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The Focus Group Podcast
S6 Ep5: I'd Do Anything To Win (But I Won't Do That) (with Dan Pfeiffer)
00:59:42
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign hello everyone, and welcome to the Focus group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and this week we're catching up with Democratic voters and their struggles with the Democratic Party. Now, if you're thinking, come on, Sarah, are you just going to rip on Democrats? Just hear me out, hear me out. If you've listened to this show at all, you know Democratic voters are deeply frustrated and want to see their party push back more effectively against the Trump administration's agenda. That's true across the universe of Democratic voters, whether people are more moderate, whether they're more progressive. And from the beginning of Trump's second term, the Democratic Party has seemed to be on its back foot, deer in headlights. And the feeling among voters is that the party leaders have gotten outmaneuvered and steamrolled by Trump and MAGA again and again. But as much as Democratic voters want to, and I put this in all caps, fight harder. We've also heard them wrapped in a constant struggle over how hard and over what they should be playing hardball about. My guest today is Dan Pfeiffer, co host of Pod Save America and author of the excellent Substack newsletter, the Message Box, which I read religiously. D. Dan, thanks for being here.
- [01:20]
B
Sarah, thanks for having me. Longtime fan of the show. So I'm very excited for this.
- [01:25]
A
You're somebody else who is deeply immersed both in like the nitty gritty politics of it all, but also the messaging side. And so I love when we get a chance to talk. And also this is like very timely, this particular group, because we're in the middle of one of those situations where Democrats are having this argument with each other about do we shut down the government and take a stand or do we kind of cave because we just can't stomach the pain that it's going to cause average people. It's a tough question. And before I get your thoughts on the shutdown, you said about a month ago that you hadn't seen the Democratic Party be more divided in a long time and those divisions are preventing a full throated response to Trump. So what do you want to see Democrats talking about right now and what do you think they should stop talking about?
- [02:16]
B
Well, I think this is tough because we are so far as a party from where we need to be, in my view, in terms of messaging, branding, strategy, tactics. And it's hard to be like this is the one thing they should do. We should talk about this one thing. But I say the following things, right? One is I think we have to be less reticent about just explicitly calling out what the threat is. We're in this constant push and pull between what every Democrat, I think, believes to their bones, which is we're in a very dangerous moment. Right. That Trump is doing something that we may not come back from. And then the people who then turn around and get all of the message testing from the polls would say affordability, affordability tariffs, Medicaid cuts, and we're like betwixt in between these two environments. And what I want to see Democrats do is something that I think we've lost the capacity or the imagination to, which is to tell one story that encompasses all of it, that these things are all tied together, that the tariffs are an illegal tax on people, that Trump is consolidating power so that he can help himself and his rich friends. And he's hurting you. And just like we have, we are speaking in sentences and not stories. And I want them to be a whole story from a legislative perspective. I recognize the Democrats have, other than this one moment, the shutdown, have very little that they can do. We just don't have a lot of power to do things. And so a lot of when people say when I think Democrats want to fight, I want them to fight harder. I want them to be more aggressive and more explicit and more omnipresent in their messaging.
- [03:49]
A
Yeah, I think that's right. You know, I was kind of setting you up because I did a panel yesterday and I saw this. Yeah, did you see the actual panel?
- [03:58]
B
No, I saw the. I think it was a Dave Weigel summary of your remarks that I saw.
- [04:01]
A
Yeah, I was talking so much and so brilliantly, he couldn't capture it in.
- [04:04]
B
Just a few minutes. Of course. Yeah. So please, please give me the full yes.
- [04:08]
A
So first of all, one of the things that is frustrating to me, and you just really did outline it, is that there is a story for the taking. And it's kind of an easy one. And to me, it strikes me as like very much in Democrats wheelhouse. You can take Epstein, you can take the big beautiful bill, the big billionaires bill. You can take these cuts to Medicare, like everything you can wrap into. Donald Trump hurts you so he can protect his elite friends. Right. He's cutting your healthcare and he's giving tax cuts to his rich buddies. He is preying on survivors of sexual abuse or not hearing them to cover up for whoever's on the Epstein list. And he's being super weird about it, about himself too. You know, like there is a story here and that it brings in the corruption, it brings in the elites versus every person. And it is about the price and the cost of things. And so it strikes me as constantly strange that Democrats feel like they have to have a trade off in the messaging. The other thing that I guess I struggle with, and I don't know if you get this sense, but now, having worked with both Republicans and Democrats, one of the things Republicans do is they just have a really good gut instinct when something's going to land with their audience. Like they know their audience really well. And Democrats need like 10 conference calls and 16 focus groups and a few polls before they move. And by the time they do move then on the issue, the world's moved on to another thing. And because they don't have that top line narrative established, they find themselves trying to message piecemeal and they can never do it fast enough to sort of keep up. Does that sound right?
- [05:44]
B
Yeah, I think there are a couple things going on there. One, the people who are in charge of messaging right now are. The ones you're seeing are not particularly good natural communicators. Right. Like the best on either side know what they want to say, they know how to say it, and they don't have to wait.
- [05:58]
A
Right.
- [05:58]
B
On our side, that could be Obama, it could be Bill Clinton. AOC and Bernie know exactly what they want to say. They're not doing a whole bunch of focus groups to figure it out. Mandani in New York, like, there are people who know what they're doing, but.
- [06:07]
A
In general say, that's like what Weigel quoted me saying is like the people I disagree with on policy are the ones doing it. Right. But it kind of left it hanging out there. In terms of what I meant, they were right on. Yes. And I saw it somewhere that they thought I meant populist economics. And I was like, no, they can communicate. They know what they believe in. They know how to talk about populist economics. And therefore they can go on offense and talk about things or make any issue kind of relate back to their story in a way that everybody else is like, what am I supposed to say about X, Y and Z? I'm sorry, I interrupted you.
