Republican. And he took his weird blend of tariffs and protectionism with his closed borders. Then his particular brand of, you know, being an absolute jerk. But he also told people like, I'm not going to touch Medicare and Social Security, which is something that Republicans had been talking about for years about how, no, we needed to do something about this for solvency issues. Something that I actually happen to agree with that there's things that we have to do to make these programs sustainable that neither political party is willing to spend the political capital on. And Trump just was like, yeah, I'm not going to touch that either. And that worked for him because voters don't want anybody to touch him.
- [09:35]
Adam Genelson
Right, Exactly. He was saying things that voters weren't used to hearing come from a Republican.
- [09:38]
Sarah Longwell
That's right.
- [09:39]
Adam Genelson
You were, you know, probably watching this debate In August of 2015, when Trump stood on the stage and turned to Jeb Bush and he said, I think the Iraq war was a big fat mistake. Right. And I think your brother screwed up, basically making leftist arguments against the war. You know, he basically didn't quite say Bush lied and people died, but he came pretty darn close. And so, you know, this was a point where the Iraq war had become unpopular and everybody else on that stage was defending the Iraq war. So this was Trump, you know, being heterodox and saying things that people were not used to hearing from Republicans, but that aligned more closely with the broad majority of the American people who by then had turned hard against the war. So. And there's another aspect to this, too, which is that bought him a lot of free media. You know, he had no real campaign at this point. He was not putting money on ads. But with that kind of conflict, it aired nonstop on cable television. It was plastered across social media at the time. And so it drove attention and allowed him to break through and define himself as an independent thinker without spending a single dollar on ads. And that's the kind of branding money can't buy in politics.
- [10:45]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, and in part, too, because the press, for all of its flaws and all of its good things, like the thing that it does, is it's looking for a certain amount of conflict. Right. For things that aren't just the same. And so when a. A presidential candidate or any politician is kind of delivering the talking points of their party, it's just, like, inherently not as interesting as somebody running against their party, which is what Donald Trump did. Like he was taking the sacred cows, or what people assumed were the sacred cows on the right. Then this is a good example, too, of assuming your voters think one thing when they really don't. And this was. This was, to me, the big revelation is how many voters, when I started talking to them, liked Donald Trump because he was against the old Republican Party, which they had started to see as feckless, as just not taking on the left, as not taking on certain issues that they wanted to See, you know, like immigration that they really wanted to see somebody do something about. And I feel like the same thing is happening on the left right now. I'm looking at what's happening right now with Democrats, and I'm like, I've seen this movie before and we're going to get into the groups in a minute. But for this show, we basically talked about to. And we've done this experiment before, but I wanted to rerun it because it's very much part of the conversation right now. Like the. Should we be more moderate, more progressive Democrats, like, continue to relitigate 2024 to figure out what their path forward is. And so we basically got commissioned several groups, some of whom think the Democratic Party should be more moderate, some of whom think that the Democratic Party should be more progressive. But really what they want is for somebody to be more aggressive. And, and it's because they are frustrated. Democrats are frustrated with their own leadership. After 10 years of Donald Trump, Donald Trump winning again basically made a lot of Democrats feel like, what are you guys doing? What are you doing there? I want somebody who's going to go fight. I want somebody who's going to stand up to Donald Trump. Why do we get beat by this guy? What are you guys even doing up there? And that is less about ideology and more about posture.
- [12:45]
Adam Genelson
100%. I mean, that's, that's the thing is people want to see people fight, right? And they want to see people stand up for what they believe in. They want to see them beat Republicans. And, you know, all of those things are consistent with heterodoxy. Heterodoxy is consistent with populism. Heterodoxy is consistent with, you know, what we call a procedural hardball and being for aggressive reforms to the system, like getting rid of the filibuster, which is something I deeply believe in. And so, you know, what they want to see is people who are willing to fight, who know what they believe in. And even if those beliefs don't line up exactly with their own and have principles and independence and, and you know, there's a huge generational change aspect to this too, where people are just tired of seeing the same in Washington. And so put all those things together and you've got a winning formula. And that's what I think Democrats have an opportunity to do right now if they follow through on it.
- [13:32]
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- [14:03]
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- [14:34]
Sarah Longwell
What about somebody like Zoran Mumdani? My certain first impressions of him because he calls himself a socialist, I was immediately like, well, that's a gut guy's. Not for me. But as I watched more of him, I was floored by what a good communicator he is. And I am desperate for Democrats to up their communications game. And so I increasingly started to see somebody that I was like, well, man, this is a generational talent. Like, I may not agree with all of his positions, but then even on his positions he's, you know, he's this hero of the socialist left, but here he comes with sort of pragmatic solutions. Like as he's governing, as he's been in office, you know, he's doing some housing stuff, doing some government cutting red tape stuff that make people like me go, okay, okay, I see you, Zoran, totally.
- [15:22]
Adam Genelson
And what he's doing is he's expanding his coalition. He's bringing in, he's building a big tent. You know, he's bringing in people like you who were skeptical of him at first. I mean, what the most recent video I saw from him on social media was him bragging about balancing the budget. Right.
- [15:38]
Sarah Longwell
So I love a balanced budget.
- [15:40]
Adam Genelson
Exactly. You know, so I mean, and there's nothing inconsistent. I mean, you know, I think he's done a phenomenal job at talking about demanding excellence in government. You know, a lot of the reason people don't trust Democrats to govern is they think we take power and direct services to favored groups or are just lazy about it and we're not responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. And those are all very reasonable and understandable concerns. And so if you want to be the party of government as we are as Democrats, you have an even greater responsibility to show People that you're using their taxpayer dollars responsibly, that you are giving it to people who've earned it and who deserve it, that you're, you know, being fiscally responsible and closing budget deficits where you can. And so, you know, if you want to make the case for expanded government services, if you want to make the case for expanding the social safety net, especially as we face, you know, massive job displacement from AI, it is even more incumbent on you to show that you're responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. And that's something that Zoron is doing in a way that I think is reasonably accurate to classify as heterodox. It's not what you would expect a socialist to do once in office. And I think it's part of the reason he's been able to bring in people who are skeptical of him in the first place.
- [16:48]
Sarah Longwell
All right, I'm going to talk more about the socialists as we get into the sound, but I want to start here with, with the voters. And like I said, we have. We have a group that wants the party to be. The Democratic Party to be more moderate group that wants it to be more progressive. I want to start with the moderate crowd and sort of the reasons that they gave for wanting the party to be more moderate. Let's listen.
