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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. It's Thursday, May 28, 2026, from Peach Fish Productions. It's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. We're gonna have Stead Herndon on the show. He, formerly of the New York Times, has a new podcast out with Vox. I guess Rupert's his boss now. It's called America. Actually, it's pretty good. I've been listening to it. Very good is the conversation that we had. Does it sound like I'm saying if you really want to hear A Stead Herndon the gist, that's the best podcast for him? No, the podcast is very good. I it recently, however, he had a semi quincentennial conversation. You know, the 250th anniversary, Heather Cox Richardson was his guest. That's fine. I. I think Heather Cox Richardson probably has a lot of outlets. Glad that instead hooked her for this one. But in his lead up, a Stead threw out there America, 250. 250 years. How we doing?
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B
And instead said, so we are 250 years into this American experiment, and I'd say it's going okay. I give us like a C plus.
- [01:04]
A
And I thought, huh, a C plus, that's not very good, especially not with great inflation. A C. I mean, this is America. I think you got at least give us a B plus. I mean, a B plus, America. We're a B plus. Yeah, I know it's not going to fly during the big huge viewing of the tall ships during the semi quincentennial celebration, but a C plus, a little low. Now, look, there was no calculation to what a Stead was doing. And of course, if you don't know this, A Stead is black and African American. And of course that has to factor in our legacy of slavery. But I think that if you're comparing the grades to the ideal, you could say America certainly comes up short. But if you're comparing it to the ideal nations operating in the world at that time, America was almost always better. So if you grade on the curve, which literally means you have to give some countries an A, America for most of its tenure was maybe deserving of that A. I mean, for the first 70 years, it's not even close. We're the only constitutional democracy you can get by. You're not going to maybe be oppressed living in Belgium, which in 1831 had some version of a constitutional democracy in Switzerland. Switzerland. Everyone does agree that Switzerland, 1848, they get there, right, with the bona fide constitutional democracy. But all right, those 70 years, that's in the U.S. favor. And then World War II. Not just that we won it, but look what America was doing and look what everywhere else in the world was doing. You had all these other countries that were killing their own citizens by the score. And by score, I mean way more than score. By the millions. Stalin and Russia, Mao and China. Those are the post World War II Hitler in Germany example. The United States not only not killing the people by the score, were the big opponents of those who were killing their people by the score. And of course, by score, I mean million. You got to give us an A in the post World war era, right? 1950s, Elvis and rock and roll and the US economy. All right, you want to say, hey, we didn't have the Civil Rights act until 1964. I say, sure, get the clock running then. But doesn't the US get an A in the 70s and the 80s? Great economic driver. I mean, we weren't the Soviet Union. We weren't. Look at the 70s and what great Britain was doing. Also, I'm going to go back. I think maybe people think that for the first hundred years of America, before we confronted slavery, that things weren't going so well here. They were going much worse in Europe. There are scholars who look at the height of Americans and the height of the English, and we lived longer and were 2 and 3 inches taller now. They lived in cities and we lived more in the country. And when industrial industrialization came here, it changed. But what I'm saying is up until 1850, America definitely gets an A. World War II and a half, couple of decades after, I think America should get an A. All the other trends that were affecting the world, like industrialization and the very sad things of indigenous populations, where they had indigenous populations being suppressed, we did that too. Arguably worse than Canada, maybe not worse than Australia, if you look at populations and decline. So America has its flaws, but I gotta give it more than a C plus. I gotta give it at least a B plus. And you want to know something? If I'm not trying to be maximally accommodating, I'd give America an A minus. That's right. I'm feeling generous. 250 years old and we clock in with an A minus. Land of opportunity and all that. Confront a lot of our problems, solve a lot of them. We got some quirky, quirky leaders here. So do they. So do they over there. Don't think. They don't remember. Yeah, okay, I'll give it to you right now. You'd probably rather be born in Norway, right. They got that sovereign wealth fund and they're not doing all these bad things in the world. It's cold. But global warming. Again you should say thank you America and China. Now I'm giving America the A minus. What would you 250 years, right. So we're starting with the Constitution. We're not going back to the pre Columbian era. What would you give America? What just listener, what letter grade do you give the U S of A minus. Email me at the gist ikepesca.com and now the inspiration for that little top of show contemplation, the very game and very interesting and very very smart though very tough grader. We all need advice, but it's not always clear who to ask, even in 2026. Enter how to the longstanding advice show and Ambie Award nominated best personal growth podcast. That's back with new episodes and a new host. And that host is. Here's the reveal. It's me, Mike Pesca. Each week I tackle a listener question ranging from travel to finance to relationships and beyond with help from world class experts who actually know what they're talking about. Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silence. No question is too big or too specific. Some topics how to protect the elderly from scammers, how to take psychedelics therapeutically, and of course how to how to emigrate to the Netherlands as a throuple. You've got questions. We'll find the answers. So follow how to with Mike Pesca on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Estad Herndon is the host now of America actually from Vox. He's a former New York Times guy, also CNN contributor. I really loved his Run up podcast. One of the more interesting and not always what you'd expect voices at the New York Times could craft a great sentence for the New York Times Magazine. We're going to talk about the new podcast and his reporting state of the Democrats, which seems to be the party that either he is drawn to or they're drawn to him instead. Welcome to the Gist.
