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The Realignment
565 | Daniel Squadron: Rebuilding American Liberalism from the States Up
00:59:58
Daniel Squadron, former New York legislator and Co-Founder of the States Forum, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Daniel discuss why the center-left and the Democratic Party lack the kind of coherent worldview of the MAGA right, why real political power and the opportunity to build and test new ideas lies in the states, not just D.C., the importance of ideas vs. "messaging," and the case for centering the themes of representative democracy, fair markets, effective government, and personal freedom at the center of the left-liberal project.
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Transcript26 lines
- [00:00]
A
Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment. Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. So quick news about the show. In case you missed last week's episode, today marks the first realignment since I left the foundation for American Innovation. Once again, huge thanks to FAI for supporting the realignment for the past five years. Next month I will be taking the realignment to the Niskanen center, where I've been increasingly featuring Niskanin's work, and I am super psyched for everything we're going to do there. Onto today's episode, I'm speaking with Daniel Squadron, a former New York State legislator and co founder of the States Forum, which is a new project focused on rebuilding the Democratic Party from the state level rather than DC Up. I have been really interested in the ways that I believe this post2024 moment is just like the Republican party situation post2012 election. The way I kind of saw this moment is that the 2013 through 2015 period before Trump was all about the Republican Party recognizing that the Mitt Romney version of the party had reached its strongest possible position and had no future. That then led to a realignment moment where you had Trump and the populist right lead after 2024. Given the fact that Trump was able to win not just the Electoral College obviously, but also the popular vote, American liberalism and the Democratic Party broadly faced their own similar moment now that the realignment has come for their party as well too. So on this show over the past few weeks and for the foreseeable future, I'll be platforming a lot of the folks who are working in this rebuilding in the wilderness space. Daniel's new Staceforum initiative kicked off in Philadelphia earlier last month, and what's so interesting about their group is that they are not focused as much on the poll testing and the messaging and the pure popularity contest aspects of politics. They're focused more on the ideas side. It's early days, but I just think centering the conversation on what can you actually do at the state level to build something that will lead to that next stage is just such a critical next step that people may miss in the nuance of all the different groups that are going around right now getting New York Times profile. So I've linked an op ed that Daniel wrote and a New York Times piece on the state's Forum and will be really interested in hearing what folks think about all of this. Hope you all enjoy the conversation. Daniel Squadron, welcome to the Realignment.
- [02:27]
B
Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.
- [02:29]
A
I'm Very excited to speak with you. We've got a lot of great show notes for folks talking about the work that you're doing with the States Forum and the States Forum journal specifically. But how about we just kick off there? Can you introduce the States Forum along with your background and what led you there?
- [02:46]
B
Sure. I'll start by saying your listeners may all turn it off when I say I'm really, really interested in nearly obsessed with state legislatures. I was a former state lawmaker, Adam Pritzker and I eight years ago founded something called the States Project, which works with state lawmakers in office. And the States Forum really comes out of things we've learned doing that work. There is little to no national conversation happening that is completely focused on state policy, even while states, especially in this moment. But I'd say over the last 15 or 17 years have done more harm or good than Congress has on almost every issue. And you even see it with, with big federal issues, whether the IRA or Obamacare even they their reality is so heavily defined by states. And so that conversation on state policy is critical. And if you're going to have a forum thing I've learned through a career in politics and government, you have to know who you are and why you're there, which is I think a conversation that often we just completely skip over. So the State Forum is a national conversation on state policy based on core American values. The idea that it's self evident that we are all created equal, that we all have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that government does secure those rights and requires the consent of the governed. That's representative democracy. It's personal freedom, it's fair markets and its effective government. And the state's forum is a conversation starting there.
