3561 - Trump's DC Occupation; Democrats Recalibrate Partisan Politics w/ David Weigel

Summary

Below is a detailed summary of the episode “3561 - Trump's DC Occupation; Democrats Recalibrate Partisan Politics w/ David Weigel” from The Majority Report with Sam Seder (August 15, 2025).

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1. Episode Overview

• This episode blends fast-paced political commentary, humor, and irreverent insights.
• The discussion opens with a surprise birthday celebration and a sponsor promotion for SunsetLakeSabaday, then shifts into an in‐depth review of the political landscape in Washington, D.C., including Trump’s controversial tactics, debates over the use of military and National Guard in cities, and evolving partisan strategies.
• Later, host Sam Seder and guests (including long-time regulars and journalist Dave Weigel) examine trends in crime statistics versus media narratives, evolving ideas of gerrymandering and D.C. statehood, as well as the shifting dynamics in progressive and ‘netroots’ politics.

──────────────────────────── 2. Opening Remarks & Sponsor Promotions

• [00:00] – Sam kicks off the show with an energetic birthday shout-out to SunsetLakeSabaday. He outlines their current promotion: using the coupon code “BIRTHDAY” yields 25% off sitewide, plus a free gift on purchases over $100.
– Sam praises the products “lifted tea” with THC, tinctures, gummies, smokables, salves, and lotions that are third-party tested and produced with ethical, regenerative practices.

• [02:54 to 02:58] – The program transitions from the sponsor message into the official broadcast of The Majority Report, with a tongue-in-cheek reminder about “casual Friday” attitudes extending through the week.

──────────────────────────── 3. D.C., Crime, and Military Presence

• [06:14 to 08:45] – The conversation turns political with commentary on Washington, D.C.’s current state:
– Sam notes the unusual presence of armored vehicles and military personnel navigating the streets of D.C. The discussion centers around a viral “sandwich man” moment, where an Air Force veteran offered a cup of coffee or a sandwich—even if his sandwich was “not toasted” to his liking—triggering a humorous yet pointed response from law enforcement.
– A memorable clip is shared at [08:19] where a character humorously asks, “I want to give you food. Are you hungry?” followed by playful banter that underscores D.C. hospitality amid heavy security.

• Discussion Points:
– The impact of displaying a visibly thick military and law enforcement presence against the backdrop of historic declines in D.C.’s violent crime rates (down 26% from a 30‐year low).
– The guests discuss how National Guard deployments, though intended to curb crime, appear largely symbolic given the already favorable crime statistics.

• Notable Quote (Speaker A):
“[15:16] …34% say increased a lot, 20% increased a little—only 9% realize murder rates in U.S. cities have dropped dramatically since 1990. That’s the only answer that’s right.”
– This comment criticizes media narratives that focus on isolated incidents rather than longer-term improvements in public safety.

──────────────────────────── 4. Politicization of Urban Crime, Partisan Tactics, and Statehood Debates

• [11:51 to 13:51] – The panel discusses James Comer’s remarks on the future of policing in D.C. and beyond:
– Comer’s argument that the heavy-handed national response in D.C. should serve as a model for other cities is examined, with contrasting views on whether deploying military or federal agents really addresses local crime.
– They note the irony of Republicans taking credit for decreased crime amid a broader narrative that cities are “unsafe,” while using these images to justify overreach.

• [15:51 to 17:27] – A heated discussion ensues about how Democrats, fearful of being labeled “soft on crime,” have avoided addressing the real data of declining crime rates.
– The conversation highlights the media’s role in sensationalizing isolated criminal incidents as part of a broader narrative against liberal governance.

• [35:55 to 39:16] – Attention shifts to the debate around gerrymandering and D.C. statehood:
– The conversation reflects on how Trump’s overreach in taking control of city leadership feeds into a larger partisan strategy.
– Some Democrats, including figures like Muriel Bowser in D.C., find themselves caught between resisting federal intrusion and dealing with funding cuts from Congress.

• Key Discussion Points:
– The strategic use of urban crime imagery by both sides, and how Republicans champion “tough on crime” policies even when data suggest otherwise.
– The use of statehood—in D.C. and in other states—as a potential bargaining chip in the broader fight over redistricting and partisan power.
– Guest B (and others) mentions that “every Democrat in favor of statehood votes for it, but the constitutional challenges mean 60 Senate votes are needed,” indicating a deep partisan impasse.

──────────────────────────── 5. Reflections on Netroots Politics and Progressive Donor Dynamics

• [60:36 to 65:08] – Dave Weigel and the panel reflect on changes in the progressive/“netroots” movement since its early days:
– What began as a vibrant network of progressive bloggers and grassroots organizers is now contending with declining financial support from traditional donors.
– The conversation cites how progressive donor funding has become “wimpy” and even controversial when activists take stances (for example, on issues like Palestine) that jeopardize donor support.

• Points Highlighted:
– The tension between established progressive political organizations and the newer, more vocal activist segments. – A reference to panel discussions where figures like Alex Soros and non-profit leaders have faced criticism for their stances, suggesting a fracturing within the progressive infrastructure. – A side comment noting that “Media Matters and ActBlue,” once pillars of progressive media and fundraising, are now under attack—exacerbating a sense of strategic crisis on the left.

──────────────────────────── 6. Conversation with Dave Weigel

• [26:45 to 31:32] – Dave Weigel returns as a featured guest: – Dave recounts his personal observations from the streets of D.C. and reflects on the absurdity of fears of carjackings.
– A clip at [27:48] shows Mark Wayne Mullen humorously rationalizing his decision not to buckle his seatbelt in D.C. due to a perceived high risk of carjacking.
– The conversation deep dives into the implications of such extreme tactics, with Dave and the hosts comparing evolving methods of crisis rhetoric on both sides of the political spectrum.

• Themes from Dave’s Discussion: – The challenges of reconciling genuine security concerns with the hyperbolic messaging used by different political camps.
– Reflections on historical parallels—how past administrations handled urban crime and the ongoing debate about state control versus local autonomy. – An exploration of how these tactics may impact future political contests and redistricting battles.

──────────────────────────── 7. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “[08:19] C: I want to give you food. Are you hungry?” – A playful moment that encapsulates the mix of absurdity and genuine concern amid heavy security in D.C.

• “[15:16] A: …34% say increased a lot, 20% say increased a little… only 9% who got it right—that murder rates in U.S. cities have decreased dramatically since 1990.” – A pointed critique of misleading public narratives.

• “[65:46] B: ‘If we were having a debate on this stage… stories are for children. Americans need a plan.’” – This snippet (taken from a debate on narrative versus policy) echoes the episode’s persistent theme: the power of story in politics versus the need for actionable policy.

• Moments of humor also pepper the show, such as the banter during the “fun half” of the program where playful jabs (“Stop talking for a second…”) highlight the camaraderie between the hosts.

──────────────────────────── 8. Concluding Thoughts

• The episode wraps by juxtaposing serious strategic debates—about urban security, statehood, redistricting, and donor dynamics—with lighter, offbeat exchanges in the “fun half” of the show.
• The long-form conversation offers listeners an expansive look at both national trends (trump’s overreach, state interventions, media narratives) and the internal struggles within the progressive movement. • As the discussion winds down, the hosts stress the importance of embracing not just data and charts but also compelling narratives that can energize voters around a positive, transformative vision.

──────────────────────────── 9. Final Takeaways

• The episode serves as an incisive commentary on current American politics, blending humor with rigorous analysis.
• It critically examines the paradox of tightening security in cities that are statistically safer, the partisan tug-of-war over issues like gerrymandering and statehood, and the evolving challenges within the progressive movement. • For listeners who have not tuned in, the episode offers a rich tapestry of topics—from the peculiarities of D.C. security to deep dives into the strategies shaping future political battles—underscored by memorable quotes and candid, freewheeling discussions.

──────────────────────────── Overall, “3561 - Trump's DC Occupation; Democrats Recalibrate Partisan Politics w/ David Weigel” is a thought-provoking, wide-ranging conversation that captures both the absurdities and serious stakes of today’s political environment. Listeners are left with plenty to mull over as the hosts navigate questions of narrative, power, and the future of American democracy.