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B
Thank you, I appreciate that. How's it going?
- [07:42]
A
Good, good. So I've been listening to America actually and I actually listened to it backwards, not in terms of backward. You can't do that yet with the Apple. But I just started listening to as of we talked. The most recent episode is about the data center war and you go to New Jersey and then the center. The one before that was about affordability and in the end of each of those, you essentially do either vox pop or convene a focus group, like right in the moment. And I also noticed that in the New York Times, you were drawn to focus group type activities. In fact, sometimes you would turn friends and family and Thanksgiving into a focus group.
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B
Yes.
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A
Have you noticed this about yourself? Why are you drawn to the focus group as a means of political insight?
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B
Yes, I have noticed it about myself. I mean, I enjoy combining the quantitative with the qualitative. I think that if you pick the right place, you have the right data point. I like empowering voices to get kind of the thoughts behind why folks have arrived at their individual political decision. I mean, a lot of it for me is based off of feeling that polling has some blind spots that, you know, we can understand the kind of big swath or big trends, but the why and how people got to that point or the kind of nuances between issues. I find people to be better explainers of that, or at least people in the aggregate. And so one of the things that we did in the run up specifically was like, we were trying to not go to campaign events. So it was, you know, that was a rule that we kind of put on ourselves. It's like, this is gonna be an election that's largely decided by people who are distant from politics. We can't just talk to people who are in the center or obsessives or whatever. And so that's always been, I think, for me, the part of the goal is to ground out what we know from the kind of political insiders with kind of folks on the periphery. And so there's a lot of ways we do that. Some is by focus groups, some is by going to a specific place in the field. But it is a consistency for me that we want baked in the name, even in America, actually. It's like we want to be able to get beyond, I think, talking points and I think uplift voices that have felt marginalized in our political discourse.
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A
So a couple of things on that. One is that I agree that if you go to the political rally, you're not getting anything like a broad swath of America. You're preaching, you're getting people who are the choir that is being preached to. There is sometimes a value in that, but. But for obvious reasons, there isn't at times.
- [10:27]
B
Yeah, like if you're in Iowa, like, you know, that that group of people might be the exact people who are choosing between candidates and you do want to go to event, but most times, whether it's A Trump rally or a Democratic event, you're mostly getting true believers, right?
- [10:40]
A
There are downsides to all of this. When I was doing a lot of man in the street, person in the street, vox pop interviews, I liked it. It was exciting. It was great for the sound, the pop of a story, you find a real person and play with them. You're very good at that. The interact put your side on the tape. But I also knew that I was getting, in a way, the world's worst poll. You know, the eight interesting people who would talk to me. So other than generating those clips that sound the flavor, have you ever gotten really great insight from man in the street vox pop interviews?
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B
Yeah, all the. I mean, I. All the time. I mean, give me one.
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A
Give me one thing either from right.
- [11:22]
B
I was literally yesterday at Virginia Indivisible event. And the way people talked about how affordability and corruption are not separate issues, but connected issues, and that they see it as something that motivates people specific to Dem enthusiasm was something I have not heard from politicians. So I talk to politicians about affordability and corruption all the time, but I have not heard them say that. Actually, our strategy as we convince more people locally is to not see those as separate things, but combine things. That's something a regular person told me yesterday. So I'm saying like that I don't. Or even the last episode of the run up was an autopsy about what went wrong. We haven't got that from Democrats to this day. I mean, I think that there are ways that you can. That to me, I'm like, anything in too much is bad. So if I'm only relying on those people's voices and saying that that's the end, all be all, then totally you can create the world's worst poll. But this should be in conjunction with polling. Like what you should be hearing should not be outside of the data, but to me should be alongside the data and help explain the data. So I don't see them as in conflict. More so than if we're choosing the right place and we're talking to the right people, it works together.