- [06:39]
B
Yeah. But there's another problem here that I think goes at the heart of Democratic messaging in the post2016 era, which is we don't use opinion research in our finely honed, massive, very expensive messaging machine. We use it to figure out what we should say, not how to make what we want to say better. Republicans tend to, and this is in part because of. I mean, you can have a very long conversation about the media systems. They've worked in the fear of their own base for so long, but they optimize their messaging for engagement. Like, what is going to get people fired up? And then they try to take the things they want to say and make them salient and persuasive to the larger electorate. What we try to do is we start from scratch, we find out what the public finds salient and persuasive, and then we change our messaging to address that. And when you do it that way, you're always going to a be behind. You're always going to be forced to play on the other team's field because you're not trying to make what is most politically advantageous to yourself the number one most important issue for people in the election. You're just playing with what you've been given. And I think we have become, in the Democratic Party, addicted to message testing. Like, there is some, you know, it could be a large language model. It could be, you know, a bunch of research and polling, a perfect, you know, analytics guru or whatever else that will tell us the exact perfect sentence we need to say to this group of people to win them over. And when you rely on that, it belies a lack of confidence and insecurity in your own messaging and your own values and your own views.
- [08:16]
A
100%. You know, Democrats have started asking me to talk about things, which is funny. I do these focus groups sort of for my own purposes. Like, I'm not paid by any campaign or any, like, Democratic politician or centrist politician, or, like, no one pays me to do these. And so I'm never beholden to trying to, like, take a message and make it fit into some framework or some person. But I was at this thing yesterday talking to a bunch of people, and I started being like, stop testing. You guys are addicted to the testing. It is not helpful because it's like, well, in a perfect environment where we've trapped people to make them watch our video without all the other noise and without knowing anything else about what other inputs are going in, this moved them, you know,.2%. And I'm like, that's actually not that helpful. What it leads to is a kind of bloodless advertising and communication style. Because, like, when they invite me in to speak and Democratic politicians say, like, well, what should the messaging be? I do kind of reach out and put my hands on people sometimes and say, what matters to you? Like, what do you want to say? What do you Care about what gets you up in the morning. Why did you run? What are you passionate about? And I, I sort of think if Democrats were to clear their desks of all the debris, of all the groups, of all the message testing, even though I disagree and I think a lot of them would have maybe not great instincts about where they would really focus their time, I'm convinced they would be better off if every single one of them is just speaking from a gut level as a human being about what really matters to them, than they are doing what they're doing now.
- [09:49]
B
Yeah, I call this the magic words fallacy. And this is a long term Democratic problem. If you look at the history of the party, whenever we lose, we begin trying to figure out what the right words. Look at the obsession with Frank Luntz after among Democrats after the 90s, death, tax, pro life versus pro choice. After Bush won in 2004 and we couldn't like get our footing in the right way, people became obsessed with George Lakoff and Drew Weston, these linguists who could tell us how to talk. The reason that we do that is there's an unwillingness to confront the larger problems. Because if you can just find the right sentence, you don't have to change your policies, you don't have to change your leaders. Like, you don't have to ask any of the hard questions. You just need someone to tell you, if I say these words, I will win. Take what I already believe, what I'm already doing. Take the person who's already saying it. Just give them the sentence and you can do it. It's a shortcut. And the shortcuts never work.
- [10:40]
A
Never. Well, I could talk to you about this.
- [10:43]
B
We can do this for hours.
- [10:43]
A
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- [13:29]
B
And I get it. Like there is an argument to be said about of like standing our ground and putting our foot down and standing in the face of what we believe is tyranny and not standing for that, not getting bullied. But at the end of the day, I just don't see what it accomplishes. If we want to avoid these type of things or if we want to.
- [13:49]
A
Make a point, then we need to.
- [13:51]
B
Do a better job of taking responsibility of the fact that we allowed people to get into this position to do these things to us and start voting people in who wouldn't allow things to happen. I think There's a level of responsibility as voters that we have to accept. We're not in the majority, so clearly it's not going to be our funding priorities. But even with the shutdown, essential services will always go on. In other words, airport security and things of that nature.
- [14:19]
A
They're not going to shut down the airport.
- [14:21]
B
Some jobs are still going to be done.
- [14:24]
A
I think that he's the kind of person that if you don't stand up to him, he will keep pushing and pushing and pushing, you know. You know, you see like if you look at Chicago, how Trump got a lot of pushback on bringing troops in and then decided, okay, you know, it's a little too much, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna do it. When you push back, it actually does sometimes stop him. If you don't push back, then he'll roll right over you. And I mean, I don't wanna see a shutdown, but I don't feel like we have much choice. I don't want it to shut down because of all that's affected. But also it makes me look at another side in a way, such as the constituents for the, that are also impacted by this who never thought that they were going to see Doge get rid of the jobs that they had on that level with, you know, so now it's coming here again and it's like, are you guys really paying attention yet? Is this like, at what point will you get your wake up call to then tell the people who aren't showing up to your town halls, who are your people in power that you put there, that you need the government to be thinking about you?
- [15:29]
B
It's time for us to do something strong like, hey, you don't want to play ball? I'm not playing ball either. I'm going to take my toys and go home too. Because that's what they're afraid, that we're so scared of them that they can do whatever they want. Yeah, he's been given carte blanche to do whatever he wants by the Supreme Court. But the power is with us, the people. And if we don't take a stand, and if our leaders don't take a stand, then they're just going to continue to do what they want to do. So I think it is time for us to just be like, hey, if.
- [15:57]
A
You want to do it, go ahead.
- [15:58]
B
And do it, but watch us come back. You're going to need us.
- [16:02]
A
So, Dan, we don't know exactly how things will have developed by the time this comes out, but in General terms, do you think that this is a good place to take a stand for Democrats? You heard kind of a slightly mixed reactions, like some people saying this is the one place that we can do it and we're tired of being pushed around. We have to show them we can't be pushed around. On the other hand, people are like, ooh, I don't know, it doesn't feel super great to do this. So what do you think the politics of a shutdown are?