For more insights or to listen to the episode, please refer to the show notes on Majority.FM.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[A]

Where every day's casual Friday. That means Monday is casual Monday, Tuesday casual Tuesday, Wednesday casual hump day, Thursday casual Thirs, that's what we call it. And Friday casual Shabbat. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Friday, August 15, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Dave Weigel, author, journalist, covering politics at Semaphore, formerly Washington Post and Slate magazine on this Week in the News. Also on the program today, Trump to meet Putin in Alaska to suss out kickbacks for himself and also maybe deal with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile in D.C. pam Bondi says the DEA chief now emergency D.C. police chief and D.C. no longer a sanctuary city. Meanwhile, the D.C. attorney general and mayor say Bondi can say that, but it's not so as they sue the Trump regime. California Gavin Newsom launches a California gerrymander campaign as Texas Dems still holding firm RFK Jr appears to be asking what he can do for pesticide manufacturers. Trump appointed federal judge rules the Department of Education attempt to bar diversity programs illegal. PBS slashes budgets by 21% as PragerU wants to replace it in classrooms. Costco bails on selling abortion pills. Greedflation is back as corporate profits soar amid a tariff inflation shield. Trump officially rolls back Biden's doj, FTC antitrust protections. Trump polling in the toilet. He's down dramatically with young men and Medicaid recipients. And it turns out the meta chatbot it's okay. With romantic and satisfaction sensual overtures to 13 year olds. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is casual Friday.

[C]

Yes, it is.

[A]

Welcome. Thanks for joining us.

[C]

Hello, hello, hello.

[A]

We got a lot to get to. I am just like three days away from vacation and I, that is what I'm really thinking about.

[C]

I, so I understand.

[A]

I, I felt like I had to get off, get that off my chest.

[C]

That you're just, you can't wait for a break. I mean, it's, you know.

[B]

We won't rest.

[A]

I'm incidentally, I'm spending my vacation protesting outside of Chuck Schumer's house. But that's, there's a lot in the news today. I don't know if people have been watching this, but there are essentially armored vehicles driving through Washington, D.C. it's not a parade, at least not an official one. Let's start with this clip. Maybe folks have seen this. He's, he's gone viral as the sandwich man. It turns out he is former Air Force, former doj, and he was basically getting in the face of some of these occupiers of D.C. military occupiers of D.C. and very. I mean, maybe stylistically people have an issue, but I think when you offer an officer like a cup of coffee or a donut or a sandwich, it seems like you're doing a nice thing. Apparently they took issue with it. How else you get a sandwich at the wee hours of night? Exactly. This is clip number seven.

[C]

I want to give you food. Are you hungry?

[B]

Really?

[A]

Reno nine one one.

[B]

It really.

[A]

It is amazing. Seven guys running after him.

[C]

I mean, just a great sense of hospitality. That's D.C. hospitality for you. You gotta get food and let's be drinks for folks.

[A]

Well, it turns out they were obviously pretty upse. They had specifically requested their bread be toasted. And when the guy shows up, it's not toasted, you get pissed. They charged him with a felony and a judge threw it out, I guess yesterday or last evening, basically saying, no, it's not a felony assault to the judge threw it right in his chest. Exactly. So good for him. But here is other residents of Washington, D.C. greeting this sort of array of National Guard and federal, I don't know, prison guards and DEA and FBI, all geared up apparently to hand out traffic violations or whatnot. Here is. Watch this clip. Here's a real cop. He has a badge. He has signia. That's a real cop. Fuck. No, no. He harasses citizens. He's not a real cop. Samo's been booed at work. That sucks. The community seems very happy to have them there. That is two nights ago.

[B]

And the size has like tripled of the crowds too. Like last night.

[A]

That's. They're out now, just. Yes, protesting now. You guys played the Mark Wayne Mullen stuff yesterday, right?

[C]

No.

[A]

No, you didn't. We played a we. No, we didn't. I don't think that had happened yet. He's not afraid. He doesn't buckle himself in. Oh, we gotta pull that for later in the program. But here is James Comer arguing that Washington D.C. is just the beginning. And we should say he said this yesterday on Newsmax, right around the time that Pam Bondi claimed that she had the authority to fire the police chief to put the head of the DEA in as the acting police chief, and that she could unilaterally decide after the D.C. city Council had voted to make D.C. a sanctuary city, that she could unilaterally decide it's no longer a sanctuary city. This is in court today. But here is James Comer saying he wants to do this all over the place.

[B]

Carjacking we have people mugging people at.

[A]

All hours of the day and it's out of control. So the President had to send in the National Guard.

[B]

And I think that, you know, you've seen just in the last 24 hours a huge decline in crime. Oh, we're going to support this. We're going to support doing this in other cities if it works out in.

[A]

Washington D.C. and again, it's unfortunate, but.

[B]

We spend a lot on our military. Our military has been in many countries around the world for the past two decades walking the streets, trying to reduce.

[A]

Crime in other countries.

[B]

We need to focus on the big.

[A]

Cities in America now.

[B]

And that's what the President's doing.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, is that what the.

[C]

Troops have been doing? Just walking around different cities across the globe and reducing crime? I mean, tell that we reduce crime.

[A]

In Afghanistan, we reduce a lot of.

[C]

Crime in Iraq by killing a million people.

[A]

They just walk around in those bobby hats actually. But the, I mean, what, what's. There's a couple of things here. Obviously, a week ago crime was down 26% year over year. And a reminder, last year was a 30 year low in violent crime in Washington D.C. so it's down 26% from its 30 year low from last year. So I don't know what it's dropped to in the past two days, but that would be pretty impressive if it had dropped even that much more because you're just. Crime is at a below a 30 year longer than a 30 year low in D.C. at least.

[C]

And across the country, I mean, violent crime has declined when Comparing January through May 2024 to 2025 by nearly 11%. Property crime over 12%. This is a national trend, as James Comer talks about, taking this police state stuff national.

[A]

And we should say, you know, for the 20 years that James Comer talks about, I know that there have been eras where we have been saying this is a problem, this is going to blow back the military equipment. There was a program during the Bush years to sell extra military equipment to police departments. The idea that now we're talking about deploying military to city streets around the country is sort of the culmination of what the Republican Party has been doing for 20 years. And we should also note that the Democrats have also failed in this accord. Put up. Do we have that graph of how people think crime is? Put this up. This is sort of stunning. It shows, and we'll probably reference this again later, but it shows that a. Since 1990. That's the question. Since 1990 do you. Has crime increased since 1990?

[C]

Since 1990, would you say murder rates in U.S. cities have. That's the prompt.

[A]

Right. And 34% say increased a lot. 20% say increased a little. That's 54%. 9% say stay the home. So we're at 6, stayed about the same. That's 63. The fact of the matter is. And then 12% decreased a little. 9% decreased a lot. Those 9% are the only people who got this right. Murder rates in US cities have decreased dramatically since 1990. I mean, dramatically.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

And no one seems to know it. And part of that is because the media, if it bleeds, it leads.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

And there's a value to being able to show heinous crimes and push crime. In news, you see sort of like, you know, even if they're not doing it for ideological reasons, local news does it because it's titillating. But this is a failure of Democrats afraid to sort of like, be pegged as being soft on crime. They can't even bring themselves to tell the truth about what's happening with crime and take credit, even though maybe, I mean, personally, I think it was the getting ready, getting rid of leaded gasoline. There's a lot of evidence that, that had a lot to do with it. But regardless, there is a perfectly compelling position to stake out here. And Democrats don't do that. Even the mayor of D.C. her first reaction was like, well, we could use a couple more, 100 more cops because of cuts to our budget. The, the, the instinctive move of Democrats to sort of be afraid of being seen as soft on crime instead of just telling Americans the truth that, like, we live in a pretty safe country and your cities are pretty safe overall.

[C]

I mean, it's a failure of Democrats. Yeah. And when you talk about how Republicans lead the press and get what they want out there and the Democrats only react, that's one of the dynamics at play here. But it's not just the traditional media. Like, we talked to Gil Duran about the network state and how these big tech Silicon Valley overlords are obsessed with the idea of cleansing our cities of homeless people of crime.

[B]

In their viewpoint, they led the recall against Chesa Boudin.

[C]

Yeah. And they are pumping propaganda about urban crime that's heavily racialized to the top of people's social media feeds. And that's a huge reason why the Republicans see an opportunity with this narrative and that the Democrats also just have been so cowardly on it. It's not just the traditional media covering these stories. Either. A lot of this stuff is even less verifiable and sometimes staged, but it has this corrosive effect on people's opinion about urban centers, even though when we see that per capita violent crime is higher in redder, more rural states and their city areas.

[A]

All right, we're going to take a quick break. In a moment, we'll be talking to Dave Weigel. First, a couple of words from our sponsors. We're headed into fall. I know what you're thinking, well, that's not a good time to plant a tree. Well, you're wrong. A lot of people don't know this, but many plants and trees actually do better when they are planted towards this time of year. It's because that gives them a little bit of time to establish their roots and then they go to sleep. It doesn't matter if you live in the sunny south or the air is getting chilly where you are. Their plant experts can help you find the perfect fit for your space. And what am I talking about? Fast growing trees, of course. They have all the plants your yard needs. They have fruit trees, they have privacy trees. They have flowering trees, they have shrubs. So much more. Doesn't matter what plants you're interested in. Fast growing trees has you covered. Find the perfect fit for your climate in space. 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[B]

Sam it.