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A
Yeah, that has happened with me too. The additive properties of all of these things. Just the other day I forgot where it was, but I read. I think it was maybe on abc. There was essentially a vox Papa man on the street. And the guy said, you know what I love about Trump? I love that he hugs the flag. No one else would do that. And I said to myself, I'm glad you told me that, because I really didn't know anyone who did anything but make fun of Trump hugging the flag. And not everyone made the same up going to get sued in a New York court joke. But here's a guy who actually loved him hugging the flag. So I actually appreciate it.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember meeting one guy who said that he loved January 6th and the, and the George Floyd protest. And I was like, oh, I never heard that. And God, he's like, I just like people who are going at it just burn it down. I was like, honestly like that. That's something I haven't heard.
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A
But that is another thing that when you get away from the regular ways of compiling politics or creating wisdom, you will always find that the cross currents of the actual electorate are cross crazy.
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B
Yeah.
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A
While there are some people who, I'm a Republican because I don't like abortion, I like low taxes and I like the police. And you know, they'll list the entire policy agenda. There are so many people who are here on abortion, but here, you know, but here on women's rights. And they're told, you say to yourself they're totally different things, but you know, they're not always. Or yes, the cross currents will always confuse and in fact delight you to some extent.
- [14:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, I like that. I think to me, seeing that nuance in electorate reminds me that a lot of, and this is my opinion, but like a lot of our polarization division to me is driven by the sorting of two party system. Right. Like if I think in a political system that could reflect those differences, I think that people would feel less adrift and like our kind of rising sense of independence, political homelessness, whatever you want to call it, would feel completely different. And so, like, I think that the way the people on street reflect politics matters so much more to me than that kind of top down, strictly ideological view because I don't think that's how most people come to this. And so if I'm thinking about the national election, all votes count the same. And so it can be strictly ideological for consistent conservative or liberal or progressive reasons, but a whole bunch of it isn't. And so I think you have to understand both sides of the coin.
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A
Yes. And I believe it was Caitlin Dickerson, your old colleague, who you were talking to who lives in Arizona, is that right?
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B
We talked to Jana Kunachoff, who was a reporter based in Arizona. And the episode, we also talked to Caitlin.
- [15:28]
A
Okay, so Yana lives in Arizona and she was talking about how the Arizona that she lives in, she doesn't recognize it nationally because and this is true. To solve problems like, say, water, Republicans and Democrats have to work together. And I have found that. I'm not saying state level things work great on the state level. We both live in New York. It is not the model, it is barely in the top 50 for models of how states should be run. But an insight I've had is we focus way, way, way too much on national politics and local politics have a huge impact on our lives, but also confound our assumptions about the way that national politics and national political parties and also effectiveness works. But what do we do about that from a media perspective? Because if you were to jump from the New York Times to Vox, I don't think they would say we're going to pay you the same amount of money to only do a podcast about the state.
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B
I mean, this came up, I'm agreeing with your original thesis because this came up a lot. When I was doing that Zoran profile at the Times, I think people were projecting a kind of national lens, that which is again, like, more traditionally ideological onto him. And certainly he embodies some of that particularly like, leftist DSA stuff. But I'm like, this is a, this is a mayor's race happening. And whether it's what the chief pitch here is deliverables that are local in nature and that, like, you can talk about rent control from a, from like a national lens or, but that's a separate thing in New York where there's rent control apartments, where there's other, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, there are flavors here that give this, I think, a more tailored message. And so I think that, like, you know, I guess to me, I focus on national elections largely. And so, you know, midterms and presidential are my beat. So, like, I oftentimes have to think of, you know, I used to, I would say in 2017, 18, we used to think about midterms elections as particularly different, particularly on the House side, because they were more local in nature. I think that that has changed in Trump era. And so there has been a nationalizing of these things broadly. But, you know, if I were to, for example, do something about the Georgia governor's race, like, I don't think that's working in the same way as, you know, the Georgia Senate race even. And so, like, I do think you have to have some humility when you show up to a place to know what you can glean, but also what you don't know and really tailor the frame of the story to only the things that you're getting illuminating info from. And so I think when we kind of drift into bad versions of parachute journalism are when you take on the like voice of God and you are not only being writing with too big of a swath about a district, but I think also imposing a national lens onto a specific place. And so I try to, you know, I think sometimes you're more successful than others, but I try to really defer to the framework that was number one our pitch. But also like what the folks there have told us we can take from that. And I think that you get better at that over time.
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A
Okay, so from that answer, there were two things I want to follow up on. Deliverables and parachute in I'll ask you about parachute first.
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B
Yeah, it.