- [16:29]
B
I think that this focus group sounded exactly what the conversations had. The Democratic caucus probably sound like from the conversations I'm having with Democrats. This is that there are some people who are gung ho for it, like in that last comment we heard. But a lot of people, their kind of take is we have to fight, we have to do something. We have a very, very short menu of things we can actually do and if we had all the choices in the world, we would not do the shutdown. But this is the one place where we can actually have a fight. I think the politics of the shutdown are probably greatly overstated. Right. They tend to have a very short shelf life. People seem to forget that Donald Trump shut his own government down over the border wall for a very long period of time, less than a year from the election in 2020, and then no one talked about it ever again once it was over. As has been mentioned ad nauseam in this, the Republican Party was basically was less popular than the Democratic Party is today after the 2013 shutdown over funding of Obamacare and then they won huge majorities in the 2014 midterm. So I think it's the short lived for Democrats. The way I see this is one, you can only go into it if you're united enough to actually fight it. Right. We've already had three Democrats who have bailed on the votes, one of which we knew in advance in John Federman, now Angus King, independent, who's Congress with Democrats and Catherine Cortez Mesto. And so by the time we have people are hearing this, this may be one of the shorter shutdowns in history. If it ends that way and then that's a mistake. If you went into a fight not ready to actually have the, then that's a failure of leadership. But if you actually, if we are still in this fight and people are hearing it, what I think the way Democrats should think about this is this is an opportunity to show when people may be paying attention that we are willing to fight to make their healthcare more affordable. Like I think the People are too obsessed with, well, no, it's a Republican shutdown. No, it's a Democratic shutdown. They won't negotiate with us. It's a partisan spending bill. It's like what we're trying to show people right now is that we want to fight to make their health care more affordable. I wouldn't have picked health care as my main issue. I would have picked affordability writ large and done the tariffs. But I do understand in the internal caucus politics why they ended up where they did. But the politics of this, I think, are probably overstated, I guess would be my short version.
- [18:37]
A
Okay, 100% agree with that. And I would say 2017 or 2018, Sarah would have been more like, hey, you guys shouldn't shut down the government. Like, find a way to work it out. Whatever. 2025, Sarah is like, you guys better shut this down and you should not lose this showdown and stop being babies. And like, where is the leadership? And also, why do you have to pick one topic to make it be about this? This is such a weird thing Democrats do to me. This is again, where sort of an everything everywhere, all at once surrogate strategy where you send everybody out to say what Donald Trump is doing. Putting tariffs on things unilaterally, putting troops in our streets with masked agents. He's cutting your health care. He won' Epstein files. He's using the DOJ as his own personal weapon. We are not going to fund a government that's behaving this way. And, like, it's not just fighting for people's health care. Sometimes I think they get so focused on, can we sort of narrow in on this one thing that we think is broadly popular that they miss an opportunity to sort of give a bouquet to people, to demonstrate all of the things that Donald Trump is doing that is out of bounds. Like, this is like, one of the few chances to focus people's attention on telling that story. And I don't know why they don't take that, but maybe I'm too Pollyannish. What do you think?
- [19:56]
B
Yeah, I think the challenge here is in a shutdown strategy, unity is all that matters. Once you lose unity, it's over. And so you needed something that would get everyone on board. And probably the only thing that unifies a Democratic House that goes from Jared Goldin to AOC is healthcare. And I think there also, there's a little bit, and this is a little bit of pedantic thinking, I think, from the leadership, which is you're confusing communication strategy and legislative strategy. Like, none of these senators will go into this without understanding what the possible exit ramp is. The only really feasible exit ramp is some sort of deal on the Obamacare subsidies because they know that there is some number of Senate Republicans who want that. They do not want to be responsible for this. And so they are. Like, that can be the exit rate, but doesn't have to be the central message.
- [20:43]
A
Exactly.
- [20:43]
B
This happens all the time. I've seen this many times. The legislative bodies use macro communications to solve micro issues. Right. So they're communicating to the public about what they actually need to be, like emailing to their members. And I think that has limited the. Has at least limited the ceiling of what you can achieve here politically. But now that this is the ground they've chosen, I think you gotta lean into the fight on healthcare because this is. They've defined the. The parameters of the shutdown as healthcare. And so you might as well make it about that.
- [21:13]
A
Yeah. I watch Jeffries and Schumer and I do have this constant sense of like, are these the right people to be doing this? Like, these are not super talented communicators, either one of them. They do not seem to have sort of the temperament to be on offense and to push people to a place like, I'm a little bit down with the gerontocracy while also being like, I miss old Nancy Pelosi there with her candy and her stick to kind of get everybody on board to do this. Do you think the leadership is up to the fight?
- [21:42]
B
I don't know. I honestly don't know. I think Jeffries has held his caucus both times now. He held them in April or whenever that was, and he's held them now. Obviously easier to hold your caucus when all you have to do is vote no. But he has done it. Democrats as a party are thinking too much about our legislative leaders as communicators. Like, at no point in my time have the legislative leaders been great communicators. Nancy Pelosi, best speaker in American history. Not a supreme communicator. I worked for Tom Daschle when he was the leader of the Senate. Among Senate leaders, a good communicator, but he's not, you know, he's not exactly the second coming of Barack Obama or anything like that.
- [22:19]
A
Right.
- [22:20]
B
You know, Mike Johnson's a terrible communicator. Mitch McConnell spoke like he had marbles in his mouth all the time. Like it just there aren't great ones. I think the real question with Schumer is, is he a good opposition leader? He's a good legislative leader. Like, he did a very good job getting Biden's legislative priorities through the Senate when we had the majority. Is he a war, you know, a wartime consigliere, to use the. The Godfather. The trite Godfather reference that I don't. We'll find out, I guess over the next couple days or by the time you listen to this, you'll know.
- [22:47]
A
Yeah, you'll know. Okay. I want to switch to a broader conversation about how Democrats are feeling about this political moment and who they do or do not see rising up. Because I got to tell you, there's nothing more. Like yesterday in the green room, after I talked to this group, everybody was asking me the same questions, like, well, who do you like for 28? Who do you think is the leader? Right. So I put this question to Democratic voters. Every time I get a crack at them over the last few years, we just say, like, which leaders do you think are meeting the moment effectively and which ones are failing? The failing answers have been pretty static. And Chuck Schumer is at the top of that list to voters who know who he is.
- [23:25]
B
Right.