- [17:10]
Moderate Focus Group Participant
I still characterize myself as personally as on the far left, but I'm a pragmatist. And that's why I think the Democratic Party has to go moderate. I'm very concerned about the midterms. I think they are completely under threat between the Voting Rights act and the, and the Virginia Supreme Court with the German case and then the Supreme Court's kind of seeming view on that. And yeah, so I'm just working like crazy to have it be. Be different.
- [17:46]
I really can't stand what's happening on the far left. And I think that is pushing moderates to the Republican side. I think we are losing Dems to Republic to the Republican. They would rather go Republican and be with Trump because of how bad the far left is. And that is disturbing. A lot of the. What we're seeing with the pro Palestine Palestinian movement and, and the extremism coming up from that, where I feel like we're having a lot of, like, honestly, the focus is so, so on that. It's not on what's happening here. And a lot of how the far left Dems. Our decision making has everything just to do with like, Israel and Palestine and not what's happening here.
- [18:31]
I don't think that for the left, it was a good decision that, you know, to make that the hill you want to die on is, you know, trans rights. You know, I mean, it's zero point fucking 1% of the population. And, you know, to choose that as the signature issue. Now, as someone pointed out, it's, it's Israel and Palestine and it's complicated. And I look at, you know, what happened in New York with Mamdani and saying, okay, he went really hard left, he said, I'm a socialist and plant the flag and now he's got to govern. That's something else. But it worked. And so that creates a lot of opportunity for soul searching and analysis on the direction that the left should go. And as someone pointed out, there's a lot of one issue voters when it comes to Israel. My personal view is that that country is in the hands of a genocidal maniac who easily manipulated Trump into attacking Iran without a plan.
- [19:42]
But I digress certain political issues that they choose to highlight on the left, it's a lot of social issues and you know, like he said, you know, trans people deserve their rights or whatever. But I definitely think that there is a lot of highlighted social issues that again, almost seem more like common sense than something that should be highlighted politically. I feel like a lot of things that could have been highlighted could have been, you know, our budget, our deficit, education, things like that.
- [20:20]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, so as much as I want to talk about that, I'm going to make us listen to the progressives. The people want the party to be more progressive, right on top of that. And then we're going to talk on the other side of it. All right, let's listen to the people who think the Democratic Party should be more progressive.
- [20:33]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
Definitely more progressive, but also more aggressive. It feels like they just have gotten used to being defeated. And it almost seems like they're not even really trying to, to fight back or push back against certain things that are like blatantly wrong. So, yeah, progressive and throw a little more fire, a little more aggression in there as well.
- [21:00]
I don't know, taking on some socialist values, I think, you know, like universal health care, potential universal income, basic housing rights for people, just taking care of people. And, you know, it's not just about equality for people. I think it's about equity. I feel like we don't have equity in this country. You know, we don't lift people up that, you know, could use assistance and, and things like that. And, you know, I think these are all values that we are kind of sorely lacking.
- [21:34]
Adam Genelson
Right now in this country, I think
- [21:37]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
as polarizing as it is right now for the left and the right, the right is pulling the center more right. I mean, we see Fetterman right now voting to continue the war in Israel. Like, what. What the is that? Or the war in Iran. On behalf of Israel, I feel like it needs to be more progressive because I feel like so many things are happening, but we're not really, like, pushing for change.
- [21:59]
Adam Genelson
Right.
- [21:59]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
Because we want equity. And I feel like we're at a point where our, I mean, our administration right now, like, we're kind of not able to be as progressive.
- [22:10]
I would like to see, and this is the history professor part of me, that Bismarck realpolitik side. We need to make it about class. The Democratic Party needs to make it about. Somebody mentioned equity. If we can tell people, you all are going to have enough. You're going to have a roof over your head, enough to eat, etc. Health care, that is what is most important when we get into anything else. As I mentioned before, I came from a conservative evangelical background. It freaks the people the fuck out to hear this identity politics stuff, sorry to say, Scares people. But if you're telling people we want you all to have just the basic needs of life and this is the party that can help you do it, then we will get the votes.
- [23:11]
I think we need to take a more progressive approach because I think, like, whatever, like the Democrats, the way they respond to, like the Republican Party, maybe back then, I think that approach could have worked. But I think right now the Republicans aren't playing fair. And I think a lot of people are tired of the Democrats trying to take like, the high road when it comes to trying to pass bills that will reduce, like, free speech or like high bills and stuff.
- [23:50]
Focus Group Participant
Yeah, I think that it's pretty obvious that the Republican playbook has to just kind of put facts out the window, lies and whatnot. And they're not playing at any sort of standard. And for so long, the Democrats have just been kind of roadblocks, just kind of condemning what's happening, but not doing anything at all. And I think also sometimes putting candidates that feel very thought about and vetted where I think Mumdani is a great example. They were all nervous that he was so crazy when he came out and look what he did in New York. He got so many people behind them. I think the more we lean into more progressive values, the more we're able to do that to kind of counteract what's happening on the right. We're going to see way more results.
- [24:26]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
I definitely feel like the Democratic Party needs to be more progressive. I feel like we need to get a lot of the younger people more involved, like with the New York mayor, who is progressive, aoc, who is progressive and all her ideas. And I feel like we'll get more people that will come into the Democratic Party, especially the younger people.
- [24:45]
Adam Genelson
I love the voters. I love the voters.
- [24:47]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, they're the best.
- [24:48]
Adam Genelson
But so. Okay, can I have some?
- [24:50]
Sarah Longwell
Just jump in.
- [24:52]
Adam Genelson
So on the progressive side, you know, there were definitely some people who were, you know, cited, you know, sort of core ideological positions. But I feel like most of what you heard was what you described of wanting to be aggressive. They want people to fight. They want people who will take on the establishment. It was a lot more about posture and, and, you know, having that fire one of them said than it was about core positions, although there was some of that. But then on positions, you had talk about heterodoxy, right? You had points of agreement between the moderates and the progressives. You had one guy who said he wanted to go in a more progressive direction who said, we need to focus on, you know, material benefits for people and then said, I'm tired of this identity politics. And you had a guy on the moderate side saying he was tired of identity politics. And then you also had one person in each. One person the progressive side and one person on the moderate side say, I am totally against the war in Iran. And I think that Trump basically got, you know, bamboozled into it by Israel. So this is heterodoxy, right? I mean, these are people who, you know, have different poles and come from different ideologies. But there are points of agreement and points of alignment. And you can kind of visualize listening to those two groups how you can build a big tent that includes all of them.