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A
Do you object to the objection of a couple of or a cycle and a half ago of going to interview the person in the diner now the person in the diner, that's a cliche. You find them in a bowling alley. You could find them in the parking lot of a Michaels. But you did articulate to me the value of let's go and find the real American. And one of the critiques was beyond diner being a cliche. And I think that working so doing 80% of the time to get the easy, you know, in group Twitter laugh. But let us not consider the real aggrievement of these people who voted for Donald Trump. All you need to know is he's terrible. So what is your critique of the critique of diner interviews and diner like settings?
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B
Yeah, I mean I have been a practitioner of diner. I was probably the leading times practitioner of diner journalism for a while.
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A
And your diner bill, your diner.
- [19:48]
B
We started the run up at a diner in Washington. Like I love a diner, but I think the critiques are true. I mean most diner stories I would say are bad. I think that but to me, all kind of all like political narrative that completely defers to just like one individual place is kind of bad. So like I think that what like I really think it's a question of execution. Like what are you saying?
- [20:13]
A
Like it's good to find the quote, real people just don't go to the diner or. Cause the critique was really forget finding the real people the truth. Our North Star is we just elected this guy who splits from everything that we thought about politics. And most of that critique was. And in a bad way.
- [20:32]
B
Well, I don't agree with, with skip the real people. So I as I said, I found value in that. But even in the stories I was doing there, I think There's a lot of ways that you can localize the way politics is playing out in a place. Like, I remember going to St. Cloud, Minnesota about how this group of city council members were trying to use Donald Trump's rhetoric in the first term to pass an ordinance to kick out Somali immigrants from their town. Like, I sat with that guy in a culverse for two days before, for a lot of those interviews. I think there's ways that you can do a kind of localized version of a story that works. The critique I agree with, with signer journalism is I think a lot of times people let particularly Trump voters live in the cliche. So you go there, you ask, and then they say, oh, I like that he's a businessman, or I like that he says things that other people don't, or, you know, I didn't elect him to, for morals or whatever. The same stuff we've always heard and we just let them live in that. Like, to me that's a reporting question. Like, like, if you get deeper to what it is that he says that other people don't, that's a valuable story. If you get, if you, if you follow up with something that goes beyond. And then I also say this is more difficult. It used to be, I would say liberals are getting increasingly like this, but because of like the Fox News monoculture of Trump, like, they have such a built in response to like typical questions. And so one thing I think that was happening in a lot of those diner stories is we were just letting them live in those cliche answers partially because we didn't wanna dig or we didn't wanna feel like we could indict in any way or whatever. And so I think that's just a bad version of those things. I would say the two things I find most important to executing a good diner story is where are you? Like, like whether that is, whether that is an individual diner or what place that is, like that place needs to be in the right community. And I think also, like have, I would hope, you know, that city council meeting I'm talking about has a different kind of value than I just think random's on the street. And then the second thing I think is pushing your questions to a point past the typical responses. And I think if you do both of those things. Well, I've seen the way people love those stories, right. So I'm like, it's to me just a matter of how you're doing it. And the lazy version of them is quite bad.
- [22:49]
A
Yeah, everyone knows, all the reporters know and the people in the audience knows that you could do pushback on a journalist, but you really have to be able to do pushback on citizens. And it's not rude because ideally the reason you do pushback on the journalist like you. Sorry. As a journalist on the elected, like you just did with Ruben Gallego, is no, there are people who are saying that you're relationship with Swalwell was expedient and ill considered. And yeah, I'm giving you a chance to answer. The same thing can be said with. Well, you know, a lot of people say, and more than that, the court records say that he's declared all of these bankruptcies.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know, most of his business success is just putting his name on things. Are you aware of those complaints and what do you think of them? They might have a good answer.
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B
Or I remember coming out of some of those Trump rallies in 24 and so much was about, you know, egg prices and economy and all this stuff. And he would ask about tariffs, which he would talk about on the stage and then people would really wave it away. They would say, oh, it didn't happen in the first term, I don't think it'll happen this time. Or. And you could really see how much of that election he was living off of a diagnosis of problem and was really disconnected from the solutions he was proposing. And so to me, that's what those people made clear. Like it wasn't as if I thought that their waving away of tariffs meant it didn't matter. And it's that it illuminated how a portion of the electorate was selectively hearing the versions of Trump that they most desired. And so like as you know, as shit hit the fan last summer, we're calling some of those folks back, some of the same people who waved that stuff away to try to follow up on that front. So I like to me think that like part of the reason the voter stories often don't work also is because we think about them only individually in that moment. Like some of the best kind of work I've done at that point has been the kind of longitudinal check in over a piece of time. And I feel like that also gives them a different type of value.