[A]

Sa.

[B]

Jam.

[A]

We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. It is casual Friday. Want to welcome back to the program Dave Weigel, author, journalist, covering politics at Semaphore. Dave, welcome back to the program.

[B]

It's good to be back. I'm, I'm looking at my window at Occupy DC which looks exactly like it did last week, but now, now it's safe.

[A]

I did. I don't know if you have a car or not, but do you drive around without a seatbelt on because you're worried about a carjacking?

[B]

No, because just statistically you're more likely to be at a car crash than get carjacked. So why would I do that?

[A]

Oh, well, cause you're obviously not. You love crime.

[C]

It's because you love violent crime.

[A]

Virtue signaling over here.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Actually, let's play this clip right now because, because it's obviously because you're not a senator. And here's Mark Wayne Mullen revealing that he doesn't understand that dynamic of the chances of him being in an accident are far greater than being carjacked. Pop this up.

[B]

And by the way, I'm not joking when I say this. I drive around in Washington, D.C. in my Jeep and yes, I do drive myself. And I don't buckle up. The reason why I don't buckle up and people can say whatever they want to, they can raise their eyebrows at me again is because of carjacking. I don't want to be stuck in my vehicle when I need to exit in a hurry because I got a seatbelt around me and that and I wear my seatbelt all the time. But in Washington, D.C. i do not because it is so prevalent of carjacking. And I don't want the same thing happen to me what's happened to a lot of people that work on the Hill.

[C]

And by the way, I mean, isn't there something so uniquely American about buying a jeep, like a big Jeep and being a real tough guy, didn't he challenge, was it Sean o' Brien to a fight on the Senate floor. But he's so afraid of seeing Black people in D.C. that he can't wear a seatbelt. That's what the, that's Republicanism. Together they're both incredibly tough, but also so, so weak and scared.

[B]

Well, I'm torn on the carjacking stuff because. Not his approach, that's silly. But there was a carjacking problem in D.C. that spiked a couple years ago. It still does happen. It happens sometimes. And we're not going to live. Minority Report. You prevent all crime. The issue is just basically a procedural issue where the city raised the age for, for trying juveniles. A lot of juveniles were just recommitting this crime because they weren't being tried as adults. And the city already has been changing that. And so the goofy thing about this, this whole discourse, many goofy things. One is just that the city had been rolling back some of the reforms that they didn't have a press conference to say, sorry, we went too far, but there was a carjacking problem. It has been getting better. But you do hear when this kind of take comes out that just there should never be any crime whatsoever in, in the city, which is hard to do. That sounds great. Very hard to pull that off. Being terrified of a city when a certain kind of crime is decreasing. I guess that's human nature, but I, why brag about it? That's just one of the things that evolutionary traits in our brain that we over worry about things that aren't likely to happen to us. But I'm not one of people say it doesn't happen, don't worry about it. It just. There are ways to fix it. If sending the National Guard to areas where carjacking is not happening is not fixing carjacking. That's been, that's been the craziness this week of the, the mismatch of this visual TV response and the, the problems DC has actually been dealing with.

[A]

And the, the, the, the fascinating thing to me too is just the absolute fear of, of cities that is just not warranted. And the idea that a. They could cut a billion dollars, a billion dollars from DC's operating budget and then send in the military ostensibly to make things safe. I don't know if they're going to permanently occupy dc. They don't. The statutorily they don't seem to have any authority whatsoever to do that. What is the, what is the sense that you're, you're hearing down there in terms of like, are there any national Democrats that are saying, hey, this is a bad idea, this is ridiculous. I know that the attorney general for D.C. has sued now to basically say, like. And that the mayor and the attorney general are saying the D.C. police chief is still the D.C. police chief. Do not. Yeah, listen to, like, what happens in that situation. Do they have some type of standoff?

[B]

Their power is. Well, you have officers of the law taking orders from somebody else, told they take over from somebody else. What they asked for in D.C. was a temporary restraining order so that the police chief is in charge while until a court rules and everything's following following the same pattern. So there's the D.C. you, you file a lawsuit, you get a panel of three judges. If they're Trump judges, they'll usually find some reason why actually what Trump did is fine. That happened five minutes ago with the CFPB layoffs. If you get Katzas and Rao, you know they're going to say, actually, we read the Constitution, Trump is fine. Don't worry about it. And then you go on bonk and try to get the whole circuit and then they go to the Supreme Court. Same thing. But if you're lucky, you get a restraining order and she's in charge. The police chief is in charge again, but you're getting it. The way Trump was trying to divide Democrats in the city, which was pretty effective, and how he's overreaching because it's more politically advantageous for him to just make it look like Democrats are crazy and they can't run the city. So he understood that in D.C. there's the mayor, Muriel Bowser, and there's the council. The council has been more progressive on crime than the mayor. One example is the city decriminalized fare evasion because of studies that said, oh, it was hitting black youth more than white people. She was against that. She vetoed it. They depested again. And she felt vindicated because actually fare evasion went up much more than expected. The city ended up building gates, things like that. She has been more amenable to tough on crime policies than a lot of Democrats, and he knows that. Yes, she presided over the Black Lives Matter mural, but then she presided over getting rid of it. So Trump understood her, somebody he could manipulate. And she initially, at the start of the week, was criticizing the takeover, but saying they could work with it. So she has this community meeting, virtual community meeting on Tuesday where she says, we actually could use more cops. To your point, the House just kind of out of spite, cut a billion dollars of taxpayer Funding DC for taxpayers paid the billion dollars. It's in the federal budget because of the crazy home rule situation. And the House just said, well, we're cutting everything. So haha, we don't trust you, we're cutting it. She was trying to navigate around that and how she did was not cutting policing. She cut a bunch of social programs instead of policing. Bowser's message has been, I love cops, they're great. I want more, give me more money for cops. Her reaction to the takeover is, you're sending more resources, great. But our police chief is willing to work with you. You're undermining our sanctuary city policy. Great. I, Muriel Bowser, don't like the sanctuary city policy. And he started a divide. I wouldn't say effectively, cuz it's been pretty chaotic every day. What they're doing now is just, it's kind of stunting on them and saying, well, we all know these people can't run anything. So Pam Bondi's gonna run it now and the DEA is gonna run it now and we're gonna just send. You're gonna have to fight us in court for the ability to run this. The premise being, and this is the premise of everything in Republican politics right now. The premise being that liberals ruin their cities and we need to take over because you're all idiots. That is through gerrymandering. That is the premise of gerrymandering. That you guys deserve fewer seats because you can't control yourselves. We need to wipe out the Kansas City seat, we need to wipe out the Nashville seat, et cetera. That's the premise here. You guys can't run it. So we're gonna send the military in and we expect there to be no backlash also, there definitely won't be a backlash if you guys can't win the House. And so the national Democratic response. I get into the Bowser one because it's a little more complicated. The national Democratic response I think, not muddled, it just wasn't very effective. It's hey, D.C. deserves statehood. Don't take it over. And the crime has been going down. Democrats have actually been clashing more with, let's say, the pundit class than with Republicans. Because you see in pundits who talk about dc, they'll say, well, they shouldn't say crime's going down, cuz it's actually still pretty bad. Yeah, obviously crime's bad. Sorry. We all agree that there is too much crime. It's tough for Democrats to get their tiny megaphones into this conversation. The argument is hey, we all agree crime's bad. The city's been trying to reduce it. The city needs the money that people paid for to reduce it. Don't take it over. If it's translated on TV as Democrats don't think crime's a problem, then I guess they lose that argument. But there's many arguments they lose because they try to explain themselves, and it just gets mangled on tv.

[A]

So do you think that this is going to. So Trump's overreaching and is actually like sort of move past where the point of the wedge issue was, at least within the context of D.C. do you think. Have you seen any evidence that there's anybody in D.C. who Democrats who are saying, this is why we need statehood, like, and ultimately, because that's really the best thing that Democrats can get out of this, is that they actually use this as a leverage point to. In the event that they get into a position of power over the next two to four years, really, I guess, you know, four years or so, D.C. statehood is on the table, and there is a real clear need or understanding why you would need D.C. statehood.