- [26:08]
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- [26:39]
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- [27:07]
Sarah Longwell
only at Fred's Appliance 100%. So this is. We're just. I was. I'm so glad my thesis of my book is rooted essentially in this conversation. Obviously I have a lot about Republicans too and a lot about Trump and but, but really when I say it is stupid to have an argument about whether the Democratic Party needs to be more progressive or more moderate, it is because if you listen to people, because I've run this experiment multiple times before and they just sound exactly this way, exactly this way. Every time I do it. You can immediately imagine how you bridge these two people. You can imagine candidates that, that both of these sections of people would find exciting and new and fresh. It wouldn't have to be a factional fight over ideology because you can just basically see, I mean I could grow it in a lab. You're like, here you go guys. You need to center affordability and costs and the economy, right? This, I hear this everywhere from everyone. And you know what? If the reason people keep talking about Zoran and AOC is that they articulate clearly the view that the Democratic Party needs to be for working people. And so if regular Democrats, just non progressive Democrats, whatever, all they have to do is center working people, center affordability. Like this is how the Democratic Party to me gets back to so much what it is and creates this umbrella. And if you center affordability, that also comes with then sort of de centering a bunch of the polarizing social issues. You start talking to SW voters, you'll hear this identity politics stuff come up all the time, right? People want, they care about their material well being. They do not want to fight about like the trans stuff. They, everybody, everybody in these groups will tell you they want trans people to be good. They want them to be okay, taken care of. They don't want anybody discriminated against, but they also don't want to talk about it all the time. That is a mistake to be talking about it all the time. The one place then that it gets sort of controversial is. And it doesn't really come up in these groups, but you can hear it is if you're centering the affordability of Americans like it is also, then people want to be safe. They want to be safe. And so they want a closed border and they want to make sure. And this is where I think you like, especially for swing voters. And they want there to be, like, police that keep them safe. Right? They don't. Those are. And that's kind of it. Like, that's kind of the ball game. You know, you heard Palestine and Israel come up in both groups a whole bunch. I do think, though, it's not that hard for a Democrat to say that we need to reevaluate America's relationship with Israel. Like, you could. That would be new enough and heterodox enough to say, like, we need to reevaluate this relationship. You will not find. Even people who are more supportive of Israel will tell you, and Netanyahu's a madman who got us into this war. So, like, we. It's. It's sort of like, to me, it's a lot like how I feel about America, which is I love and support America day in and day out. We are behaving like lunatics, like, we are not to be trusted at the moment. Our government is out of control and corrupt. And like, you could say that about Israel's current government, too, and that we shouldn't support them while they're behaving this way. Just like I think we should fight with tooth and nail against this Republican administration, Trump's administration. And so, like, you could still love and support the places and the existence, but, like, calling it what it is, which is that this is not how these countries should be run. That's all you gotta do. Like, you can just see the coalition right there, 100%.
- [30:34]
Adam Genelson
I mean, no one should be more mad at Netanyahu than people who love Israel because of what he's done to the country and completely obliterated their. Their moral standing in the world. I feel that as a Jewish person. But, you know, but I mean, there's nothing mutually exclusive about a lot of these positions, right? I mean, you had a lot of people talking about, as you said, affordability. I think, you know, there's a deep sense of economic precarity that suffuses their lives. You know, people. People are afraid of what's coming with AI with potential job displacement.
- [31:00]
Sarah Longwell
100.
- [31:01]
Adam Genelson
And I think if you said, look, let's focus on material benefits. And taking the example from Zoron, there's nothing mutually exclusive about also saying we want to be fiscally responsible as we do that. If we want to expand the safety net we should make government as efficient as possible. We should have transparency about where your money is going. We did a poll recently on Tax Day about, you know, the question of taxes. And obviously the top line number is that people don't like paying taxes. Right? No surprise, sure. But when you ask them what would make them feel better about it, paying less taxes actually had less than a majority support. The two things that people wanted the most was for the system to be more fair, namely for rich people to pay their fair share, wealthy people, corporations, and second, to know where their money is going. And if you do those two things, people were happy to pay taxes. They weren't looking to pay less. They're looking to pay into a fair system, and they're looking for transparency and clarity about where their money is going. So none of these things are mutually exclusive. You could. And we're actually something we're working on at Searchlight is proposing a big social safety net expansion, but also engaging these entirely fair questions that people have about what you're doing with their money, whether people are earning the benefits they get. You know, these are the kind of questions that Democrats have shied away from. But we shouldn't, we should take them head on because we're the ones who want to argue for a bigger expanded government. You know, and I'll say the last thing. I mean, you know, FDR understood this with Social Security, right. Why is Social Security so durable? It's because he structured it so that people pay into the program. Right. And they expect to get back what they put in. There's also a ton of research that shows that Social Security throws off a lot less racial resentment and other forms of resentment because people understand that everybody paid into the program, so everybody earned what they're getting. And these are the kind of, of questions that Democrats used to engage in frontally. And we've started to shy away from them, but if we go back to them, that's how you get people to trust you to do things like expanding the social safety net. So you can see this big tent coming together if we just don't shy away from those questions anymore and really go headlong into them.
- [33:13]
Sarah Longwell
And then maybe you could explain this to me, because I gotta say, as somebody who lived on the right, as I was sort of coming up, Republicans, if a Democrat took $1.8 billion to hand out to their political friends and reward them for, let's say, trying to overturn an election, if they took a billion dollars for a ballroom that a president was obsessed with, if they spent over $100 million on golf outings, took a $400 million jet from Qatar, which then cost like a billion dollars of taxpayer money to refurb me. Seems like an awfully easy way for Democrats to reclaim the mantle of fiscal responsibility by pointing out all the ways that Republicans are currently bilking the taxpayers. We are mugging the taxpayers on Fifth Avenue. And I just don't like this is what. What me. What I hear the voters saying is they're like, would somebody please go freak out about those things? Would somebody please hold a million press conferences about that? Would someone on the Democratic side please talk about this relentlessly? Show me that you're going and accusing Republicans every day of stealing money from taxpay. Like that's what they want to see.
- [34:26]
Adam Genelson
Totally. And I think, look, I think what you said earlier about, you know, sort of Trump's second election being a really brutal wake up call for a lot of Democrats, I think is. Is really true. And we've made a lot of progress on sort of, you know, breaking away from this purity trap that we've been in for the last decade or so. But I think, you know, you still see Democrats hesitating a little bit to say the words fiscal responsibility or balance budgets, you know, and that is what is preventing them from really making those issues you described salient to a bigger swath of voters. Right. You're always going to get the people who are already with you just by railing against Trump's corruption. But if you want to bring in additional people that you're going to need to build a super majority to build a Big ten coalition, you're going to have to say, I will be a more responsible steward of taxpayer dollars. I believe in fiscal responsibility. I believe in balanced budgets. It's really funny to be sitting here talking about this, because it's not a moderate who is out there making the strongest case for fiscal responsibility right now. It's Zoran Mamdani. So, you know, that is the thing that Democrats need to engage in and not be afraid. You know, there's still a lot of pressure to sort of never say, you know, we want to make sure benefits are going to people who are in them. We want to be responsible stewards of your taxpayer dollars. We have a little bit of progress to make there, but if we do that, then I think we're looking at bringing in much bigger segments of voters that make it possible for us to win in a lot more places that we're going to need, not just on the presidential level, but, you know, I'm a former Senate guy, and I always think about building a big enough Senate majority to do a lot of, not just pass legislation, but some of these structural reforms that we're going to need to do. We're going to need, you know, more than just a one or two seat majority in the Senate to do that stuff.