- [24:49]
A
Yeah. So going back to that answer of a few ago, you mentioned Deliverables, local mayor's race. We're talking about Deliverables the same day he was elected. So is Spam Burger. So was Cheryl's. They're talking about in their states, Virginia, New Jersey, Deliverables now on the national stage. And America actually had a report on this. Affordability has become the issue.
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B
Yeah.
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A
I wonder, since you identified this as a local issue, does this really play, do you think, on the national stage that we're talking about the US Congress, the US Senate, what making a law that grocery store has to have paper, paper price tags. Like, what are we really talking about?
- [25:33]
B
I think we're talking about housing costs. I think we're talking about health, healthcare. I think we're talking about. But I do, I mean, I do think, I mean, really we should say what this was born out of. Like, it was born out of Democrats and I think a Biden era, or let's take even the 2022 midterms, that's almost principally about abortion rights and the January 6th era kind of election denier backlash like affordability, Was it really even there? Even though we were in an inflation crisis?
- [26:04]
A
No democracy was on the ballot.
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B
Right. So I'm saying, like, this is really born out of an ignoring of a thing more than I think it's them arriving to a problem that already people were feeling and I think a late arrival to that thing. So I'm like, so, you know, when we talk to Greg Kzar on the show about the affordability agenda, that is clearly a, a down payment on what he hopes a Democratic president and House can do in 2029. You know, and so I'm like, we're still in the early stages of them figuring out what that word means, but I think it's similar ish to what Zoran has accomplished in terms of like retraining the party back to quote, unquote, kitchen table, but doing it in a way. I remember there was a quote from him that he told me about, like, you know, I don't think that Democrats have to spend so much time messaging the good things that they do because people don't feel them tangibly. And I think that's what we mean when we talk about this new affordability stuff is like, you know, Mikey Sherrill declaring a state of emergency because of electricity prices. And that's a thing people can see and feel immediately. Right. Like, I think. And so I'm like, that's really what I, I think on your, to your point, they're building in the early stages of building a kind of legislative agenda going forward. But I think more than that, it's about acknowledging a problem that they really are four years late on doing. And I think that lateness is, is the principal reason Donald Trump is president.
- [27:39]
A
Yeah. It's maybe good politics now based on their bad political Calculations of the past.
- [27:45]
B
I'm like, they've arrived at good politics through their former poor one.
- [27:49]
A
Yeah. Because good politics will thrust itself in your face after you lose and then you do some version of the autopsy, which I want to get to. But when Greg Cesar said to you. So he's. What's his official position? He's in charge.
- [28:02]
B
He's the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
- [28:04]
A
Progressive caucus. So he said to you that Donald Trump or the Republicans demonization of illegal immigrants or trans athletes didn't take your job and didn't raise your rent. And then he said a Wall street company raised your rent. I remember thinking, no, that's almost entirely not true. Not only are very small percent of rents owned by a Wall street company, what really did it was the supply side scarcity of housing, which are mostly the result of a Democratic agenda or Democratic agenda in coastal cities. And I don't know if you could get to that in the interview. And I don't know if voters will get to that.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But it did present to me of, yeah, maybe it's good politics to say affordability and bad politics to acknowledge what so much of the affordability crisis has been caused by. Also that last stimulus bill that, you know, was passed at a time when there wasn't the capacity in the economy to handle.
- [29:03]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think you make an important point like the naming a villain doesn't necessarily track to the causal relationship to why people's housing costs have gone up. Right, Right. So I do think it's a political move to kind of train the focus on, you know, insert billionaire. But I also think that, like in the, in the same way that like, you know, is the data center the chief reason why your electricity price is going up? Like, there's questions there too. Right. So I'm saying, like, I don't 1%
- [29:30]
A
of the US electricity goes to data centers. So I'm probably.
- [29:32]
B
Yeah. So I'm like the, so the political question is, I think, a fair one to point out. But I also think that like, you know, they are like, as we said in that interview, like, you know, climate change isn't mentioned. Like Medicare for all isn't really mentioned.
- [29:51]
A
Right. The shibboleths of the progressive agenda. Up until 20 minutes ago.
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B
Up until 20 minutes ago. Because they're now trying to retrain everything into the affordability lens. And so they're. And so I'm like, I guess I'm not like making a judgment on the success or failure of that more than I think it is very Clear how the Trump bomb on one end and I think the Zoran success on another end has really pushed them into this lane where it could be corruption as they talked about yesterday, it could be climate change, it could be healthcare, but they're going to go back to said kitchen table, which we should acknowledge. It's like not letting unique of a thought. Like Jenny Carville said, it's all the economy 20 years ago, right. Like this was there for them to do. I really think in the, I mean I would say in the Obama era. And like obviously Biden made this more clear. They just became obsessed with trying to I think talk people out of their problems more than acknowledging it.