- [23:26]
A
If voters kind of have a person that they want to lay blame on, I would say Chuck Schumer comes up an awful lot. But I want to take the positive side and listen to who people think is meeting this moment. Let's listen.
- [23:40]
B
Pritzker, J.D. pritzker and Newsom. Gavin Newsom are two people that are really standing up and speaking out and making their voices heard. And I'm a little disappointed in Kamala. She kind of disappeared after the election.
- [23:58]
A
Bernie.
- [23:59]
B
Bernie Sanders has always wanted to stand up, too, but, you know, people get tired of hearing him.
- [24:04]
A
He's not perfect. But I'm going to say Gavin Newsom is up there. I think he is really meeting Trump for what it is that he's trying to do to that state because he's, you know, certainly, I feel, overstepping his bounds. And, you know, Gavin Newsom is affirming, you know, what he can do. So I think he's someone that is one of the few people that has some ability to challenge things. He's doing that. And then I think, you know, just kind of further, he's someone that he's seen as presidential, whatever that is that I think, you know, he can kind of stand his ground. He's somebody that has potential down the line to be a future president. Bernie Sanders is the one I can think of. He seems to be the only one consistently, I've been like, this is my thing. I'm not going to change, and I am going to continue to shout it from the rooftops. I don't care what the party does to me. I'm going to hold my. My ground and I'm going to put my head on my pillow, at least okay with myself. And I don't know, a lot of Democrats can say that these days.
- [25:03]
B
I was thinking Jasmine cracking out of Texas. Like, she's really going after him. Like, she doesn't hold back. And I think she grills them. Like, I mean, it's like, just almost.
- [25:14]
A
Like a thing of beauty to watch.
- [25:15]
B
She just grills them. She calls out their nonsense. And, you know, she's not the only person there, but he's the first one.
- [25:22]
A
I think off the top of my head, I was gonna say Gavin Newsom as well, just because I think, like, what he's doing with. I don't know, is it Twitter? It's like, tweets and stuff. I think it really resonates with, like, the younger people because we're, like, seeing him, like, talk like Trump and, like, that's how he's fighting back. So it's just, like, a cool thing for us to see that. Also, I think that I'm not sure if America is, like, ready to vote for someone who's not, like, traditionally white male person. So that's why I think, like, it's just really a safe choice. Deep, but a judge in that. The way he speaks to everyone is.
- [26:08]
B
From a very empathic kind of person, but also very intelligent kind of discourse. And he's not afraid to have a discussion about anything with anyone. So I feel like he would be a great resolute and calming and authoritative in a way that you feel secure kind of leader.
- [26:31]
A
I love what Cory Booker's done with him. I don't know why he's not put forward more. I feel like he's really dynamic and on point. And I really like Eric Swalwell in those congressional hearings. I think he really calls people on the carpet. But as other people said. Yeah, I know people find Gavin Newsom problematic, but he is the. Like, it takes a Trump to beat a Trump. He's got that kind of swagger, I guess. A strong supporter of the trans community. He threw them under the bus. I think he was probably trying to attract the middle ground, but not at the expense of already beleaguered community. I used to live there, so I used to know a lot more and nothing else is coming to mind, but. But that's the most important to me. All Right. Pritzker, Pete, Gavin, Bernie, Jasmine, Corey, Swalwell. This group was deeply representative of what I hear from Democratic groups. With one thing, you don't get a lot of Swalwell that was unique to this group. And we didn't hear aoc, which I would say she's the other name that comes up pretty reliably from people as sort of like people that they like. And all of those people have to me something in common, which is that they are the handful of people who have visibly done something to push back against Trump and that is who is rising up through the ranks. And so I get sort of frustrated that the more moderate ish types of people aren't out there taking like strong swings at Trump, because that is clearly what is defining people right now. Like, doesn't matter if you're moderate or progressive, even like Gavin Newsom, just like performance artistry, like straight up performance art is grabbing people's attention because they're so desperate for someone to do something. So, like, is that the path to 2028 nom right now is just somebody who can be visibly against Trump?
- [28:32]
B
I think that it's too early to say whether the gains or attention that Newsom or Pritzker or some of these other people have gotten will translate into actual votes. You know, several years from now, when people go to vote in whatever states end up being at the front of the Democratic primary calendar, we just don't know. Like, it helps them gain name recognition. It probably helps them from a process perspective because, I mean, this is a terrible thing to say, but the presidential primary is going to start the day after the midterms. And so if you head into that with some momentum because you're a fighter and Newsom has done this redistricting thing and maybe JB Pritzker has pushed back on the troops or whatever else, that will give you some advantage in getting endorsements and most importantly getting money and staff and all of those things. Is that going to actually translate to votes when time comes? I do not know. The fact that these names are mentioned tells me two things. One, people are desperate for someone who will fight back. Absolutely desperate. And so they like whoever they see fighting back. The other thing these people have in common is that they are very good at getting attention. Newsom obviously is doing his. He understands his media environment very well. It's not just the social media postings and the AI videos making fun of JD Vance. He's everywhere, right? He's doing right wing podcasts, he's on Fox. He's Got his own podcast. He is a content initiate himself. Pritzker has, you know, found a way to be pretty well seen himself. There probably are some other people who are actually saying all the right things, but they just don't know how to have those things heard by the right people. And then there's a set of people who are on that 2028 list, you know, whether that's Josh Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer, who are have taken a different approach. They are trying to just like, as far as I can tell, like lay back and not actually be at the front of the line attacking Trump. You know, Whitmer's like, worked with him in some ways. I don't know whether people will make them pay for that in, you know, Nevada or South Carolina in 2028. But it's not helping them right now in terms of like gaining attention momentum.