- [36:07]
Sarah Longwell
And it's also not just about one election, right? This is, this is about 26, it's about 28. But it's also about building a durable majority that pushes the Republican Party to a place where they've got to completely reevaluate, evaluate what they're doing. I think one of the reasons Democrats have been so unmoored over the last decade is that Trump's eating their lunch on a couple of issues, right? Like, he came in and grabbed like, I'm, I'm for unions, I'm for working people. I'm for more protectionist trade policies that benefit American workers. I'm for America first. And, and that, like those people, you got to go win those people back with a message that makes you feel them, feel like you are relentlessly on working people's side. And let me ask you something. How do progressives that you deal with in sort of the professional political class greet recommendations like the one you just made?
- [37:03]
Adam Genelson
We talk about this process of conflict, calibration and consensus here. I was just talking about it earlier in a meeting before I jumped on this conversation with you, because look, what happens is at first, people get really mad. You know, anytime you say something that deviates from sort of the consensus, everybody yells at you on Twitter or, or codes.
- [37:23]
Sarah Longwell
Right, right. That's part of the problem. Sort of. It codes Republican, kind of.
- [37:26]
Adam Genelson
Exactly. You know, and, and, you know, and then the key thing is to be right, you know, if I'm just being blunt about it, because if you're, if you're correct, it, you know, people, it, it sinks in and people think about it. I mean, there, there, there's sort of psychological research behind this that, you know, it's like when you get in an argument with somebody, you yell and scream, but if the other person had a point, even though you kind of don't want to admit it, you sit on it, you sit with it and you dwell on it and you say, all right, well, you know, let me, let me sort of find my own way to reason towards that. And you're already seeing that in a lot of places. Like, one of the first things we did at Searchlight was to put out some polling and some other research to show that people really don't like it when we talk about climate change as Democrats because it is not a top priority to most voters and it has become basically a cultural issue that, that tags you as somebody who's, you know, more concerned with jetting off to Davos and rubbing shoulders with the elites than somebody who is focused on, on your workaday concerns like affordability because, you know, people associate anything green with costing more and they think you're gonna, you're gonna try to make them buy more expensive things because you care more about climate change than you care about their, their kitchen table issues. It doesn't mean we should abandon it as a cause. It just means it's not something you want do to go campaign on. Everybody got really mad at us when we put that out, right? But just last week you saw in the New York Times Matt Huber, who is a self avowed socialist, making a very similar argument. And he was making it from the perspective of class warfare that this is the most effective way to advance it and keep the focus on material issues, like one of the voters in your focus group said. And so that's sort of what we're describing here, where everybody got really mad at us for a little while. But then I think the merit, the point we made on the merit spoke for itself and people sort of processed it and came around to it. So, you know, we have a thick skin. It's part of who we are as an organization. It's been part of my experience being in this business for 20 years where, you know, the important thing is to go forward in good faith with, you know, solid research and in depth analysis that you've put some time and effort into and not just try to sort of, you know, backfill from a preexisting point of view. And if you do that, you know, you're definitely going to get yelled at. But I think you can actually help move things towards a more productive place overall.
- [39:40]
Sarah Longwell
This is to me a big part of developing this durable coalition. What the never Trump kind of lesson did teach me is that like policy matters, but I have a bigger first order concerns, which is beating an authoritarian slide in America, right? Defeating this authoritarian slide. And what I think is a toxic version, a dangerous version of the Republican Party. I'm sort of like, okay, what works? Like in my book, I am not talking about Sarah Longwell's bespoke policy preferences. I basically listened to thousands of voters and I synthesized it and said, okay, you listen to all these people and they're very clear about what they want. Like, everybody says the same thing. And I will say on, on climate, right? So it's never been a huge issue for me, but also one that I've always kind of been like, yeah, we should do things that are good for the Earth, like if we've got. And we should find ways to. To have a green economy that creates jobs for people and do manufact around it. But it also is very much a luxury topic for voters. They just are like, that's the kind of thing, like, I remember doing a set of focus groups around EVs, electric vehicles, and the voters in the focus groups, even the Dem ones, were like, I can't afford one of those. Like, that's not something I get to have. What do you, like, why are you focusing on this? Like, I can barely afford the jalopy. I'm driving that. Like, if it breaks down, I'm one car payment away from losing my car, which is how I get to work.
- [41:08]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
Work.
- [41:08]
Sarah Longwell
And like, that's what they wanted to focus on. Which, of course, to me, that just always underscored the disconnect between the conversations I was having here in D.C. where of course, lots of people can afford electric vehicles and average voters who feel like that's not even a thing for them, it's not even a thing they get to think about.
- [41:22]
Adam Genelson
And it doesn't mean that you have to give up on the issue. I mean, you know, every side has issues that aren't, you know, super resonant with voters, that they make progress on it when they get into power. Right.
- [41:32]
Sarah Longwell
Sure.
- [41:33]
Adam Genelson
Republicans don't run on cutting taxes for the rich, but then they do it when they get power. And there's just, there are many ways to, to make progress when you have power, and especially if you have durable majorities that can last more than just, you know, past the first midterm under a new president. And I think especially on climate, there are a lot of things we need to do that are actually the most effective policies to pass to reduce carbon emissions that aren't super political on one side or the other. They're very pragmatic. They're about, you know, getting, getting these products to be sort of ready for consumer standards and also doing a lot of stuff on the global level, up global scale, because, you know, ultimately this is a global issue, but it doesn't mean you have to run on it, especially if you're trying to, you know, not lose your focus on affordability. So, you know, it's ultimately, you have to make choices when it comes to what you communicate on and what you make your the core of your appeal. And I think Democrats are starting to get more pragmatic about that.
- [42:30]
Sarah Longwell
I feel this way without getting too deep into it. And I have a whole chapter on, on trans issues. And it's like, like I want to protect trans people. Most Democrats want to protect trans people. You know how you protect trans people? It's not by running on it. It is not by running on it. It is by holding power. It is by holding power. That is, that is how you're going to protect trans people. And so you need to win the election so you can protect trans people. And you heard that progressive say it. It's like, well, I don't think this. You got to do the issues that affect the most amount of people. And there are going to be people who don't like that, especially in the political class. But at the end of the day, this is about everybody agreeing to figure out in a broad coalition how do you win elections and gain political power so you can do the things you want to do.