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A
We'll be back with more of Estad Hurden right after the this. We're back with Asted Herndon talking about his new podcast America. Actually all politicians always think the mistake they made is we didn't message it well. We have a branding problem.
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B
Right.
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A
And these guys you're talking to think that. Do you get a sense of that? Anyone actually actually running for office or creating the policies and they're not going to say it in the context of that kind of interview with you, but are they saying while we have a branding problem and while some of these things are really frustrating and it's not the trans girl who causes any sort of economic problem for you, we also on other issues really actually have a policy problem like say the supply of housing.
- [31:54]
B
I think on the housing front, like, you know, I hate to keep going back to Zoran but like make no mistake that like, you know, there was an inclusion of that type of supply side language that even angered some leftists because there's a recognition of where that problem lives. I mean, but on the opposite side, you look at the California governor's race, a place that embodies the some of the bureaucracy that's made kind of housing costs rise and like it's not like the leading candidates there have really put together like chief policy proposals on that front. So I'm like, I think that they are in the wilderness. I mean we interview Gallego also about immigration because I remember that in the 2019 kind of primary where there was an Elizabeth Warren, big old plan for everything, they basically had the position of like let's do deportations quieter, you know, like so like I do think there's a lot of issues in which they have not asked themselves kind of fundamental questions about their affirmative vision. And I also think that's just because that primary got collapsed in the last in leading into 2020 not just because of COVID but Biden basically convinced enough of the electorate that electability was all that mattered, that you prioritized beating Trump, and that these kind of heady conversations about who Democrats should be were a waste of time.
- [33:11]
A
Maybe at the time his theory of the case was right.
- [33:13]
B
And I'm like, it was fine if he wasn't gonna run for reelection. Like, you know, like.
- [33:17]
A
And he has no ambitions of just cauterizing this wound in the moment.
- [33:21]
B
Right, right, right. I'm saying in the moment that was a fine electoral strategy. I think that's how most people felt. But it did, I think, halt what is a very necessary party wide conversation that would culminate in something like a project 2029.
- [33:35]
A
Right.
- [33:36]
B
Like I'm saying, like they can't even do the basics of that front because I don't think they're in agreement about who they think government should work for. And so I definitely see that as part of the conversation that runs from this year to next year. Because it was unfinished in 2019.
- [33:52]
A
Correct my memory, or maybe it was just my impression. Were you on the Warren beat?
- [33:57]
B
For the time I was. I was Warren and Harris until.
- [34:02]
A
Until each imploded.
- [34:03]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I watched both of those front row.
- [34:06]
A
So you're the through line. It was you. Here's my question. Not gonna ask you about Harris right now. Does Elizabeth Warren think her policy prescriptions were wrong about anything?
- [34:16]
B
That's a good question. I haven't talked to her in a while, but particularly on housing.
- [34:20]
A
Those who I look at, maybe Katie Porter as a proxy.
- [34:23]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like the acolytes have not. Have not. I don't think Warren ism has panned out well, like they would say, just
- [34:35]
A
in terms of messaging and acceptance. Right?
- [34:37]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I even think, you know, particularly to this housing bill that's happened, like she's angered a lot of people on that front because to your point about kind of pointing at private equity, like, is that more in name than actual substance? And I just think in general, I remember in that race she was trying to do, you know, Bernie has a very obviously is going around the party and has a very clear intention to reshape the party. And there was a kind of warm belief that like the, the party itself did not need transformation more than it needed just ideas. And I just think that hasn't worked out.
- [35:17]
A
Like, but even if she. I would say it could have worked if all her ideas have been vindicated, if so many of her ideas were right or seen as right. Now, I know that she and her acolytes believe in them, but you look at, I think even simple things like the opposition to the JetBlue spirit.
- [35:34]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's a good one.
- [35:36]
A
And like, yeah. And like. Oh, no, no. In fact, if that had gone through, JetBlue also might have gone away. Ah, I don't know. I don't know that not only is that popular, I don't know that the vast majority. I know that the vast majority of economists who aren't already aligned with her would disagree with that.
- [35:52]
B
Yeah, I guess I'm. Yeah, I guess I'm a little more sympathetic. Only like, sympathetic isn't the right word. But like, the only thing I would say is the lack of creativity among Democrats is so deep that I do think that campaign gets some credit for just thinking. But to your point, I don't think the policy prescriptions. And I kind of think Warrenism was. She was like, kind of like, was. Was a priority of Biden administration policy. And I don't think that has worked out. Like, that's right.