- [30:30]
A
Yeah. So let me lay out my theory of this and see how it hits with you. So I sort of think there's three paths to 2028. So the first is you go early and often like a newsome like you are out there. You understand the attention economy, you understand dominance narratives like you are in understand taking it to Trump is what the base voters want. That is the quickest path to people thinking about you as a 2028 nominee. Unfortunately, it is not. Are you a great governor of your state? Have you had really good governance? But okay, let's meet people where they are. I would say the second path is a winning path. And so this, I think is Shapiro's plan, which is, hey, I've got a race in my state for governor. I need to win my second term, I need to win, run up the numbers in Pennsylvania and show how dominant I am and I'll come out of that with that momentum, which I think is a totally plausible strategy. And then I think the third path is kind of the come out of nowhere path. Not out of nowhere entirely, but let's say this sort of celebrity ish. Let's just say it was like a Mark Cuban, somebody who can self fund, somebody who has kind of a unique profile. Doesn't come out of traditional politics. The thing about coming out of nowhere is like you sort of to be on people's radar somewhat. Like, do you buy into the theory that someone like a Jimmy Kimmel or Jon Stewart or someone like that could potentially be a nominee for the Democratic Party?
- [32:00]
B
Yeah, I think that's possible. It's probably not likely, but I think it is possible so much. This is going to depend a lot on where Trump is at this point. If you would ask people in 2005 whether George W. Bush would be this big bogeyman hanging over the entire presidential election, done all these terrible things, the Democrats hated him, would be a big deal. And by the time you get to 2008, he's sort of just like a avatar of failure to voters and he had fallen back. Is Trump still, and probably still will be the main dominant figure in American politics then? Maybe you can see this appetite for an outsider. Right. Someone who is totally different, who is not of the establishment. We generally have avoided that in the Democratic Party. It's that like when people like that have come, you know. You know, I guess Republicans before Trump did too, right? Like Reagan. Yes, he was an actor, but he'd been a two term governor of California at that point. And former presidential candidate, you know, but like Fred Thompson on the right, Wes Clark on the left, you know, those people have not actually.
- [32:57]
A
Schwarzenegger.
- [32:58]
B
Schwarzenegger. I mean, he would actually run for president and be chosen because he's not an American citizen.
- [33:02]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [33:04]
B
I think the Democrat's best candidate is probably someone who comes off as an outsider, either because they are truly an outsider or they have outsider credentials, which, like NAOC has outsider credentials even though she's been in Congress for a decade by the time 2028 comes around. But will our primary voters want that or will you hear. Or voters decide what they decided in 2020? And what you hear in this focus group, which is, we can't take too many risks here. We need a safe bet. Like, you know, they kind of say, you know, you kind of see that person like wrestling with, maybe it's aoc, maybe it's Jasmine Crockett, maybe it's, I don't know, Amy Klobuchar, someone who's not a white man, who looks like a president. Like, is that too big a risk after what happened in 2024? And will we default to electability? Right. What I think is a fairly narrow and incorrect view of electability, but, you know, a traditional view of electability. And that's the Josh Shapiro path, right?
- [33:58]
A
Well, yeah. Although you do hear more people now talk about Shapiro being Jewish as a problem in a Democratic primary. I push back on that quite a bit. I don't really believe that. In fact, I actually think having someone who's Jewish, who is critical of Netanyahu, but who believes in Israel's right to exist, could actually be like a good figure in the Democratic Party, where that issue is quite a big Schism. But, you know, that's me. I have a Shapiro problem. And everyone's going to write in and yell at me about my Shapiro problem and why I don't love Gavin Newsom. But that's okay. That's okay. I'm taking all comers right now. I'm looking at the whole field and trying to. For me, it's very important that Democrats put up somebody who can win. But it's really important to the Democratic voters too. And the funniest thing is that the downside of telling everybody that Kamala Harris lost because she was a black woman, it is. Not even everybody in the party, women of color specifically, want to tell you that it has to be a straight white man. Cause like, people love Pete. Pete comes up all the time. And then everybody goes, but I don't know, I don't think America's ready for a gay president. And they'll say, you know, like, they like Jasmine Crockett's fight, but, you know, can't do another black woman. And it's a real bummer in that the Democratic Party has this gift of being incredibly diverse and having a lot of black people and a lot of women and a lot of Hispanics and like there's like a now a much smaller group that are part of the Democratic coalition that are straight white men. But everybody's like, nope, it's got to be one of those guys right now, like maybe Gallego, maybe someone like that.
- [35:28]
B
It's probably incumbent upon people like us and everyone else pressed to push back on that idea. Because I think the number one, like, defining characteristic of electability in 2028 is going to be your capacity to navigate the attention economy.
- [35:41]
A
Yes.
- [35:41]
B
I don't care if you are, you know, the white male, former union member, veteran governor of Pennsylvania or what, not that Josh Burrows, all those things, but like, who's like a prototypical, like you know, made in a lab candidate. If you cannot be heard by voters, you're going to be characterized and demonized by the right wing media machine and you're never going to get out of the starting blocks. Right?
- [36:03]
A
That's right.
- [36:04]
B
Like Pete, like the fact that Pete is a very good communicator who can manage this so far outstrips any concerns anyone might have about the willingness of electing a gay president. And I'm not sure there are a lot of people who are available voters to Democrats who would think someone being gay is a non starter in 2025. I think we just have to really widen the aperture of electability like that sort of thinking. I don't know. There was a candidate better than John Kerry in 2004, but that was how you end up with John Kerry, which is we need a veteran. Right. And he's the one veteran we have. So that's who we're going to get. Biden, I think in 2020 had a legitimate case that he was more electable than anyone else. And it wasn't just because he was a white man. It was belligerent because he was the moderate seeming opposite of Trump vice president to the extremely popular former president. And so you could make a, you know, a return to normalcy argument that honestly barely worked, but did work.
- [37:02]
A
Yeah. And I think might have been the only thing that would have worked. I do think it's a really crazy thing to look back and think that Biden was like far and away the best candidate in 2020 and the worst candidate in 2024. And I also, I always just want to throw this in where like, yes, I know Kamala Harris is a black woman that Trump on the Ledger beat, but like he really beat an old white man. That is who he beat. She had very little time to like really be the person who captured the nomination and like leaned into that role. So I think people overread the sexism and the racism of that.
- [37:36]
B
There's not a Democrat, white man, Latino man, Latina, Latina or anyone who I think would have won that election at the 107 day mark. No matter what criticism you have of her as a candidate or a candidacy. I think the bigger problem, the die was cast when Joe Biden ran for reelection and then stayed in the race that long.