[B]

Yes. That's another thing Democrats are very comfortable saying. There is no Democrat I'm aware of in the Congress who doesn't support statehood. When the bill comes up, they vote for it. The problem has been you need 60 votes in the Senate, and then you know you're gonna get constitutional challenges on it. And there are some Democrats who, because they know the constitutional challenges are coming, say, well, what's the point doing this? The closest they came was there was a bill that would have expanded the House by two seats in 2009, when Utah had grown fast enough that they correctly said they deserved another seat because the census had not captured their population growth. And it was going to be one more seat for Utah, one More seat for D.C. pass the House just. And this is. You can go back and litigate the Obama years and how they didn't leverage their power effectively. If they could go back in time, if Democrats would go back in time and knew it was coming, would they have banned gerrymandering given D.C. statehood? I think probably. I think even Joe Lieberman probably would have been negotiated with on that. But in lieu of that, yeah, every Democrat's in favor of this. And so the Bowser. I'm kind of simplifying it by saying the Bowser position, but they're Bowser position. Other Democrats, the Bowser take, the DC Reformer take is, oh, well, in order to get statehood, we need to be seen as a Place that is so obviously ready to run itself that we get it. And the other Democratic take is just listen to Republicans. They don't want to give it statehood for power reasons. And Trump will say that, Trump will say, as he did at the Kennedy center, no, don't give them statehood because they get two Democratic senators. That's it. The city could turn into paradise. It could have no crime for 10 years, but it would elect two Democrats to the Senate. Therefore, don't give it statehood. And so is there some future compromise? You can imagine a Aaron Sorkin compromise where, I don't know, you get a third Dakota or something, or Alberta gets admitted to the Union as a trade off. Alberta's gonna leave Canada, they're gonna get two Republican senators, D.C. gets two Democratic senators. Great. But the idea that the Fed shouldn't be able to intervene in D.C. because it's been denied these rights, I think that will intensify. And Democrats need to be ready for Republicans to never agree for power reasons. That's, you're never going to get the city so clean that they want to give it statehood unless it started voting like West Virginia. The fascinating thing, I think they'd be interested in that.

[A]

Right, of course. And the fascinating thing is that this, this is analogous in some ways, although I think there's some evidence that maybe it's changing a little bit to the redistricting fight. Like the idea that Democrats, there are Democrats who legitimately believe, and I don't know, I mean, you tell me if they legitimately believe this and it's not just a concern that there's going to be, you know, too much of a majority, perhaps potentially in the Senate, but the idea that they legitimately believe that if, if D.C. can show that it attains a certain level of competency in self rule, then Republicans will buy onto this is just like, I feel like you'd have to be dropped, like literally airlifted out of 1952 and just dropped in to 2025 to believe that's what this is about. I mean, it's fascinating and I feel like there's some, and I'm, you know, there's a lot of things I don't like about Gavin Newsom, but I like the fact that California Democrats have basically said we're gonna do this. And because we're not gonna wait for the, you know, the Republicans to redistrict to do this, we're gonna do this, we're gonna go forward with this right now because it just shows like a slightly better. And I don't know how sincere they are in California, to be honest with you. But it shows at least that they understand, rhetorically speaking, this is just a fight about power. It's not a fight about whether good government or competency.

[B]

Yes, it is a fight about power. I'm agreeing, agreeing with the point you're making because it's a good way to explain what Newsom's doing. If you watch Newsom's speech, and I've seen him a lot over the years. I followed him in South Carolina when he went there a couple weeks ago. He's a California booster, and he's a booster of just California as a pluralist state, as a diverse pluralist place. His argument he's very comfortable making is it's not just diversity is our strength. And he can have his bromides, I guess, but he argues, look, we are all better off if there are big, messy places with lots of people from different walks of life. And Republicans don't think that I am the governor of California. I think the country should be more like California. But in the meantime, I think I can prove that California has figured out a better way to live. Yes, it includes higher taxes, but includes more social benefits. And the problem he sees with this is not to get into the entire abundance discourse, but the problem he sees with that is that people around the country need to hear California and think, oh, yeah, they have nice the way they think of Switzerland or something, or France. Well, they're liberal, but at least if you're there, things are pretty nice. He's aware that the progressives have a branding problem around this and they're up against daily coverage from Fox News and from conservatives and from some reality. This is the thing where I never say it's all fantasy. There were some decisions that I think progressive criminal justice reformers made that were a little naive about the effects of lowering sentences that were reversed. And Newsom was for those changes. He was against changing them back. But voters in California have reversed some of these things. They get turned to cartoons on TV that you can shoplift with no problem in California. It's not that it is just there. It turns out there are a small number of people who are repeat offenders. If you don't convince them, they might actually have to spend some time in jail. So setting aside the police, abolitionists, the people who think that's bad, that's what Newsom's doing is I am trying to defend a version of the country that I think is really pluralist and progressive and economically dynamic and good and on the other side are the national conservatives represented by Trump, who are posting memes from DHS about how the country was better off in 1880 and how heritage Americans are having their futures taken from them by immigrants. That is what he sees happening. I think he is correct. I think, just if you listen to the Trump administration and Stephen Miller, their plan for the country is fix the country by getting rid of immigrants. Now, not just there are people who are immigrants and are considered who can stay here, but there are elements of that movement. You can log on to X and see them. Who will make fun of Vivek Ramaswamy because they don't think Indian Americans should be here. Who will make fun of Asian conservatives because they don't think should be here. Certainly make fun of black conservatives. He's trying to square up the California version of things with the nationalist version of things that says we'd be better off if we had a smaller population. Now, eventually, people who heritage Americans having more babies. That's how to fix the country. And this idea is really very old. I mean, I'd start dating back to the opponents of the 1965 Immigration Act. So let's say 60 years, the idea of what America should be. I think there were a lot of liberals who said, we all agree as Americans that diversity is our strength. And they're now in conflict with conservatives who say, no, it's not. That was a lie told to us. We need to turn the country into what it would have been if we didn't have so much immigration. And that's what he. That's what he's against. So that's. That runs through the cities. That's when. When you see criticism of cities. One thing I see online a lot is criticism of, like, Canal street in New York, which is not a multicultural crime. It's just. It's like there are some people, some are immigrants who are selling goods on the street, and you'll see criticism. That's what the Third World looks like. We shouldn't have that. Does it look like parts of New York in 1880? It kind of does.

[A]

Exactly like me. Except for in 1880, there's a lot more people on the street selling stuff.

[B]

Yes. I mean, but there is this idealized, AI created version of the past that Newsom's competing with.

[A]

Well, I mean, and to be fair, we should also say that it didn't start in the conservative movement. In 65, it started. You know, you can go back to 1920. You can go back. I mean, there is a history of this. The Political parties may have shifted, but there has been, you know, since its founding, there has been a sense of, or at least shortly after its founding, a sense that, you know, we want to have a certain purity in the. Who we consider to be actual Americans in this country. But specifically on the gerrymander, I mean, my sense of Newsom is that he's a bit of a sieve, like you say. He's reacting like he reacted very quickly to the narrative that the podcast bros. And we should be. He didn't go as far as saying, like, I'm glad we can say the R word now, but he did sort of adopt a lot of that stuff. He actually trans kids under the bus.

[C]

Had Steve Bannon on.

[A]

Yeah, I say that only because he is, in my mind, a bit of a barometer. Maybe, you know, whether he's accurate or not, I, you know, I don't know. But he certainly reacts to what he thinks is out there. And it seems to me that he's moved from if Texas does this redistricting, we're going to do it, to we're going to do it, or at least like, we're going to. We're edging up to, we're going to do it, and you do what you're going to do. And is that change? Am I imagining that change? And if that change is real, that he's moved a little, little bit on this, like, gotten more aggressive and leaned into it, is that indicative of a change within the at least strains of thinking in the Democratic Party? Because from my perspective, I welcome that. It's like, Republicans are going to do this. I think Democrats should go ahead, full steam ahead, and do the redistricting, because I think it's going to benefit Democrats in the long run because they have done less of this. They don't have to cut into safe seats to do the redistricting in the way that Republicans will. And. And I think you got to do this until Republicans find, like, it's not in their benefit, and then they'll start coming up. We need good governance.