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- [43:19]
Sarah Longwell
If my teenager starts calling me Leslie,
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Sarah Longwell
I just booked my verbo because there was a sweet wine fridge.
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- [43:42]
Sarah Longwell
All right, you mentioned purity tests before and this is always something I'm interested in. So we kicked it around with the groups. We asked sort of which viewpoints or people should not be allowed in the Democratic Party. And that generated a whole other discussion around the amount of of purity testing that goes on in the party. So let's listen to how the Democratic Party should be. More moderate crowd talked about the purity tests.
- [44:07]
Moderate Focus Group Participant
Anti Democratic sentiment is disqualifying, I think, you know, and as, as I was explaining to my alien friends, you know, somebody that is only interested in the being in service to the tribe or the cult, in this case, that's disqualifying. You can't be a Democrat and be anti Democrat.
- [44:35]
Fetterman just seems to be. I don't know if like getting things done or what his whole attitude is about this but it's. There isn't anything that I think I've heard him consistently support that would follow the party tenants.
- [44:50]
Democrats have a purity test which I do not agree with. You have to have a completely clean slate. Have never done any trouble that could even be seen as possibly wrong. Unless they will not, hopefully you will not get the support or they will kick you out of ballot. For the example I I think of is Al Franken. Yeah, Soda. He had those pictures. The pictures were great. But to step down, I am, I'm on the side of run again. If they don't vote for you, they don't vote for. For you. But he was a great senator. He. I listened to Bill Maher. I think Bill Maher is trash. At the same time he brings both parties to the table. But for me it's you voted for them. They might have done something during their time in office but don't vote for them again.
- [45:34]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
Don't.
- [45:34]
Moderate Focus Group Participant
But the party itself always wants to kick somebody out when they do one bad thing.
- [45:38]
I think that the Democrat Party, the expectation is that there's a four year degree or an advanced degree or you know they, they've built themselves up to the political podium where the Republicans, I mean they, they picked a reality TV guy who's bankrupt how many businesses and you know they, they put it out there that anybody can hold an office position regardless of your background.
- [46:08]
I completely agree about Al Frankton. I thought it was really crazy how much the Democratic party was trying to push him out so quickly. And I think that's the first time I really paid attention and have really seen that. I thought that he also was an excellent senator and I'm not sure that in the current political climate they would have gone after him the way they did back then. I don't expect someone to be like completely free of any background or this or that. I think there's too much background checking going on in some way. For example, somebody's known to be like, like having some affair with someone in the past. I don't care about that. In Europe, like presidents have affairs while they're president and nobody cares. You know, that's their private business. I think when it comes to like political office and really running for office and being representative of other people, I think there's a moral standard that I think they should have and certainly represent. But I think there's too much background checking on their personal side. But when it Comes to legal things, when it comes to financial issues, when it comes to, you know, really
- [47:12]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
issues
- [47:13]
Moderate Focus Group Participant
that relate directly to their office and their position. I think that needs to be looked at.
- [47:17]
Sarah Longwell
I talk about this a bunch in my book about the difference between voters wanting somebody with sort of a civic virtue, but they don't really care about per. They do. Voters do not care if somebody's had affairs or abortions or any of that stuff that used to matter in politics. No one cares. Right or left, left, no one cares. And that's a big shift in our politics. But they do want somebody who sort of cares about America, cares about the people in America and like, shows every day that they believe in what we're doing here and they want to go fight for it. Does what jumped out for you. And also, maybe you want to comment on the Fetterman of it all.
- [47:55]
Adam Genelson
It's. Well, yeah, I mean, it's funny. They're going to make me defend him. I mean, I, you know, I actually think, think as much as I disagree with my former boss on many issues, you know, he still votes with Democrats 80, 90% of the time, you know, which is, which is a funny thing. And, and recently passed a bill to expand SNAP benefits to cover hot rotisserie chickens, which I think is a really good thing, completely in line with Democratic values. So, you know, complicated guy has made his own choices on a lot of fronts. And that's, that's sort of how I feel about that. But, but again, you know, I think big tense, you know, you still need to include people who we disagree with on a lot of issues. And that's sort of what comes across to me in general about that segment is that, you know, for, you know, what's deeply unfun, purity tests. You know, nobody wants to hang out with people who you feel, you have to watch what you say around. You know, if you feel like you're walking on eggshells around Democrats, you're not going to want to go to that party. And, you know, we have to ask ourselves, are we. Are we about shrinkage or are we about growth? You know, and that's, that's what this really is fundamentally about. And you cannot go through life purity testing your friends, your family. And the same, and that same thing applies to candidates. You can't go through life purity testing them. You know, and I think there, there are certain things that we should expect of our elected officials in public office. They should hold themselves to high ethical standards when it comes to the conduct of the office, how they deal with taxpayer money. What, you know, not using their position for financial gain, but yeah, who cares about their personal lives, you know, and, and I think that that's a much healthier approach, not just to politics, but to life. And I think that that's something Democrats should take to heart.
- [49:36]
Sarah Longwell
But let me ask you a harder version of this question, which is, who shouldn't be in the tent, though? Like, where do you draw the lines? Because of course, like, if somebody had killed somebody in their past or was somebody who. So, like, I just, I can't help it. Like, I have certain red lines and I found myself in this position recently where I got in a fight with a far left streamer sort of unintentionally. But, and, and in my head I'm like, no, you've got to have this big tent. I want all these people in this big tent. But also, you know, saying America deserved 9, 11 or using violent rhetoric, then I, I start to be like, no, no, no. And because I think that's not a good, healthy way to win. And yet, and yet I struggle with this idea of like, but you do need this very big tent. And for the people who are furious about. So I'll give you an example. I don't, I find it alarming when I hear people sort of brush away the murder of the United Healthcare executive. They say, like, who cares about that because there's social murder going on, on. And I think to myself, it is really important to have a coalition and to have a politician leading the coalition who says things like, I'm going to fight for people's health care and I'm going to take on these insurance companies. What I wouldn't support personally is a presidential candidate on the Democratic side who was saying, yeah, I think it's, I totally get why people wanted to just murder the guy who ran the biggest big, you know, health insurance company. Like that is, that's where the, the rubber meets the road, I think, on this whole idea of a big coalition. And how do you, how do you think about navigating that?