- [37:54]
A
If you'd had a primary and like people had had come out of it that were able to super distance themselves from Biden, that's a counterfactual we'll never know the answer to. But like she did the best she could with what she was given. Okay, I want to talk just a little bit more about what it means to sort of meet the moment. Okay. We've got our people that we like, but it also is going to mean thinking differently about strategy and tactics. And the one phrase that is stuck in Democrats heads is Michelle Obama's when they go low, we go high from her 2016 Democratic National Convention speech. It has been a pretty frequent refrain in our focus groups that people think doesn't work and we should abandon this principle. So let's listen to how that sounded in these groups. It's just a very different time than what it was when Obama was in office like he was a unicorn. And it pisses me off that he had to be a unicorn, because the other side, you have Trump, who is trash that he can be all these things, but you have to have someone perfect on the other side. So, anyway, back to the actual point. You know what you're asking. We've tried to follow that, and we've taken the higher road, and we continue to, frankly, lose. The Republicans are playing to win. It is not about doing the right thing. It is not about doing what's best for the average person, is about winning at any cost. And so not that we need to go scorched earth, but we've got to have a different playbook because we need to play to win.
- [39:17]
B
It's generally a good concept. But when he came along, which by the time he's done, it'll be 15 years of my life spent on this and probably everyone, I think everyone else here. So he took the guardrails off, and once those fell off, all those norms that kept things like, when they low, we go high. That could kind of work. It doesn't work anymore because that side is a. Okay with being mean for meanness sake, being kind of cruel, all those types of things. So if enough of them is like that, you. You can have that in your head, but you can't do that and be effective.
- [39:50]
A
Yeah, it's a great ideal, but it's hard to follow in today's politics. Like, yeah, look at Trump's constant attacks and the media landscape. And if you just take a glimpse at Fox News, the types of headlines that. That seem to focus on transgenders in bathrooms and progressives with blue hair. Right. Like, it becomes tempting to fight back aggressively. So even strategies like the redistricting which we were talking about, like, that shows how high the stakes really are and how it is just challenging to always stay above the fray. And, yeah, when things like abortion rights are being rolled back and whatnot, it's hard to remain purely diplomatic. So now the pressure to respond forcefully is huge. So, yeah, I think the. We go low, we go high. That's a great mantra to teach our kids, but right now, it isn't working. We don't have to be like Trump. I hate that phrase. We need to be more like Trump. Absolutely effing not. But can we bring some of that aggression in some of that organization? Can we bring some of that determination and that ruthlessness, but not in the way that he does it. Can we bring that aggression and determination and grit instead of sending A. And this goes back to the Schumer thing, a strongly worded letter. How do we bring our grit, our determination, our aggressiveness? And politics is different now. I don't like it, but it is. It's not the poise and the articulation that it used to be in the past, which makes me frustrated. But if we turn into Trump, we become idiocracy even more than we already are. I do think that, yes, there needs to be more confrontation or more aggressiveness.
- [41:33]
B
Of some kind, but making up alternative facts or coming up with a Project 2028 and then somebody saying, oh, I have nothing to do with that.
- [41:42]
A
And it's a list of Democratic things.
- [41:43]
B
That we want to change about the government.
- [41:46]
A
That's not really, I think somewhere we.
- [41:49]
B
Should go, we should still be arguing.
- [41:53]
A
For facts and science and all the.
- [41:55]
B
Things that are good about humanity, instead of having somebody who's self important. Yes, it's good to have a unifying person that everybody can get behind.
- [42:06]
A
Okay, should Democrats go lower? Dan, which I would say is not our frame, it just comes up all the time, and I'm sure you hear it, too. What do you think?
- [42:17]
B
There's a lot of oversimplification that's been involved in this because people will say that obviously they go low, we should go low too. And then you ask them specific questions about what we should do, and they often don't want to do those things. So I think that when you look at this, Democrats should be, if we ever get back to power again, more aggressive in some ways. And you can see our reticence to be aggressive in the failure to get rid of the filibuster in 2021, to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights act and a whole bunch of other things that we wanted to do. That's aggressiveness. I today, I mean, this is a small thing, but I worked in the White house during the 2013 shutdown, and we were like, so careful to follow.
- [42:53]
A
All of the rules.
- [42:54]
B
And now all the government websites just have a statement at the top that says they're not doing anything because the governments have been shut down by radical left Democrats. I was saying to some former White House people, we could have had a lot more fun if we had done that. And so if we ever get back to power, we can be more aggressive. I don't know that I don't want to do all the things that Trump did or even most of the things he did. And I think we should recognize that typically in elections, voters want the replacement, not the replica. So if you are running just as another version of Trump, a paler shade of orange, as I used to say, then I think you're gonna fail, right? Like we went from George W. Bush to Obama, opposites Obama to Trump, opposites, Trump to Biden, opposites, Biden to Trump, opposites. And so I think the Democrat is gonna have the most success in 2028 as someone who seems like they are tough enough to take on MAGA extremism for sure, but is trying to appeal to something better, right? To unity, to fixing our broken politics, to fixing our broken society, to fixing the problems of Trump. Like, I think. I think we need a counter case. Like, we have to be tough, right? One of the problems Democrats have is people do not think we are tough enough to actually check Trump's power, which is why everyone thinks Trump is going too far and becoming a dictator. But we only are only up in the generic ballot by two points. That's our problem, not Trump's success. And so you have to be tough. But I don't think trying to be like a lesser Satan to Trump will work in 2028 for us with our coalition. And so it's like an unsatisfactory answer, but it's sort of the reality of being a Democrat these days.