[B]

Yeah, there's a Newsom as a figure in this. I don't want to get too far on a tangent from the gerrymandering, but I think it all comes from him wrestling with why people rejected Kamala Harris and with her California in 2024. Why did he have that podcast? You can debate how much ground he gave when he talked to Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, et cetera. My sense is that Newsom really wanted to understand, okay, what is going on on the Right. That is so attractive to people because I am a progressive Californian and I don't get it. I think we are figuring things out. I don't get why so many young people are especially into this. And he's somebody who's not that young anymore, but he's somebody who has watched, who is watching these districts, these younger, more diverse districts move to the right. Why is that? I think he was trying to figure that out. So what he's trying to do is almost, almost he's making this argument that democracy is at stake. You're not going to have the right to choose your leadership unless you vote for this gerrymandering proposal in California, the anti vote rigging proposal. And if it sounds a little bit like Democrats saying Democracy was taken 20, 24, he's saying no, seriously though, be willing, please, Californians, to pause this map that we got an independent commission to draw and draw five seats because Trump is trying to ruin the country. And it's audacious. But is it that much more audacious than a lot of Republicans talk or a lot of Republican governors talk about? Because if you guys consume some conservative media, know what's going on. If you, When I hear him talk about the threats to freedom, I, I've heard the same thing for all the governors in red states for years. Barack Obama is going to do Jade Helm and he's going to take over.

[A]

He's talking about Jade Helm today. And now literally they're doing it.

[B]

They're going to have the agents steal your guns. Covid was super, supercharged this. And, and again, to be fair, and Newsom was one of the governors. There were people who wanted to go to church and they couldn't go to church during COVID And for a lot of people who voted for Trump in 2024, that was, we need to vote for him to save our democracy from the threats of the state. That's the Kennedy version of things. Newsom is using the same sort of appeal, saying, yes, we all want to just kind of glide through life, but your freedom is at stake. It is worth voting this way because your freedom is at stake. It's a Flight 93 election. That's what I hear him doing. And when he talks about gerrymandering, he's not saying, I love gerrymandering. It's awesome. He's not saying, California deserves more seats, which is what Republicans are saying about themselves in Missouri and Indiana. Their quotes, if you see them, are just, yeah, we should have more seats. Trump wants more seats. We should get them. His argument is that, look, maybe one day you'll vote against me, but we'll never get our country back without this. We're gonna turn into Nazi Germany. And he didn't say Nazi Germany, but he talked about the 53 days. And that's a reference to Hitler consolidating power. So yeah, I said audacious before, like repeating myself. What he's doing is very audacious for a Democrat. Because even when Democrats talk about democracy. Yeah, well, even when they talk about democracy, it's more like the Biden version of folks, we need to restore our democracy, but we're not going to break the filibuster to do it.

[A]

Right.

[B]

We're going to debate this, we're going to have our GOJ get some consent decrees. But look, it'd be a bad idea to have our DOJ go after Donald Trump on January 21st. And they look at Republicans, they being Democrats, look at Republicans saying, boy, it looks like you could just take power and do stuff. And if they can do that, how do we get Democrats to feel like motivated enough to compete with them? That is what Newsom is trying to do. And I feel like the coverage, I'm not going to criticize the coverage, but he's trying to make it a bigger than partisan thing. I don't know how effective that will be. Cuz he's gonna have on the other side, not just Republicans, but the League of Women Voters in California has said it's gonna oppose this ballot measure because.

[A]

Right. I mean, this is it said in.

[B]

The LA Times like, well, la, yes, authoritarianism is happening, but we shouldn't get rid of this great reform in the meantime.

[A]

I mean, that's my point, is that like, I wonder, for a Democrat, this is a big move. This is like basically saying like, we're not going to be bound by norms right now. We're going to be, we're going to address the moment we're in and what we're actually facing and not hope that it's, you know, things cooler heads are going to prevail and I wonder if, you know, and I guess we'll find out. But he doesn't strike me as a guy who's going to go too far out on a limb unless he's, you know, somewhat confident that there's some support for this. Which I think, you know, part of the problem. You could just go back and look at like democrats, you know, 15, 20 years ago, the vast majority of voting Democrats wanted their politicians to compromise versus Republicans who did Not. And that has changed dramatically over the past 10, 15 years. And I think, you know, Newsom is reflecting that. I hope, you know, it's just the idea that the League of Women Voters is like, well, we've got the military in decent, but the important thing is that we maintain some type of like. Because if we're not an example, who will the folks in Texas follow? It's just.

[C]

Can I have a bit of a thought that it's maybe a different, I don't know, perspective on it? Because there's all this talk about how Mamdani's victory is not replicable outside of New York City. But Newsom's actions here feel a little bit more specific to California even than a broad based focus on affordability. And not just in the way that the Democratic Party talks about it, but a redistribution of wealth or taxing the rich. Like Newsom, this, this is good partisanship, but it's only made possible given the size of California and its, and its blueness. I'm just not necessarily sure without a material angle how you can paint that picture. Because the fact that he didn't really understand why Kamala Harris lost, that's a bit of a problem, right? Like we have Gilded Age levels of income and wealth inequality.

[B]

Right. But he also was thinking about what aspects of, of pluralism in California piss people off so much. And he really does listen to try to understand a lot of conservative rhetoric to see what's so popular. I'm not trying to do this Gavin Newsom mash contest. I just think he is different than some Democrats who just say that stuff's crazy and I don't want to listen to it. I want to platform it. And that has, you can see, it's like almost like in the mediocre Matrix sequels where like Agent Smith gets defeated, but then he gets the, the good Neo code. And he said he's able to compete with them. I'm not saying that's what Newsom thinks he's doing. I'm saying as somebody who watched that mediocre Matrix movies, that's what I thought. He's taking some of the tactics that he thinks is working for the right. But yeah, not relicable everywhere, obviously, that is what you're finding. And each of these states has its own rules. Democrats are learning that they kind of built up this latticework of rules to protect voters that make it harder to then take power from voters, which seems like the way they should work. When I was in Michigan a couple weeks ago and I was asking all the Democrats running for Senate there, hey, there's a nonpartisan commission in the state. Should you get rid of that? And they said they're not naive. They're saying no. Here's the thing. We would never have won back the legislature but for that commission because Republicans gerrymandered it for so long. We support what Texas Democrats are doing. We support what Newsom is doing. Each state's different. And what we want as Democrats is President Whoever in 2029 to sign an anti gerrymandering bill, which would mean getting rid of the filibuster. And that is the thing. Every Democrat I talk to want to get rid of the filibuster, but that's four years away. That doesn't solve your problems right now. This is a real fight inside liberalism, though. I was at Netroots, which maybe we'll talk more about, but that was a topic at Netroots Nation was there are lots of liberal groups and liberal donors who just still say, like, but can't we, once the backlash comes, can't we roll this back? And there are other. I'm using liberals and progressives interchangeably, but like, the liberal legal movement is what it calls itself. And there are other people in that movement saying, you guys are idiots. Like, you need to be. You need to think like a conservative in 1992 when they're writing law review articles about the executive unitary executive theory. You need to think about how you take power and do things with it. Because if you don't, we will never will. You will never get the government you want ever. Because Republicans will have pulled up all the ladders. That is a, that's a real fight happening. That's not just around these, these, these districts. But that's how it affects the, the gerrymandering fight. Because in a lot in New York, in Virginia, Democrats took power and said, we're the Democrats. We're going to have rules that you can't just rig these maps. Same thing in Colorado. And in a country where Republicans are allowed to gerrymander and do and justify by saying they want to stop Democrats from winning, how do you respond? It is not easy. I have sympathy for Democrats as they answer questions about this, especially poor Tim Walls. I see people tweeted him demanding he gerrymander when, like, there was an assassination in his state that maintained Republican control of the House. They can't gerrymander for very important reasons. But yes, people are right. The Democrats are for now. And you know, in the six in the seventies when Dixiecrats ran the whole south and made sure that black. No black members would get elected. Yeah, Democrats used to love gerrymandering and do this, the current version of the Democratic Party though they want to ban gerrymandering eventually. What does that mean for everything else they want to do? Because they don't have a plan that is let's take power and then lock it in forever. That is the Trump DeSantis plan. Take power, make it impossible for liberals to win again. How do you compete with that?

[A]

The interesting thing though is when you that while in a place like Michigan, maybe what happens in California doesn't work it with Pritzker and Newsom probably like in a, you know, pre shadow primary with each other on some level it increases the pressure on Pritzker. It seems to me to do the same in Illinois and with Hochul having to deal with Delgado and just the idea of like we're, you know, the other big blue state. It's gonna put pressure on her, I think what happens in California because all of a sudden she's gonna be measured against the that and there's going to be an indication that like it can be done. So it's going to be fascinating to see what happens with that. But let's talk about netroots. You were there. You've been going since 2007. I think I was at the. Was the first one, 2005 when it was daily code. Yeah. I spent a lot of years there. It, it is changed over the years and you write about some of those changes. Give us a sense of what's happening there. Because Emma and Matt were at the DSA convention. I don't know why this one weekend in August has to be like where, you know, anybody left of of the DNC is, is having their convention. But give me your sense of what was there and I don't know, put it contrary to 07. I think we were both there in 07. I can't remember if that one was still in Vegas or not. But what have you noticed that's happening there?