- [51:19]
Adam Genelson
I think there's, there's tears, right? I mean, if, if we're talking about who should be the leader of the party and who should be the presidential nominee. Absolutely, there are red lines and I think the things that you cited there would certainly qualify. I would not vote for a Democratic presidential candidate who said America deserved 9, 11. But then when you, you know, it's, it's a pyramid. Right? And so then when you go down, you know, I think the, the sort of the, the boundaries expand because ultimately those kind of red lines quickly become sort of a personal issue. You know, who would you disagree with, who would you not associate with? Lots of people are going to have different answers to that question. So I think we should hold, you know, the, the leaders at the top of the pyramid to high standards. There should be red lines for them. But I think as you expand to say, you know, look, would I be okay with this person casting their vote for a Democrat and helping us win? My sense of who I'd accept in that part of the pyramid is, is a lot more expansive. And I, look, I, I think it, and that doesn't mean I agree with them. I could vehemently disagree with them, but we ultimately, you know, need to have people voting for us in a lot of places across this country who aren't currently voting for us. So I think, you know, at the top drop, you know, high standards and your standards get looser as you go down the pyramid, basically. I mean, look, one way to think about this is that, you know, if you look at the coalition that sustained Democrats to pass the New Deal and a lot of the Great Society, it included a lot of genuinely terrible people. That was back when Democrats, the Democratic Party was still the party of white supremacy. And, and all the senators and congressmen in the south who upheld Jim Crow cast their votes and formed the, the votes that enabled FDR to enact all of the things that we love about the New Deal. And you know, these were people who would vote for Social Security one day and then go to the Senate floor the next and talk about decrying, you know, the mingling of the races in terms, I can't even say here, that were pretty common at the time. So, you know, I'm not saying we should do that, but I think that if you look through history, there are always these very difficult questions of trade offs and how you approach that is tricky and there are no easy answers. But again, I think when we're talking about the top of the ticket, we should have very high standards. But if we're talking about the millions and millions of people that we need to support Democrats so that we defeat the rise of fascism and pass things that are going to make people realize that they want Democrats in power because we deliver concrete benefits to people, it's sort of a different standard.
- [53:57]
Sarah Longwell
So let's take another tough example that that's being tested right now as we speak, and that's Graham Platner. So he's got his tattoo, he's got Reddit posts. They've been discussed to death already, so we don't need to relitigate them. But he recently said in an interview with the Lever that he doesn't support banning assault weapons because he owns an AR15 himself. Now let's listen to how the Democrats we talked to wrestled with that.
- [54:24]
Moderate Focus Group Participant
No one has ever explained to me why an individual needs an assault rifle. I've never understood why. Again, I grew up hunting. I understand shotguns, I understand having a gun to protect yourself, but I don't understand that particular gun. And no one has ever been able to explain why we need it. And I think that that just doesn't make any sense to me. And I don't understand how you can, can support that and claim that you're a Democrat just because you own one. I also am just like, why do you own one? What are you doing with it? Like, why do you need it?
- [54:58]
I think that there's, there's a wide range of, you know, even if he is, wants to hold political office, he still can have his personal opinion on how he feels about something. I don't know enough to like make a decision of whether I feel like, like he should take a stance just because he's running a Democratic platform or not. Like, you know, I, I think he has the right to his opinion on certain things based on his own history and, and background of military service.
- [55:30]
I guess Maine's very in the middle or leans more Republican. I personally, this is just a personal thing. I am anti second Amendment. I don't think guns are necessary serving this country. But at the same time the, the gun comment for him, for a state like Maine is helpful just because people like guns in, in Maine if the case, I would never go from because of that. But in the primaries, if he ends up being the can. If I was a person in Maine ends up being the candidate that is selected and it's between him and a Republican and likelihood I will have more things in common with him and then than Republican. I'm not for it, but I think on the side of like purity tests, if he wants to run on that as his platform, let him run and we'll see what happens in the primary.
- [56:18]
I'm a gun owner and it's not about hunting. You know, the second amendment had nothing to do with hunting, owning shotguns. That's not what it was for. It was for, let's say, for example, to give you a contemporary example, the current government set up a secret police force that were allowed to wear masks and round people up and put them in camps. Okay. And it got out of control. The Second Amendment is so that you have weapons that are military in nature to counter that, to make it very difficult for that to, like, get traction in society. And we've just experienced that with ice. You know, if ICE really got out of control and decided, you know what, we're going to go after Jews next, or we're going to go after this group next or that group next, if enough people have military weapons, it makes it a lot harder for that to be a practical thing to execute.
- [57:11]
I think assault weapon is what I'm really against. I signed petitions to ban assault weapons. I think there's a big difference between hunting and hunting someone down with an assault rifle. I don't think that's necessary.
- [57:26]
I would say that I'm not an expert on that particular thing in the Democratic Party, but it would definitely give me pause. And I just, I wouldn't understand why he was staking his claim about that particular thing when that is so very much not a Democratic thing.
- [57:42]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
It wouldn't be a deal breaker for me. I don't like them either. I don't want assault weapons. But again, trying to be real realistic person about what's going to happen. Guns aren't going to go away anytime soon. Maybe someday they will. If there was a candidate who I agreed with on everything but that, I would still vote for that person.
- [58:03]
Sarah Longwell
Here's why the debate that happens online bugs me so much, is that if you listen to regular people, regular Democrats, many of whom the. The last person there is is, was one of the progressives. The rest of them are the moderates. They're pretty pragmatic, like they just want to win. They're like, I might not. Like, it might not be for me, but guys running in Maine and so let him do his thing. So what do you make of. Of the way that the Democrats reacted to that?
- [58:29]
Adam Genelson
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean that, you know, look, gun control is maybe one of my top three issues I'm most passionate about. Right. I mean, the worst day of my professional career was when I was working in the Senate in 2013 and I had to go tell Sandy Hook, Sandy Hook kids that we failed to pass the assault weapons ban. I mean, I'm almost like tearing up thinking about, like, that was hard. But Graham Putner represents Maine and people in Maine love their guns. As, as I understand it, he also is just personally, you know, he's not like a, you know, one of these Democrats who has held a gun once and is going to look awkward holding it like he loves guns and is part of gun culture. And that's heterodoxy in action, you know, And I think. I think he's not going to lose any of those folks on the left who love him for a bunch of other reasons because he has this heterodox position. But what he could do is bring in other voters, people who voted for Susan Collins in the past, which are going to have to do to win by taking that mix of positions. And then I also think you know so much about him. You know, this heterodox position on the issues and just his general personality and this being somebody who the Democratic Party would have canceled in the past, I think when you put all those things together, you have a genuinely heterodox mix that's capable of winning what's going to be a very tough race, even though it's a pretty blue state against a really, really tough candidate, Susan Collins, day or night.