- [44:24]
A
It's a satisfactory answer to me. I 100% agree with that because I do think whoever comes along next does have to be a big and tough unifier and does have to be both aggressive, but like, aggressive in calling to the better angels of our nature. Which brings us to somebody, though, who is taking going low to an art form. Obviously, folks talked at length about Gavin Newsom earlier and I want to just talk about him a little bit more because he has now jumped out to the top of the field in any of these. Absurdly too early, but still we look at them because we can't help ourselves, because we have a sickness. Any poll that you look at right now, he's at the top of it for 2028. He obviously is enjoying himself with this bit of performance art and voters are enjoying it. So we asked voters what they think of his Trump, like, style of Twitter posting and let's listen to what they said. So I think, like, the way Gavin Newsom's using social media to kind of troll Trump's behaviors because his behaviors have become so normalized. You know, anybody else acting the way that he does or making the statements that he makes, speaking the way he does would be looked at like they were crazy. But because we've been conditioned to this after years and years and years, and nothing has changed. The way that he utilizes social media to kind of throw it back in his face and the Republicans faces is, I mean, it's funny, yes, but there's also, there's intent behind it to say, look, this is ridiculous. And, and something's got to change. I just think that it's brilliant. I mean, the only way to be effective with Trump and his supporters is to really get under their skin. And this is just doing such a perfect job. I mean, there was like a reporter that was, you know, calling it dumb, how he was using the wording and the way he was basically mocking Trump. But it just makes you realize how ridiculous Trump actually is on all of his social media. And it, it's just so perfectly done that it's like almost scary.
- [46:40]
B
He's using parody and satire to its fullest extent because everything in there, he's showing people how ridiculous this stuff actually is. And he's just using satire and parody in such a brilliant way. And I love when he ends the things saying, thank you for your attention to this matter. And I do want to say one thing about the craziness. I worked at the mental health center and I was the intake coordinator for many years. And I always tell people now if one of our clients said some of the same things that Donald Trump would say, I would tell them, you can't come back to our center until you see your doctor and get back on your medication.
- [47:20]
A
There's a part of me that feels like it's appealing to the worst parts of us. I think we all to a certain extent, grieve the loss of any amount of dignity at this point in our politicians. It's just depressing. So at the same time, there's a part of me that goes, well, at some point is mockery. The only way to go, you know, Is irony the only way to go? Of course, my concern is like Stephen Colbert who did the Colbert Report and did that parody so well that some people genuinely thought he was that right wing person. They don't get the irony.
- [47:55]
B
Would I want this right now? No. Like, I wish politics was different. But we have, we live in this world and that's the way it is. I mean, look at the other side. So then I am like, okay, that's maybe meeting the moment and we'll see.
- [48:10]
A
It's refreshing to see someone fight back when big colleges are rolling over. Basically everybody around us is rolling over.
- [48:18]
B
To Trump and doing what he wants.
- [48:21]
A
And when Trump posts his nonsense, he's always Dead serious.
- [48:26]
B
He doesn't joke.
- [48:27]
A
He's.
- [48:28]
B
He's very much upset about everything.
- [48:30]
A
And so to have someone kind of throw that back in his face, I.
- [48:34]
B
Think it just highlights how ridiculous Trump is.
- [48:37]
A
And we're all used to it, but you read that, the stuff that he posts, and you just can't help but.
- [48:42]
B
Laugh because it's so absurd.
- [48:44]
A
I've been on a social media blackout since January, so I was actually just pulling up the tweets. They're hilarious.
- [48:51]
B
So that's.
- [48:52]
A
That's fun. I'm sorry I've been missing it, but I. I just don't think two wrongs make a ride. But at the same time, I. I don't know what else to do. Somebody needs to stand up. Somebody needs to do something. I, living in Texas, I do appreciate it. Almost feels like joke ish. Like you're doing it, so we're gonna do it too. Kind of fight fire with fire. I don't know if that's the right direction, but if it's generating buzz and everybody here has heard of it, like, I may be changing my mind a little bit. Once I throw my weight behind something, I go for it 100%. So, honestly, a lot of conflicting feelings. All right, so I think those clips kind of speak for themselves, but you wrote a substack post a few weeks ago called why Everyone Should Stop Freaking out about Gavin Newsom, Social media, and your thesis had a couple points I want to drill down on. We were kind of touching on them earlier. Politics is about attention, and the language of politics is less formal than people think. Just walk us through the main points you were making there.
- [49:51]
B
Yeah, I mean, these focus group comments would warm the hearts of the Newsom staff because they get what Newsom's doing better than most of the people writing or talking about it in the press, which is like, oh, he's doing a Trump impersonation. He's being light. No, he is holding up a mirror to Trump to show how ridiculous what Trump is doing. And so my first point there is just that people are like, oh, this is so unprofessional. It's ridiculous. And it's like, we need to take the language of politics and make it simpler. And, like, in a lot of what he's doing is he's speaking in memes, which is how a lot of young people get their information or how or how they communicate with each other. And so it's just like, it's not. He's not violating some norm about how a politician speaks. It's not unpresidential or un gubernatorial. It's just like people get it. Like they understand online humor and satire and parody. And it is working for Newsom because it's getting him attention. People are hearing what he's saying. They're paying attention. The fact that these people all knew about Gavin News of social media is somewhat mind blowing.
- [50:46]
A
I know.
- [50:47]
B
Like you think this is just something that only the most online political junkies would know about it. And I hear about it from my non political friends all the time. Like it is broken through to people. And that is such a rare thing in politics these days, especially for a Democrat.
- [51:02]
A
Yeah. And I struggle with this a little bit because there does need to be this type of pushback. Like holding up the mirror is exactly what needs to happen. The best thing is when the Fox News hosts are like, isn't it terrible how the governor of the largest state is behaving? And you're like, why yes it is. I'm so glad you've noticed. This is unprofessional. And also, I don't know, the vice president is like a Twitter warrior who calls your colleague a dipshit on Twitter in the middle of the day when he's supposed to be doing important things. But he's so online. Like it is the world we live in. And I struggle with this too. I 100% agree with the tension economy. This is something people have to grapple with. Does it qualify one to be president? I think that there's a world in which the Gavin Newsom lane of I am going to mess with you, I am going to push back. I am going to go on Fox News and hit you back with facts is a necessary component of leadership and you need people in those roles in a party. Does it mean he needs to be the president? Because then everybody seems to like immediately jump there, like, well, he's doing memes make him president.
- [52:09]
B
And I think we're so far from the election that I think what it does is it opens the door for him to make the rest of the case to voters if he gets the chance.
- [52:16]
A
Right.