- [36:35]
A
She lost. But they.
- [36:36]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it's fair to say that that campaign lived on through Biden administration policy, which I think, and I remember asking her this when she was running in the time, like, like it's kind of a little too debate class, right? Like, it's kind of. It's like there is a belief here that policy is politics that I've not seen work out, you know, and so not only have the policy prescriptions been kind of indicted, but the Biden bedrock belief that if we simply do good things, like, then they see them in the end was totally not true. And I think that was a little bit of an order.
- [37:18]
A
They got to do the good things. Things.
- [37:20]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm giving them their version of good things. But I hear what you're saying too.
- [37:25]
A
Yeah, yeah. I don't, you know, Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein would say, I don't disagree with Biden or I don't disagree with Warren. But if you have all of these and they can cite 12 programs and then they don't actually get implemented, is that Warren ism or is that Warren ism showing its vulnerability to the tentacles of all the groups within the Democratic Party? And if you're ism, if you're way of thinking about problems doesn't take into account that every time you have a proposed solution, they're going to jam into it. All the environmental asks, all the Staffing asks, then it's not really a solution.
- [38:02]
B
I totally think that the ways that we. I think that, though, that the recognition of, like, group deference is overdue, like, among Democrats. Like, I think that that's part pretty clear now. I think, particularly issues like immigration. Like, that was part of the reason there was no creativity is because they were so nervous about angering different groups or whatever. But, like, Lord knows I saw that on so many fronts. Like, Kamala Harris didn't put out a criminal justice plan till, like, a year in because she was scared of messing. She was scared of making people mad. And she had been attorney General. It was what her whole life was about. Like, I'm. Like, there was so much that was like that I think had hamstrung them unnecessarily. That, like, I do kind of think that the picking on Warren is a little convenient. And, like, some would think it's like a media class who fell for her and then fell hurt by it. But, like, there was so much of that kind of, like, faux populism, or at least what I would say. That's not even the right word. I would say there was a lot of what I would say, a fear of offending, and that was the driving force of not just her campaign, but several.
- [39:20]
A
Yeah. And I'm gonna make an attempt to tie it back to what you were talking about with Greg Cesar, and the entire idea of, we just think we have a branding problem. We don't have the courage of a set of convictions that will change as data comes in, but there are also convictions. So one of the reasons why Kamala Harris doesn't come out with a justice plan is that everything she did as Attorney General ran into the trends of the moment. You know, the progressive prosecutor trends, which she retroactively tried to brand herself as though we know. She.
- [39:58]
B
You know, that's what. That was never really true.
- [40:00]
A
Right. Just like the branding on. And I think that they're right. They have to rebrand. And I think this is the message of the moment.
- [40:07]
B
I.
- [40:08]
A
But the thing that you stood for, which is we're going to make it extremely difficult to build, especially in coastal cities. That thing was wrong. And you either have to say it was wrong or you have to say, no, we were right then. And although the moment right now doesn't line up with that.
- [40:26]
B
Yeah, I think that's fair. I think it's fair to say that, like, on. On several fronts, and I think this one is a chief policy front, that the admission of. That. The admission of of wrong would to get them a long way or at least to be able in a moment of reset, I think would gain credibility. I think it reflects what is a mass feeling among Dem electorate and base which is that their own electeds, particularly in cities have failed them. Right. And so I think that they could do that on education, they could do that on housing. They could do that on several fronts. I think to say that, okay, we are working from a place of assumption here that has not panned out.
- [41:04]
A
Place of intention.
- [41:05]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [41:05]
A
I'm like science of reading.
- [41:07]
B
I'm like. But I do think like. But I mean they won't even admit, I mean they won't even admit Biden shouldn't have run for reelection. I mean they won't even admit basic things. They will admit that like the bear hugging of Netanyahu through 2024 lost them votes. Like, they won't admit things that are so obvious that I'm not like waiting for the moment on like the deeper policy front.
- [41:28]
A
Right. So you earlier said, you know, the Democrats haven't come out with an autopsy, but have you seen this within the last day and a half?
- [41:34]
B
Yes, I have. I, I have, I have actually seen.
- [41:36]
A
But you did the autopsy before. I think this was your last.
- [41:39]
B
Thank you for recognizing.
- [41:41]
A
You go to Chicago, you talk to friends and family and there is a guy there, Corey Lasseter. Who's Corey to you?
- [41:47]
B
Parents friend.