[B]

Yeah, I started to talk a little bit about it where there's this debate about how you ever get power back and networks has changed over time. It started as progressive bloggers just being online, organizing politically, donating to their candidates, wanting the Democratic Party to get better and meeting in one place to do that. So the big story out of the first it was yearly coast for two years and it was networks. Big story out of the first one was Ned Lamont's there and they say we're going to beat Joe Lieberman. And then in a primary, they beat Joe Lieberman. And it changed over time. The progressive donor space changed a lot and changes all the time. But labor wanted to fund it more. Progressive organizations wanted to fund it more. Somebody would have a $10 million grant, they'd come and they'd fund a party at Netroots. It definitely had shrunk this year, which I took as I was just taking notes of the funders from last year and this year, certainly the progressive donor space, and this has been reported mostly in the New York Times, is just a little wimpy and not sure what to do. They've been scaling back some of their funding for organizations. That's one thing that came up. A quote from one panel in my story where people at nonprofits were saying, yeah, there's donors who stopped funding us because we put out a statement on Palestine. They said, we don't want that. Wow. It's not that secret. There's a good New York magazine profile of Alex Soros where he says this about Sunrise Movement. Like, yeah, we funded Sunrise Movement. Now they talk about Palestine. What's that about? So activists are dealing with how donors who might have just cut checks before don't want to anymore. And then people who are in Democratic politics. It's all the stuff we were talking about, but also a discussion of what do you do if you're just not allowed to win? What is the strategy for winning? And some of it was, Democrats suck and they didn't have good messaging that breaches the race. Class divide. That's a common theme. That's 20 years of this in that roots of, look, if we had candidates who just explained to people how we could benefit them and how the right was screwing them and trying to divide them by race, instead of saying, you get a tax break if you get. If you started a nonprofit in three years with the Pell Grant, like, yeah, if we just were more compelling, we could win. So, you know, you're Abdullah sayed, your progressive members of Congress, like Deli Ramirez, that's kind of their. That was the message they were saying. But nobody came out of it saying, hey, we figured it out. And that was again, the big takeaway just from being there was it wasn't like a ghost town. But you could tell there are groups that used to send lots of people who have been minimized by Trump. And it's not just the donors. It is Media Matters and ActBlue have both been attacked by in Media Matters case Elon Musk and Republican attorneys general in Lawsuits meant to bankrupt them. In ActBlue, it's the DOJ trying to run ActBlue out of business because they are funding portal for Democrats. The premise is that they're not stopping secret foreign money from getting in, which would be legal if they just had a stablecoin, I guess. But it's a real problem that blue does it. And so I was surprised. Now there was some media competing. There was competition, as you said, with BSA convention, which is an overlapping story, very little media there. And I think it's just right now the left is seen as mostly like a problem for the Democratic Party. What do they do with it? This is how the Mamdani story is covered. But that's important if the organizing capacity of the left is being strung in by donors and by investigations. Look, that is a much worse and much more real version of what conservatives said was happening 10 years ago when the IRS was not giving tax status to every Tea Party group. This is happening under Republicans of trying to undermine progressive organizing. And one, it's been pretty successful. Two, some of the donors are fine with it. But that's a different story. I mean, this is a story for like a massive story that involves organizations that don't let anyone into their meetings. But the large donors saying, we're not sure what we should be funding anymore because we think progressive activists are too crazy and too focused on Gaza. That is a real. There are some Democrats who think that is good because they do not want those activists to have much of a role in the party. They do not want them to be the face of the party. They want to. That. I mean, this is Hakeem Jeffries. They want that to go away so they can talk about Medicaid. And that was clearly happening. They were not at Netroots, but that was the worry about what was happening to the party at Netroots.

[A]

It's interesting. We have a clip. Let's play this clip. It was a panel that included Keith Allison. I know you had an interview with, with Keith Allison. And they featured a clip from Derek Thompson. Derek Thompson, I guess he was at the, you know, one of the abundance corporate festivals and interviewing somebody. And this was sort of fascinating to me.

[C]

The.

[A]

Play this clip.

[B]

If we were having, if you and I. Marshall, if we were having like a debate on this stage. If you and I were like, like running in a primary. And you. And you said that, you said the far right has a story and they've won. The far left has a story. The center doesn't have a story. And that's a problem. What I would say in response to that is, yeah, stories are for children. Americans need a plan.

[A]

What that guy said is wrong.

[B]

If you're thinking about running for office.

[A]

Absolutely ignore him as aggressively as you can. But think about a story that is compelling, that anyone can understand. Because you get why I'm very pissed off about Alex Smith, right? You get why I would leave Congress to fight for Alex Smith, right? Because the story happens to be a true story.

[C]

So this is a version of your comp. That part of the debate that you had with Ezra Klein, the co author of Abundance Sam, where you said that who is the villain of your story and Ezra said that you had a difference of opinion about whether or not it was good politics, but have a villain. You know, I've seen Donald Trump single handedly change the debate about immigration in the Republican Party by having immigrants be the villain. Like when he rose to prominence, the RNC was like doing an autopsy about how they had lost to Obama with Romney and they were talking about how they need to soften their stance and reach out to Latino voters. And Trump came in and completely took a sledgehammer to it just by the power of the narrative being repeated over and over and over again. And that guy, Mr. Centrist up there wants to tell me that stories don't have power in politics. My God.

[B]

Yeah, I'm going to be boring and agree with everybody because obviously stories have power. It just when you think about how one of the things that every Democrat is now nodding and agreeing with is, hey, we can't just respond to these crime stories in D.C. with charts of crime decreasing. Okay, that sounds like if you agree on that, you agree that, for example, Donald Trump changed a lot of opinions about immigration by saying, I'm going to stand on stage with some mothers of women whose children were killed by drunk drivers who weren't citizens and say, this will happen to you if we do not close the border. Yeah, obviously stories are important. I don't get the point of insulting people's intelligence on this. Would. Do you want somebody to hear a story and then say, let me find the actual truth behind this? Sure. But you need compelling stories. This is how the media works. But it's also how I listen to not just this podcast, but you listen to conservative podcasts. And they are not saying a new study came out. They're saying, check out this crazy video. Check out this crazy person. Check out this crazy person.

[A]

TikTok kids are using kitty litter in their, in their classrooms. And I heard this from my. I mean, the amazing thing is, is that Thompson himself purports to tell a story in abundance about M and R mRNA. I mean, the story, it's not a very good story, personally, and I can understand now why, because he doesn't think that there's any value to it. But what's fascinating is, I think in that instance, I mean, I don't know what his motivation is about it, but that feels like what the Democrats are doing. I mean, you know, like what the leadership of the Democratic Party is doing. We're not going to tell a story. We're going to just wait until Donald Trump's approval rating is in the toilet and let that do all the work for us. We don't need to provide a story because that would then require a vision of what America could be. Right. I mean, aside from how just absolutely stupid the idea of, like, there should be no narrative, like a plan to do what? Well, we don't need to tell you what the plan is. Putting that aside, it's almost as if that's how the Democratic establishment functions is like, we don't need. We don't have a vision of where we're going in any way. And so best to just, like, be at the ready and deploy certain things when. When it comes. I mean, it's almost like they don't want to be responsible for an overarching narrative. And it's. I don't know. I found that fascinating. Did you think, like, you know, with the netroots thing, the most interesting thing. I mean, like, my, My recollection has been the first year after a loss, election tends to be a little bit like sort of disempowering for. For net roots and that it starts to come back when there's more sort of election activity in the second year. I mean, early on it was different because the energy was so untethered from Democratic, from, you know, like the Democratic machinations. I guess there was more sort of like an independent life for the netroots, but this idea of donors really sort of starving it, like. And is there any type of broad understanding that the same people that they're defunding because they're talking about Gaza were also the people they were relying on to get the vote out, who were also upset about Gaza, then it's a tacit admission that they were depressing the activists, if not with lack of dollars, but at least in terms of, like, what the campaign was saying about Gaza or not saying about Gaza.