- [59:56]
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Sarah Longwell
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- [60:24]
Sarah Longwell
Let's talk groceries, specifically your groceries. With Instacart, you want your groceries just the way you like them, right?
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Sarah Longwell
lets you pick how ripe or unripe you want your bananas.
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Sarah Longwell
helping guide their choices. Instacart get groceries just how you like. All right, we're gonna keep moving on this because we are running long because this is my favorite conversation. So in this big tent thing, never Trumpers, of which I am one, still there is a frustration that it feels like the Democratic Party tries to appeal to people like us, right? Sort of people who were on the center right or disaffected Republicans, they're like, why are you. Why are you focused on that flank of the big tent and not the more progressive flank of the big tent. And there. So we asked this in the focus group because we were sort of interested in how people thought about appealing to people who were more to the center right of them. And here's what they had to say.
- [61:32]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
It goes back to Biden, like, his whole. I feel like his whole campaign was like, vote for me because I'm not Trump.
- [61:40]
Moderate Focus Group Participant
And, you know, I'm.
- [61:41]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
I'm. I don't know, I feel like they're like, even the way they kind of run their, their Democratic. What is that, the big nomination, primaries, convention, you know, they bring in all these ex Republicans, right, to like, talk about why they're good. They're going to vote for the Democratic nominee. And, you know, I feel like there's not enough talking about, like, the actual issue, but more about, like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, we can accommodate for those of you who are disaffected by this current administration. And, you know, we'll be tame. We'll kind of be toe the middle, you know, but not actually, like, take a real stand on anything.
- [62:24]
I think it is just a lot of dislike having, like, in common, of not approving of Trump and saying maybe, like, we should vote for us because we're better than Trump. But they don't really have, like, they don't. They're not really laying down, like, their policies. And I think generally people that support the Democrat Party don't want, like,
- [62:45]
Moderate Focus Group Participant
I don't.
- [62:45]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
They don't want that, and they don't. I don't think they want. The party to, like, go more towards. Towards, like the center.
- [62:56]
During the election, when Biden and Kamala and that whole thing, all the Democrats thought, oh, maybe we should become, like, just right of center. And like, everyone should start announcing that, oh, well, I'm a Democrat and I believe in all these liberal ideas. But, like, I have handguns. Like, Kamala goes, I have a Glock.
- [63:14]
Sarah Longwell
And it was like, what the does that even.
- [63:17]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
Like, I don't give a.
- [63:18]
Sarah Longwell
Like, I want you to make my
- [63:20]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
life better, and I want you to make my neighbor's life better. I want you to make even Republicans lives better. So don't give a. About your gun. Like, it was just so weird.
- [63:29]
It's almost like a popularity contest. Come sit at my lunch table. I don't like Trump. And. And it's like, there's more important things at stake than just trying to win over people that are kind of iffy on Trump.
- [63:44]
Sarah Longwell
I would say what I didn't hear was, no, I don't want you to try to appeal to Republicans. Right? Like, they seem to understand. It's more that they feel like it was kind of a coding thing. They were trying to code something as opposed to being like, like, no, here's what I stand for. Here's how I'm going to make your life better. You know, which to me Sounds like basically everything these voters say, which is as much as the Internet wants to fight about should the party again, because being more moderate, people then sort of think like, oh well, that's about appealing to the never Trump types, whatever, versus why aren't you appealing to more progressives? But actually what these voters are saying is like, just tell me how you're going to make my life better and we'll judge you on that. Which to me is the core of this is like, it's not about just appealing to this swing section or this swing section. It's about saying, I've got a really clear message and we're going to lay a really clear brand around what I'm saying. And so anybody who wants to be a part of that and tag into that left, right and center, like, come on in.
- [64:46]
Adam Genelson
Yeah, 100%. Part of it, I think, is the ham handedness with which it was executed by the Harris campaign. I mean, it was like, we're going to trot out Liz Cheney, you know, and what this means is that if you are a soft Republican considering voting for Trump, you should vote for me. Like it was, it was done awkwardly, you know, there was no subtlety to it and there was an aspect of obsequiousness. You know, there was like, it was like she was begging Liz Cheney to endorse her. She was begging to go on Joe Rogan, which I think kind of gives off this feeling of artificiality and you know, trying to sort of substitute for having beliefs and substance and, and principles. So I think there's nothing stopping a Democrat from saying, here's what I believe, you know, here is how I am, you know, a uniquely heterodox candidate. And I've got some friends on the Republican side and I've got some friends on the far left too, you know, and I, I actually come back to Platner thinking about this. You know, I bet a lot of his former friends in the military are not all Democrats just going to take a wild guess there, you know, And I think if you have genuine relationships with Republicans, you know, genuine friendships and areas of core agreement, that's where you need to focus that effort. So it doesn't come off as artificial. It doesn't come off as, you know, just sort of trotting somebody out symbolically, because I think it's very powerful to model where we, where we agree. You know, I mean, Sarah, you and I, we have been on different sides of many elections over the course of our, of our careers. I mean, I, I remember arguing with with Tim Miller, you know, during the 2012 campaign. But. But I think that when you actually show people that you have things in common and you can sort of model those relationships, that can be very powerful. You just can't be, you know, so artificial and fakey about it.
- [66:38]
Sarah Longwell
As somebody who hosted or hosted, I was asked to moderate one of those Liz Cheney events with. With Vice President Harris. I thought about this a lot in the aftermath because I certainly didn't think there was any harm in her doing that. And I think it was. I think it's good. Like, you have to show that you can reach out to a lot of different types of people. I think the. And so people now in their analysis, try to latch on to things like that. They're like, well, she campaigned with Liz Cheney and that's why she lost. And I'm like, that is definitely not why she lost.
- [67:09]
Adam Genelson
Definitely not. It's definitely not why she lost. She had no genuine relationship with Liz.
- [67:13]
Sarah Longwell
That's right.
- [67:13]
Adam Genelson
She was. She was a senator from California. She had no real relationships with Republicans throughout her career that she could talk about. You know, I mean, I remember Barack Obama, you know, when he got to the Senate, he built a really strong relationship with Tom Coburn, who was one of the most conservative senators in. In America. Right. And. But that was a genuine relationship that he could. That they had points of agreement. They worked on an ethics bill together. You know, so I think you have to. People sense it if it's fake. And I think think campaigning with Liz Cheney, there's nothing wrong with that on the face of it, but people can sense that there was no real relationship there. It was, you know, Liz Cheney trying to do this because she thought it was the right thing to save America. And that's admirable. But it comes across, you know, because of Harris not having these deep relationships with Republicans. And I think that's sort of what people sense.