- [41:48]
A
Okay, cool. He said something that is the main thrust of the autopsy because the autopsy says a lot of obvious things you would expect it to say, but she's, but the autopsy says, and I will quote Corey, another reason is she did not separate herself from Joe Biden. So what Joe Biden was doing wrong, she didn't take a step apart from it. She kind of just didn't really make her own stamp on her own thing she was running on. My question is how come Corey Lasseter got that right all these years ago and it takes the Democrats years to get out a redacted Boulderized version of Corey's insight.
- [42:25]
B
Like those, the real answer to that question is because the consultant money involved won't allow them to be as clear eyed as Corey Lasseter. You know, like, and I'm like the, the, the reason we did that, we started the run up with looking at the 2012 Republican autopsy like we were trying to string together these moments of accountability and the ways that politics have been disconnected from people. And I knew, I, I can't. I knew after that election day because partly because I was so in it and around it that they weren't gonna have accountability, honesty moment. Like, the level of gaslighting. I personally, I only have to speak to others.
- [43:04]
A
I mean, I don't know if people remember, but your profile of her was one of the best. And they came out and blasted and refused refuse you interviews. I mean, right?
- [43:15]
B
You want to hear some tea? After that profile, I was uninvited from the White House's black history celebration. Like, Like, I can even go to, like, black events. You know, like I was saying, like, the amount of ridiculous listeners, if you're
- [43:28]
A
listening to this in audio form, as that is black. The.
- [43:32]
B
The. The amount of, like, gaslight, the amount of vitriol was so personal that I never thought there would be some moment where they would recognize how they marched us into a Trump second term. Like, I think that weight on them is just too big to admit. Like, and so I wasn't waiting for the official moment because I had these experiences where the officials were just clueless. And so that's why it led us to do the autopsy thing with the famine in Chicago was because I was like, okay. We had talked to them the year before on Thanksgiving, and they did this really good thing. They did this really good kind of focus group about the changing relationship between black voters and Democrats. And it felt like so much of that was in the air post Harris loss that it just felt like a nice way to end. But the core was based out of me feeling we're not gonna get that kind of 2012 Republican autopsy where the show was built from. Like, we should do this ourselves, because principally, this is an election I don't even trust the DNC to have honestly seen. They weren't even there, in my opinion. Like, they passively watched the march to Trump.
- [44:50]
A
So I mentioned that I've been listening to it backwards. The latest episodes are the ones I heard most recently. And then I listened to the first episode, and I hadn't realized this, that the conceit of the show is to
- [45:02]
B
do, at least at the beginning, we haven't executed every episode here.
- [45:06]
A
This is my point. The conceit of the show is to do a politics show without Donald Trump. Let's remove Trump.
- [45:12]
B
Yes, with that.
- [45:14]
A
What happens now? Isn't this like a little doing a whooping cough podcast without considering the Bordetella pertussis bacterium?
- [45:22]
B
Yes, 100%, I guess. I guess as I was thinking about 28, I'm like, we're on this. We're on this road to, you know, pseudo replacement. But obviously, first open primary for both parties since 2016. And I just frankly feel a little Trump exhausted and, you know, today explain. And other vehicles and like, other ways of producing content. I talk about them all the time. But I kind of wanted to have a space where we were asking questions about both parties and country that was not about him directly. And so it's hard because it's an everything. And so people are like, joking me like, you just made the Trump. Like you talk about Trump every episode. What are you talking about? And I'm like, yes. But I do think my goal is eventually to get to a place that is, you know, or to be ideas based rather than reactive. And I honestly think that tonally thinking about who we are beyond this individual person is relieving. And I want us to hold that goal in mind, even if it fluctuates week to week.
- [46:42]
A
Yes. And I would say that if you did a survey of potential listeners and say, we're not gonna include Trump, they'd all say, oh, what a break. Thank God. And then if you did a headline, watch what Trump did, they'd all tune in. Yes.
- [46:56]
B
Something like, I kind of just like the intention because I think it speaks to the electoral journey we're on.
- [47:04]
A
Asted Herndon is the host of America actually, and I want to thank him for allowing us to get in Astead's head, which I understand was your high school newspaper column.
- [47:17]
B
It was. I used to have a little graphic where the words would come out of the head. And I did serious journalism like, you know, candy sale price increases and stuff like that.
- [47:28]
A
And even that was a lot of episodes about Trump.
- [47:33]
B
I was still. He was still at the center.
- [47:35]
A
Great for ratings. Thank you, Estad.
- [47:38]
B
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
- [47:45]
A
That's it for today's show. The Gist is produced by Cory Wara. Jeff Craig does How to. Ben Astaire is our booking coordinator. Kathleen Sykes does the Gist list. Em. Michelle Pesca is extraordinary in her role as COO Improve. Thanks for listening.