- [04:36]
A
I have to ask you about this. I'll go a little ahead in the script, but I spent a lot of time on the realignment right in the post2016 era. And when you wrote this great piece sort of announcing the work that you're doing, you pointed out that if you look at the polls and the surveys and you ask voters what Republicans tend to stand for, they would give the answers of small government, low taxes, strong defense, tough on crime, protecting traditional values, and the opposition to wokeness broadly. And I think the question for you though would be if you look at the principles that I just articulated there, it's pretty easy to see and you write about this, how that leads you to building a wall, the Muslim ban, draining the swamp as a narrative, it's going to be A little difficult, given the principles you've just outlined from sort of your state centric perspective to have like an immediate, addressable and just clear slogan that both has its high because there's like a highbrow version of Build the Wall and there's a lowbrow version. I think that's why it's a good slogan. So how do you make the principles you just started off by listing as discernible and almost sort of organic feeling as the Republican ones you list?
- [05:47]
B
Well, look, let's take personal freedom. I think that you could take a hot button issue like reproductive rights and say, what government just, just shouldn't be involved in those sorts of issues of people's personal family conscience and bedroom. You could take it with, you know, over incarceration for marijuana, where it's just, you know, massive limitations on people's personal freedom without a public, sufficient public interest in it. You could also take it, though, to the culture of the cancel culture, as it's sometimes been called. And you know, the culture that relatively minor arms, even if they hurt personally, somehow being unacceptable in the civic space. And that that idea is really counter to the idea of personal freedom if you, if you start from that promise in the declaration that has sort of ran throughout our history and has sort of ever expanded its understanding. So, you know, I actually think those are pretty salient, like, stay out of my bedroom, like, let me raise my family. You know, maybe we want to tax some sins a little bit, but unless the harm is really severe, we should let it occur. And speech and association shouldn't be policed in ways that risk your ability to participate in the public square. Now, it's not a slogan, and I do not sit here claiming to be a sloganeer. I'm the person who's hired political consultants. I was briefly one, but it, it was probably my least favorite job of my entire career. I think when you get to things like slogans, you know, make America great again, let's remember, even the great marketer Donald Trump didn't write that slogan. He just adopted it from Ronald Reagan. Slogans can actually be hard. What I would say is that slogans are impassable if you don't know who you are and why you're here. I guess I'm going to keep quoting Admiral Stockdale throughout this Congress. And when, you know, we know this from 2016, we know the Clinton campaign. In fact, like, what was the Clinton campaign slogan in 2016?
- [07:50]
A
Wasn't I'm with her.
- [07:52]
B
Maybe I think it was also better together. I Think there were a few, like there was an article written that there were hundreds that were focused, certainly dozens or even in 2024. You know, I think it's much harder to think of what the, the slogan was. Obviously that was a short and difficult campaign for lots of reasons. We know Donald Trump's slogan make America Great again. We still remember iconic policies from like George Bush's reelection, hot taxes, war in Iraq, no gay marriage back then. And so I do think that having these principles doesn't write a slogan, but it does define what a slogan would be. Representative democracy is a pretty clear idea compared to January 6th or compared to some of the rhetoric that was coming out of Doge. Effective government is a pretty regular language type idea for a lot of the exciting abundance and effective government, excuse me, of state capacity ideas that you see Bear markets is pretty clear. Right to repair is a thing that folks should have. Junk fees are things we should are things we should track down on. I do think that when you look at what's happening, especially in the left center Democratic Party firmament and you say what are these fights we're having? And which, which gang am I a member of? Am I an anti monopolist? Am I abundance? Am I, you know, you know, sex utopian or a Luddite, you know, afraid of it? The gangs don't actually make sense relative to core principles that lend themselves to slogans. They're more sort of intellectual, almost single issue debates that then we replace core values conversation on rather than returning to the core values.
- [09:42]
A
I think something I'd be, it's not even a quibble with the way you articulated the Republican side of things, but I think it just sort of gives a little more nuance to it, which is if I think the Republican Party, if I think of Democrats versus Republicans, an advantage the Republican Party has and that MAGA specifically has, is that whether it's Make America Great Again, Trump conservatism or even like pre2015 conservatism, those are ideological worldviews and sets of ideas that exist outside of the Republican Party. And ultimately the Republican Party only exists to advance those sets of ideas. So that's why Donald Trump, being good at politics in a very specific sense, understands that if he had his like Reform Party era 2000s critique of the Republican Party, he didn't need to do a third party run that wouldn't work. He could just take the set of ideas that were embodied under MAGA ism and then like take over that husk of the late stage. 2010's Republican Party. And I think of. So when you just say these are Republican principles, I say they're conservative principles, which is a critical distinction as well too. Because the idea of there being a conservative movement outside of a party is very helpful in era when no one likes political parties. So I just love you to sort of like, I just, it's just like I'd rather sleep on the left and the right. It's just interesting to me that when I talk to conservatives, they refer to themselves as conservatives, and then when I talk to Democrats, they refer to themselves as Democrats. And I think that's a fundamental advantage that the right has over people trying to think about these moments.