- [67:55]
Sarah Longwell
To me, it was less that the artificiality of the relationship with Liz Cheney and more that the voters. I would ask every Democratic group, people who didn't vote, whatever, people who, who sat out or people who voted for Kamala or people who switched. They switched from. From Biden to Trump. I asked a million people about why, because I was just wanted to know what all the reasons were. Nobody ever said because she campaigned with Liz Cheney. You know what they said, though? They said, because I didn't know who Kamala Harris was. I didn't know who she stood for, what she stood for. It was like some. Many people thought she was way too progressive, which she was kind of using Liz Cheney to shield against the accusations of being too progressive. And all it ended up with was, was, I just don't know who this person is. I don't know what she stands for. I don't know what her deal is. And that was the thing that lost that election, that inability to have, like a real parasocial relationship with her, a real sense of I know exactly who she is and I could tag on to that. I can find space with her. It was more just like, I don't know what this person stands for. That is the thing that did her in.
- [68:49]
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- [69:46]
Sarah Longwell
N okay, Speaking of artificiality, I do want to get into AI just really as we close here because AI is coming up more and more. A lot of the AI aversion in this country is concentrated among more progressive Democrats right now. But it comes on through in all the groups too. It's not just progressive. I mean, I hear AI concerns from everybody, but the progressives tend to be more clear in their opposition. So let's hear how the progressive group talked about AI and how it's going to affect our future.
- [70:20]
Focus Group Participant
I think the people that are running these companies are just mass data farming just kind of stealing everybody's info there. There's ton of environmental stuff. I mean, you see what's happening with the data center. It's kind of in Utah right now. I just think that there's so much kind of negative with it that for me outweighs the sort of positives of maybe correcting emails or doing other stuff. And also just even in music, there's like a huge AI boom to get music. And I'm not so worried about jobs being replaced, but it just seems like such a wasted amount of energy.
- [70:54]
Progressive Focus Group Participant
Yeah, I think about who is kind of spearheading all this. I think about all the tech billionaires and you know, I think about like, what is the end game for AI? And I sure as hell don't think it's so the billionaires can create universal basic income for everyone. You know, I think it's. They can get more and more money and you know, jobs become a little bit more crunched.
- [71:15]
AI should be the best news since. Jesus Christ. Excuse me for the. It could free just in the United States. We already have enough food and housing. We have everything we need. AI could free up so much human potential that it would be like splitting the atom, the energy and we could develop Africa and the rest of the world. We could put these people in America to work, educate them, get them out there and make the rest of the world better. But what's going to happen is what Chris and Kai Kyle said, these billionaires are going to hog it up the way they've been doing since the 1850s. It could be good, but it's going to be shit.
- [72:03]
I think about the environmental factor first and foremost because you and I and everyone here and all this dumbass billionaires all going to live here because they can't breathe on Mars.
- [72:13]
Yet.
- [72:15]
I know that the first, like there have been tons of news reports recently that the first major city that is going to run out of clean drinking water is in Texas. And if I remember correctly, it's San Antonio. But yes, the massive data center that just got approved in Utah, which is fucking disgusting. A lot of my clients for accounting purposes, obviously it's just like really simple dumb shit like, you know, coding expenses and blah, blah, blah. But I have to review it and then I have to correct it. So like at that point, why didn't I just do it myself?
- [72:46]
I do like to use it just for simple things like is this garlic any good anymore? It's got greens, you know, little stuff like that. So I don't have to read 10 articles to figure out some simple thing. But I don't trust it for any, any moral purposes.
- [73:08]
I do use it in my work life. I'm in staffing, so I put a lot of resumes through AI they can point out things, see how they refer to a job description, they can write cover letters. So things like that, that's helped me in my daily work life. And then personally, yeah, kind of like what, what they were mentioning, you know, I might Say, oh, I have this in my refrigerator, but what recipe can I make from that?
- [73:34]
Sarah Longwell
All right, so, Adam, there's been some reporting from Axios on Democratic campaigns spending less on AI than their Republican counterparts. Parts. And this tracks with sort of my experience now, having seen the way the sausage is made on both sides. Republicans are quick to grab new technology and implement it for political purposes. Democrats, because they have some moral quandaries about this, seem less willing to adopt it, but man, is it coming for us whether we like it or not. So how do you think Democrats need to adapt both the campaign professionals and the policymakers?
- [74:06]
Adam Genelson
Yeah, I mean, look, the fear is real, right? I mean, as you heard in those groups, AI sort of represents. It sort of conjures a lot of other existing fears that people have about the environment, about, you know, antipathy to billionaires, about the lack of fairness in our system, you know, all that stuff. And that's a genuine feeling and it's not wrong. You know, I mean, the threat is really real. I think the challenge in a campaign context and just with AI in general is, you know, how do you make it work for us? I think part of the reason people have this fear is they feel like AI is something that is being done to them. You know, it is, it is being wrought on them. And, you know, if a leader was to say, I'm going to, you know, seize this by the reins and take control and I'm going to make sure that the build out, you know, benefits everybody. I'm going to make sure it's done in a fair way. I'm going to make sure the environment is protected. I'm going to, you know, make these billionaires, you know, pay out their asses to fund things like schools and roads and bridges and, you know, even a direct taxpayer rebate to folks where these things are being built, AI makes them feel powerless and they're looking for someone to come and sort of take it by the reins and say, I'm taking control of this situation and I'm going to make sure that it is done in a way that is fair and is consistent with our values and, and that ultimately doesn't leave anybody out in the cold.
- [75:23]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I agree with that. I think that actually one of the reasons that you're getting sort of the war on the gerontocracy and the way people are so desperate for younger leaders is not just because sort of the lesson of Biden was that, you know, these, these leaders hold on for too long. It's because they worry that the older. The older political leaders don't understand the new information environment that they have to exist in. And they want people who are like, no. Figure out how to regulate this in a way that's going to make us be able to reap the benefits and mitigate the downsides. And I think, yeah, they're desperately looking for somebody to talk to them about it.
- [76:01]
Adam Genelson
Yeah, 100%. I mean, that's, you know, in the campaign context, you're right. It's, it's coming. It's here. I think you gotta, you know, you're fighting with one hand tied behind your back. If you let Republicans use it and Democrats don't use it because they have moral quandaries about it, or, you know, they have campaigns that are unionized and you're not allowed to use it. There's complicated dynamics here, but I think ultimately we can't let Republicans, you know, use something that's going to be a very effective weapon on campaigns against us without us, you know, being equally adept at that technology.
- [76:31]
Sarah Longwell
Adam Genelson, thank you so much for joining us. This was a great conversation. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the focus group podcast. Remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the Bulwark on YouTube and become a Bulwark plus member at the bullwork.com we will see everybody next week.