[B]

Yeah. Which I wrote about the DNC is going to have its meeting end of the month. And the resolutions going around, one of them is a very soft Gaza, one that just calls for a cefire, one that will probably not pass, is calling for an arms embargo. The party is going to continue to fight about that. And it's an odd issue because if you look at the polling right now, just saying, hey, do you want your tax dollars to continue to be funding this war that you don't quite know why is not over yet. Most people say no, but everything's around Gaza. It's more that. And this has happened throughout the liberal space. I hate that word, but liberal spaces, basically there has been this conflict between older and more, not even more conservative, just older liberals who fund organizations and younger progressives who've come into the organizations where the younger progressives have different ideas about intersectionality, different ideas about Gaza, different ideas about even gender. And there has been a blame game you can very well covered in the New York Times because the Times is one of the organs I think that enforces this saying, those guys wrecked it for us. Those guys are the ones who are wrecking the movement because they have ideas that are unpopular and they're alienating. The party was in better shape when we, when the people in the room were labor leaders who didn't care about this stuff and even the labor leaders we have. This is Democrats talk themselves. In my fantasy monologue. If Randi Weingarten and her ideas appeal more to the people we have already, the liberals in Takoma park and Berkeley, we need those people who come from Northeast Ohio, how come we lost them? Well, part of the reason is because of these crazy progressives coming in. And you've seen this even in the fight over universities and them paying out settlements, the administration. You start to see some academics publish essays saying, look, can we just cut bait and like saw off the humanities people because they suck and I want my funding and I'm tired of them. And you have to give Trump his role in this. Trump is on his in his first term because I think, I don't think, I know Even when the popular vote Democrats said this is an aberration, this is a more progressive and diverse country that did not want him to be president. And politics moved to the left with all the same people. I'm just talking about moving in tandem. There was not this disagreement from the Democracy alliance donors and the young progressives. That's why you saw like NARAL and Planned Parenthood, et cetera, saying, yes, we support to fund the police in the second Trump term, you now have these people and what's the popular vote? 49.9% win because he won the popular vote. There is this sense of that they have lost the country. This is several elections now of being unable to win places like northeast Ohio. And those donors saying, we gotta do something about these young progressives because they're so alienating. And Republicans get that in lieu of Democratic leadership that people know and respect and think are good, the Democrat leadership assigned by Republicans every week is like the craziest liberal they can find online. And that was the entire Sydney Sweeney discourse was just, there are some people on TikTok and some columnists for liberal websites who have this opinion. That's the Democratic Party. And after that it was, there are sorority girls dancing. There might be some liberals who are against this. That's the Democratic Party. How do Democrats get this electoral coalition that's not identified with that? That's where Republicans think they've got progressives over the barrel is you guys can't do that. We can build on the right a coalition of conservative Latino dads and white evangelicals and Free Press subscribers who hate liberalism. And you guys can't put a coalition together of conservative union members and Berkeley gender studies majors. You can't. So we're going to keep blowing it up. What's the response in the left? They have no idea what to do. They're progressively say, the thing we do is build solidarity and remind people that it should not matter to you if a school has a gender policy you don't like somewhere else. Meanwhile, that your tax dollars are being redirected to Peter thiel and your 401k is being put in private equity or in crypto. They're distracting you. That's a message the Democrats are happy making. But there is that view there that we need to do something so people don't think Democrat and then think some annoying college student. And that's. That's basically. Imagine a world where there is no conservative media. I don't think you get that conservatives had a version of, I wouldn't say this problem, but let's like, let's stimulate. Since Elon bought X, there's a lot of more very far right content on X that if you showed it to a swing voter, they might say that's pretty gross. Like for the stuff we were talking about before of people fantasizing about how great it would be to deport Vivek Ramaswamy and give his house to Americans who fought, whose family fought in the Civil war that's probably not that popular around the country. Why are they not forced to own that with swing voters? That's an interesting question that no one has figured out an answer to. And I've seen Chris Hayes ask this. How come JD Vance does not have to answer for some opinion he follows and every Democrats to answer for some random person on TikTok? It's not a rhetorical question. I think that is one part of it is the anti woke backlash means just less interest in saying you won't believe what this Republican said. I mean Trump exists, you'll believe what they said. You'll believe somebody said this on Twitter. But why is that political movement, which is not a majority movement, which if you went down to South Texas and showed that a few persons have voted to Trump, hey, here's a guy who thinks you're not really human, they might not agree with that, but how come they are not supposed to, they don't own them too. I heard a little bit of that at Netroots. But there is a fatigue because people voted for Trump last time. He has run three times and gotten more votes each time. There's just this punch drunk attitude. Okay, maybe much of the country will put up with stuff that we think is anathema to democracy, is authoritarian, is racist. If they will, then what do we do?

[C]

It's really put the answer's in their face. Right? Like, I mean this is what's frustrating about this guy. Conversation is an overarching vision about a working class coalition and it's about improving people's standard of living by taxing the rich. That's the answer that cuts across everything you're saying and gets a, gets ahead of the whatever aesthetic cultural elitism that they're trying to harness. And like I'll give you credit Dave, you were much more bullish on Trump winning or having a really good shot than I was. And I was wrong about Harris winning. So I defer to you on some of this stuff. Like you know, that could cut across some of the, that squishiness that you're talking about.

[B]

Well, at the same time, sorry I've been interrupted. Also Trump, if he was running as Mitt Romney and saying and I'll cut Social Security, I don't think any of this would work. You need him to do that. Sam. Sorry, interrupt you.

[A]

Yeah, no, no, but I, I, I'm curious about that question because I think part of the answer is the, the nominal left, left of center has less resources to do that now I think than it has probably at any time in the past 15 years.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like you mentioned, Media Matters is gone. They were a juggernaut. CAP is a shell of what it was. They basically jettisoned everybody from that organization, I don't know, five years ago, who.

[C]

They just hired Antony Blinken. So they're not gonna embrace the pro Palestine energy.

[A]

It's always been, you know, it was developed as a sort of like a Clinton in exile, but they had a lot of progressives there. I mean, Fash was there, Siroto was there. I mean, people came out that operation, and we're putting out content. And, you know, I mean, I remember 10, 15 years ago, you know, if you would talk about a lawmaker in the Iowa legislature, a Republican who had some crazy idea, people like, what are you doing? That's ridiculous. Meanwhile, they could look at one person at a protest on the right and say, like, look at the Democrats. They're, you know, they're. They're wearing stilts. And so this dynamic is sort of like built in, I think, to the nature, on some level, of the difference between the way society is set up, at least since probably the 60s, where hippie punching still echoes on some level, and we still have a Democratic Party that is defined by that attitude on some level where they feel a certain defensiveness. I think the Gaza stuff has sort of like, has cleaved the Democratic leadership and establishment from much of the party, it seems to me. And that, I think, is another problem. But what do you think? I mean, aside from, like, the loss of resources, Cap Media Matters. I think having a social media, like having Twitter owned by Elon Musk at this point, particularly when we don't have blogs in the way that we do, we have this consolidation by Instagram and Facebook in a way that we didn't when it was yearly codes or Netroots Nation. Early on, things were far more, you know, small D Democratic and populist just in terms of the media. And we just don't have a similar dynamic to that. Maybe the shows like this somewhat replace it, but not exactly. What is your sense if it doesn't include those things? As to why Democrats are in the defensive mode, aside from the fact, I think Emma's point is, you know, well taken. You need to have a positive agenda or an aggressive agenda or a proactive agenda. The best offense is a good defense.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I mean, they attacked Kerry for being. For what his strength was. But, but, but aside from that, taking these individual moments, and there's plenty of them, maybe there's too many but in blowing them up, I mean Epstein is the only thing that's happened like that. And that's not such a small thing. And it was only on the map because of the right.

[B]

It was. That's. That. That's. You identified something about the Epstein story which was that in the current configuration of the parties, this is. I think somebody called this the crank gap. It might have. Might have been Matt Iglesias because he likes to coin terms, but you used to have a disaggregation of people who didn't trust the government. And frankly, just talking about media, I've been listening to not just a lot of podcasts, but a lot of old podcasts. And I'll listen to a podcast from 2009 or 10 or 14 and you'll find a guest on that who I checked their writing since then and they. In 2010, 14 were at Bush sucks. The Republicans are trying to destroy the country from within the Department of Homeland Security, the masses, etc. You look at the writing in 2025 and they're like, Trump's amazing. He's blowing up the deep state. We need to find out what happened to Russiagate. There is a roving, not even that political anti establishment view that I think Democrats have not lost. Like they weren't trying to hold onto it. Just as the parties changed, they became a more evidence based, Norm's loving party and they didn't hold on to those people and Covid sped that up. So that's.

[C]

Well, I'd argue that was deliberate, Dave. Right. In the pursuing of suburban Republicans as a way to change the constituency of the party, which Chuck Schumer said since 2016, they were deliberately doing that jettisoned critique of the government and as conspiracism, which I think really is alienating to folks who aren't well off or older boomers and have a more a difficult relationship with the government when you can't talk about dark things like Epstein. I mean Democrats feel very uncomfortable using that kind of conspiracies against Trump. Sorry to cut you off.