- [11:20]
B
No question. You ask someone who identifies, you know, who's a Republican activist, professional, and you say, what do you believe in? And they start talking about ideology. You ask a traditional Democrat what they believe in and they start talking about a single issue they care deeply about and sincerely. But a single issue, not an ideology. I actually couldn't agree more. And so I think it's, it's certainly both, it's certainly equivalent with how working you speak may also be a substantive one, but it's also not an organic just fact that the Republican Party is a coalition of ideologies and the Democratic Party is the coalition of basically single issue advocacy or single issue commitment, by the way. I think that's certainly true. Right. You know, you can, you, you know the ideologies, and they all have a foundation on the Republican side. Right. Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is the bible for some of the Republicans. Bible as a guide to governing is for others and you know, what government should do. Those are really clear ideological ideas. I would say that dangerously blood and soil, which is a deep and dangerous concept, is very much the ideology that you see behind a lot of maga. On the Democratic side, we know our issues. Reproductive rights, climate, democracy, all important things. But organized labor, really important thing. So, but I, but that's happened almost by a decision from a few people. In the early 1970s, a guy named Paul Weyrich was. He'd worked for Barry Goldwater. He lived in Washington D.C. he was an aide for a U.S. senator, and he actually sat in the Civil Rights coalition meeting as an aide for a Republican senator. Because in those days, ideology and a party didn't define outcome on every single issue. And he thought this is a real movement based on beliefs that can organize civil society and elected officials and donors altogether. And those days he said, we don't have that on the Republican side. He was Very upset about Barry Goldwater's very upset about the Great Society and civil rights bills of Lyndon Johnson era. But you know what he was most upset about? He talked about this later in life. Vatican ii, the modernization of the Catholic Church. He in fact left the mainline Roman Catholic Church for an Eastern Catholic Church because the modernization. So he's living in this world, sort of moving away from. He gets the chorus family to give him some funding and starts the Heritage foundation as an ideological counterpoint to the American Enterprise Institute and to Brookings. And he also starts, or essentially starts alec, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is focused on states and building a network of state lawmakers on an ideological foundation because he knows that if he's going to change the Republican Party, he needs ideas in Washington and he needs ideas around the country. And the best way to do that is state lawmakers. That was an ideological idea behind the Heritage foundation, which of course, Rover Project 2025. The Kochs, at the same time, the Koch brothers in the 1970s were not Republicans to your point. They were libertarians. They started the Cato institute in the mid-70s and one of them ran as the vice presidential nominee against Ronald Reagan's ticket in 1980. Imagine that, the Cokes, because it was an ideological libertarian idea. Those, especially those folks. And then what I would say is what was left over the John Burke Society and the constant in our country's history of the blood and soil super minority. But, but, you know, real strand of folks in this country, those three ideological ideas reformed, recreated the Republican Party as a coalition of ideologies. And that just hasn't happened with the Democratic Party. And so, you know, as I, as I started when I asked Democrats, what do you believe? They don't think about it. And look, let's be honest. I think there are a couple of different ideologies that make up the Democratic Party intent, but many of us don't even know where we are. I was describing a, you know, I think a form of really aggressive American liberalism. When I talk about representative democracy, accepting government, fair markets and personal freedom. When I talk about building on that promise of the Declaration in the ways that Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, the suffragists, Martin Luther King and Barack Obama all did. I also do think that there's a strain that we see in this country that's much more skeptical of those ideas and that, you know, thinks that, that there is a power struggle between those with power and those without it, those who oppress and those who are oppressed, and that individualism doesn't have as much of a role to play in that. And I think there's a coalition now in the Trump era who, you know, feel like they are basically in. They're certainly aggressively into liberal democracy, but not to the idea that government has much more roles to play in it. And I actually think those are three different belief systems that are making up the current Democratic coalition. But it's dangerous to even acknowledge it, must much less to define it, and then say, look, we disagree and we want to be in coalition with each other the way theocrats, libertarians, and Christian nationalists are in coalition to make up. Yeah.