- [52:17]
B
Were he not able to communicate, not just in this way, but everywhere. Right. He's doing the online stuff. He's going on these right wing podcasts, he's hosting his own podcast. If he was not doing that, he would just be another generic governor and all the conversation would be, can Democrats really nominate the governor of California as our nominee? Right. But he has carved out a space for himself to make the sale for everything else when the time Comes presuming, as I do, that he runs for president. It's certainly not a qualification to be president, although I do think that being able to communicate in the attention economy should be a requirement for a president. It is. One of the reasons Democrats are such a mess is because Joe Biden was unwilling and unable to communicate about anything at all for the bulk of his presidency. And even regardless of. What do you think about the decline of his communication skills? He wasn't even really trying in the beginning. And I know a lot of people work for him. Some of them really get it. I think a lot of people at the top of his White House who were also part of the gerontocracy, did not understand how the world worked in this day and age and just failed to do it. If you are a great manager of government who makes great policy decisions, can pass bills, but you can't actually talk to American people, what you've done, I think that is insufficient to be president.
- [53:29]
A
Yeah. Well, I gotta tell you, Gavin Newsom's gonna be the nominee. Like, I just. I just. It is gonna put me in the loony bin when they run this guy from California who used to be married to Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was dating Don Jr. And screamed the best is yet to come. And the rnc, like, I mean, just gonna have to lock Sarah up. However, like, I just agree as a communicator, the attention economy is everything now. And Democrats, there's just so few of them who get it, and Gavin gets it. Like, Pete gets that you go on Fox News and you argue with them, but Pete is so tidy. He's such a neat and clean little boy. And I am obsessed with Pete. I'm like, he's for me. But I also think that America wants somebody who's, like, just a little grimy.
- [54:17]
B
I think Pete understands half the equation, which is go everywhere, right? But the part that he. And he may just be constitutionally incapable of doing this is to say things that get you heard, right? You have to be edgy enough, controversial enough to lean into it. I mean, this is also, I'm sure, going to put you in the line of it. But the other person who has all the ability to do this is aoc. She gets it. She knows how to say the things that need to be said. She is polarizing, which is actually, I think, quite helpful in this attention economy to elicit a response from the other side. Some of these other people may. I mean, Pritzker is better at this than I thought. Maybe he'll be able to get there. But you're right, it is a very short list of people who can do it.
- [54:56]
A
Very short list. And I gotta tell you, it's funny about what puts me in the loony bin and what doesn't. AOC has impressed me genuinely over time as somebody who's interested in learning and growing. And I don't know if it's because she has the ability to be both because she was elected so young, actually has some level of experience and growth and understanding of the way things work, while also feeling very fresh and new. I also think that she is very authentic to who she is. This is a sort of an old person reference point, but the hit on Aaron Burr and Hamilton was that this was a guy. It's not that he had the wrong principles like Jefferson. It was that he had no principles. And I think I would take somebody I authentically disagreed with who I thought was being, like, really true to themselves and knew how to express it and, like, passionately cared about doing this than somebody who felt kind of greasy about it and like, chameleon, like. But, you know, here's the thing. I can learn and grow, too. I'm watching everybody closely and seeing what they do. I will say one thing that's interesting to me watching Gavin Newsom, though, is like, I'm interested in his tactician ability on this gerrymandering thing. And so I'm going to wrap this up really quickly where we asked about. It's a Newsom adjacent question. Again, you're hearing a lot about Democratic voters about how it's time to get down and dirty tactically. But when we ask people about how they felt about California redrawing their congressional maps mid cycle because Texas is doing it to fight back, and there's this ballot initiative in November that would allow Newsom to basically do it in California, these guys were kind of squeamish about it. Let's listen. I don't always know if fighting fire with fire is the best thing to do. Like, you know, I just don't know. That's why I'm on the fence. I just don't know. You know, just because one state's doing it, you know, we need to do something to fight back with Trump because he is. He's going to get his way on literally everything. And this is kind of an ingenious way to give us a little bit more leverage, a little bit more hope. So, I mean, Gavin Newsom trying to do his part, I guess I kind.
- [57:21]
B
Of understand what he's doing.
- [57:23]
A
I Don't know if it's the right move.
- [57:24]
B
It's a prudent move, but again, it's in the whole fighting back spirit that.
- [57:28]
A
He seems to embrace at the moment. I understand that it's like the fighting back type of thing to the gerrymandering, but I feel like there shouldn't be gerrymandering at all. So that's why I'm like. I don't know if, like, two wrongs make a right or whatever. The aspect of gerrymandering is kind of uncomfortable to me. It just seems really weird. I wish it was not an issue that we had to think about, but if they need to do it, then they have to do it. So I thought this was interesting, and I'll tell you, not that Gavin Newsom gives a rip about whether or not he ultimately persuades Sarah Longwell that she should be for him. If he gets it done, though, I think it's important for him to, like, get something like this done and have it not just be a social media thing that he does something tactically to get Democrats into the Constitutional hardball that Republicans are playing. What do you think?
- [58:20]
B
I think it's very important that he gets it done. I mean, imagine a scenario where Democrats take the House by three seats, and it's entirely based on the margin that Gavin Newsom delivered. And frankly, if it's under eight seats, it's largely because Newsom, in addition to the five Democratic seats, he's also making a bunch of very vulnerable Democrats safe. And so he will be able to get a lot of credit for that. So I think it's very important. Losing this would be a big blow to him, I think. Could. Is it recoverable? Anything's probably recoverable at this point, but it would be a political blow. He put a lot of skin in the game. He removed all his chips in the table here. And so I think. I think it's important. It is interesting listening to these Democrats. It goes right to the go low. You know, when they go low, we go high thing, which is we got to go low. We got to go low. Here's something we're doing to go low. Oh, I don't know about that. I don't know if we want to do that.
- [59:07]
A
Democrats are so sweet. They're just, you know, they. They know they need to fight back, but, oh, God, they still like their norms and all that stuff. God bless them. God bless them. God bless you, Dan Pfeiffer. Guys. Thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the Focus group podcast. We'll be back next week, but in the meantime, remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to The Bulwark on YouTube and become a Bulwark plus member at the Bulwark.com See you guys.