[B]

No, no, no, let's have some back and forth. That's fine. I think that. But it was interesting because it was so unnatural to them. Whereas something that's totally forgotten politically these days is 2006. The Bush administration is making a deal over ports management with a company from Dubai and Chuck Schumer leads the charge in saying that's terrible. We can't have this Arab country running our ports. And just Democrats wouldn't do that anymore. They wouldn't say, hey, we're all in on a conspiracy theory that the color of skin and the funding of these guys is a national security threat. Yeah, they just don't do that anymore. They have become a more let's defend America with facts and reason party, which I don't. I'm not saying even is bad, but the discourse, the conversation that sometimes is, who would Bill Hicks be voting for now? That's what I mean is I just feel there's sort of a I don't trust these, these frauds in power mindset that is now entirely, entirely Republican. And there's a lot of organically popular media that has that mindset. That's the Joe Rogan thing. What would it. You've seen some Democrats go on Joe Rogan and he doesn't really push them on that stuff. When they've been successful, your John Fetterman's and your James Talaricos and Republicans are successful. That's why they got bit is because Cash Patel will go on Rogan show and say he's got all this information that he won't release it. That's been losing those people. But I'm thinking the audience of those people, the people who were floating between the parties before and always hated George W. Bush, I wrote about them in 2016. I was finding these ex. These people had voted for Ron Paul, then were voting for Bernie Sanders. I've always been interested in that kind of voter. That consumer is very important and this is one fractal of what we're talking about. But that media just. Yeah, Democrats are not seen as credible because they were the party that in 2020 was saying stay at home to avoid the spread. And I think that hangover is gonna last for people for a while. How come Trump gets away with it? I have no idea. That's a complicated question. He's made people forget he was president during all that. He's just overcorrected by destroying vaccine research, I guess. So what did Democrats do in this, in this media? It's. I feel like it. Part of it is funding. So it's not like. And Charlie Kirk's media network, the TP Turning Point Network. It's very successful, but it involved lots of startup capital over many years.

[A]

Same with Daily Wire.

[B]

Very seriously. Oh yeah, Daily Wire, same thing. Which. Which has made a ton of mistakes and lost it lost its CEO over them over investing in a bunch of media products that didn't work. But it didn't go like. It didn't get shut down. Like. Like think progress got shut down and so one thing I'm glad this ties what I was saying before because I was worried. I was into rambling. Yeah. Progressive donors, I think, need to be ready for some stuff to bloom that they don't like, because on the right that happens. There are conversations that happen on right wing media funded very well by large conservative donors that are not helpful for Republicans that day. And it doesn't matter because people stay organically interested in it. And sometimes they're talking about that stuff and it catches fire and Republicans do it. This is the entire politics of the gender issue. This was something that was lighting up conservative talk radio podcasts for years. And Republicans were saying this. We lost all these elections over the bathroom bill in 2016. Shut up. This is not a winning issue. As soon as Trump wins, one issue wins the election. Every Republican ad this year, not every ad, but every Republican campaign I've seen this year that has money is spending on gender stuff. So they are willing to have media figure something out and then chase after it because media proved that it was popular. I don't think liberals are in that same space. They don't like seeing liberal commentators say the Democratic Party sucks. And it's like you have to get over it. Like just. It helps. Like Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell who are not popular. Well, Johnson more so. But Mitch McConnell's like gotten everything he ever wanted and he never was popular on conservative media. It just helped. The conservative media was popular so they kept winning elections.

[A]

Yeah, that's a great point. Dave Weigel, author, journalist, Semaphore Newsletter. We will link to that newsletter at Semaphore. Dave, always a pleasure. Really appreciate.

[B]

Was great. Thanks for this conversation. I really had fun.

[A]

Thanks.

[C]

Thanks, Dave.

[A]

All right, folks, I think it's time to head to the fun half of the program.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Wherein we will take.

[C]

Dave was still on here, sticking around.

[A]

I hope he knows that that was not specific to him. That's the branding that we use. Yeah, I always worry about that. I always worry about that. I always try and make sure that the guest is off. They don't hear us saying that.

[C]

Yeah. Now for the fun part of the show.

[A]

Sorry about some cbd. Yeah, yeah, sorry. I always take your medicine.

[C]

I like talking to Dave because first of all, it challenges some of my preconceived notions and he does is on the ground all the time at all of these events. I mean, I don't know if anybody has more continental US Travel miles than Dave Weigel. So he knows what's up. He has his ear to the ground. And that's what I appreciate about our talks.

[A]

He also we should say was I think back in 07, maybe before then sort of a little libertariany. I think in terms of like he came out of that media and sometimes that perspective is very, very helpful. You saw that with like what's her face Collins too. Having a sense of where these people are is sometimes helpful, particularly in the context of just reporting and being able to know what it is you're observing in many respects. So very helpful. With all that said, we're going to head to the fun half and it's your support that keeps this show alive and thriving, aliving and thriving. You can become a [e-mail] when you do, you know, only get the free show, free of commercials, but you also get the fun half. Also. Don't forget just coffee co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate, use the coupon code. Majority get 10% off. You can buy the majority port blend. They have all sorts of blends. They have single origin. Great, great coffee and a great progressive co op in Madison, Wisconsin. Matt Left Reckoning. Left reckoning. What is it? Refining. Yeah, we had a good show at a good show. Seth Harp on talking about his excellent, excellent new book, the Fort Bragg Cartel. Have you been hearing about all the murders and deaths, like hundreds of deaths going on at Fort Bragg and been curious about what's going on there. Well, it turns out that it's a pretty familiar story about narco trafficking, conspiracies and lawlessness in the armed forces. A really amazing book and everyone should check out the interview. Patreon.com left reckoning. But that was out last Tuesday. Ronald Reagan is reminding me that we used to call it at one point the better half. But Ken Burns was still on the line when I had said that we were going into the better half. And then I felt bad because the look on his face when we went into that second half of the show. Then I just started calling it the fun half. But that's also. Who wants to HEAR that they're 18 hour documentary. Exactly. Well, he canceled the one that he was planning on me because of that. Yeah. He couldn't have been on video. What do you mean?

[B]

This.

[A]

I've never heard this Ken Burns story before. Oh yeah, no, I think this was, this was like back in like 20, 2013, I think. Right. But he was on the phone. You could tell that he was put out by calling it the better half. No, I think maybe we did have. We didn't use video, but we would connect video wise. Huh? Okay. I'm not sure. Interesting. Maybe it was the phone. Maybe he was still on. I don't know. I don't remember. I think Ken was probably okay, but that's just me. We'll see. All right, we gotta take a quick break. We'll see you in the other place. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's gonna be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily gonna be better six months from now than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're gonna look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for. Hold on for a second. Emma. Welcome to the program.

[B]

Matt.

[A]

What is up, everyone? No me ke.

[B]

You did it. Fun path.

[C]

Let's go, Brandon.

[B]

Let's go, Brandon. Fun path.

[A]

Bradley, you want to say hello?

[B]

Sorry to disappoint everyone.

[A]

I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.

[C]

Fundamentally false. No. I'm sorry.

[B]

Women.

[A]

Stop talking for a second. Let me finish.

[B]

Where is this coming from?

[C]

Dude?

[A]

But. Dude, you want to smoke this cinnamon?

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Hi.

[B]

Me?

[A]

Yes. Is this me? Is it me? It is you. It's me.

[B]

Hello? It's me.

[A]

I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?

[B]

Sports.

[A]

We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm gonna go to libertarians. They're so stupid. Though common sense says. Of course.

[C]

Gobbledygook.

[A]

We nailed him.

[C]

So what's 79, 21.

[A]

Challenge.

[B]

Man, I'm positively quivering.

[A]

I believe 96. I want to say 857. 210, 35. 501, 1/2. 3, 8, 9, 11.

[B]

For instance.

[C]

$3,400. $1,900.

[A]

54. $3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game.

[C]

Actually. You're making me think less.

[B]

But.

[A]

But let me say this poop. Call it satire.

[B]

Sam goes to satire. On top of it all. My favorite part about you is just.

[C]

Like every day, all day, like everything you do.

[A]

Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right, folks, folks, folks.

[C]

It's just the week being weeded out. Obviously.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Sun's out, guns out. I. I don't know. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares?

[B]

Our chat is enabled.

[A]

I love it.

[C]

I do love that.

[A]

Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump.

[B]

I'm losing it, bro.

[A]

Two o', clock, we're already late, and the guy's being the dick. So screw them. Sent to a gulag.

[C]

Outrageous.

[A]

Like, what is wrong with you? Love you.

[B]

Bye.

[A]

Love you.

[B]

Bye.

[A]

Bye.