- [16:54]
A
And the way that the right would describe the Dynamics since the 1980s. Well, separately, the history here is key, and obviously you know it as well, too. So this is also for the listeners. But, you know, 1950s, when you have early National Review, you have this idea of fusionism because you had the John Birchers, but you also had the aggressive cold warriors, and you had the folks who still hadn't gotten over the New Deal and the right just at an intellectual level, put a lot of thought into how does this fuse into something coherent. Obviously, Barry Goldwater is an initial effort at that, but as George Wool put it 16 years later, obviously you get the 1980 Ronald Reagan win. That's probably not the timeline you're trying to operate on here. But the point is, eventually that comes together, and then you have sort of the three stools of the Republican Party. You have the social conservatives, the fiscal conservatives, and then the social conservatives. I would love to hear from you why things don't work like this on the Democratic Party side. And the quick anecdote, I'll tell you if it builds on your theme of focusing on states. I was talking to a buddy of mine who is an elected official in a state legislature, and we were talking about the Democratic party after the 2024 election. And I just sort of said, like, I feel as if what's missing here, and I think you and I are simpatico on this, is just this broader worldview question. Once again, worldview is something that's transmitted via a political party that's something inherently different. And I sort of talking about how it just seems like left liberalism broadly doesn't really have anything to say about a lot of the big issues, where even if you agree or disagree with MAGA or whatever Trump is doing in Washington, there is a worldview, and it's a serious worldview in it. You could just, what's like you say in your. Your essay, you just take build the Wall Ban Muslims and drain the swamp. I could actually, we could write a whole book just drawing where that takes things. And left liberalism has no equivalent. And he just said, that just seems a little academic to me. That just seems a little, just like nutsh. And that was just so helpful coming from the right because I was just thinking, like, I totally get in terms of the way Democrats talk about the party and policy, why that seems academic. But on the right, you could be a low brow Rush Limbaugh listener and you could say what conservatism is. You could be a highbrow academic getting your PhD and you could talk about what conservatism is. So why do you think this dichotomy between the right and the left exists? Because once you see, once you hear it, you just see it everywhere.
- [19:15]
B
So I think that's a big challenge and it's just very exciting to be taken to the outer limits of this argument. But there's a couple of pieces of it that I think are important. One is if you go back and look at what the Cato Institute was saying in the 1970s or what Paul Weyrich was arguing, even in the 1980s, it was not nearly as tight and compelling. You have really two generations of brilliant political operatives, including, by the way, Rush Limbaugh, who, you know, are popularizers of this idea. So I think there is, but there's a second thing. Let's talk about that, that 16 year, that, that 16 year periods in Goldwater, Reagan that you talked about, or to your point, because even though Eisenhower was president, certainly conservatives were, were out of power even in, you know, from the 30s onward. There's one nice thing about the wilderness, gives you a lot of time to think. And I do think that that is an important stage in defining a political movement. I also think in America, one political party is, or one political movement is never fully in the wilderness because of our federated system, because of the states. And so if we really. That's why that period is so interesting to me, because I feel like, I actually feel like American liberalism, the American promise, has been in the wilderness for seven or eight years now. It felt like weak tea as the Trump moment was coming up. Folks who felt disappointed by some of what they saw with the hope of the Obama years, you know, who assumed a single election would change everything that had ever occurred ever, which of course was never going to be true. But that led to some, some disappointment. You know, for folks, I think that combination meant that even among, in the Democratic Party, the idea of a muscular Liberalism found itself more in the wilderness. And then of course, today in Washington, D.C. where I would say, though, that you don't need to just wander in the wilderness and think, though it's helpful, you also can test things out. And not just test things out, but improve lives in states during that period. So if you actually look back and dig under the hood and what was happening in some states in the 1950s, of course it's. It's not a quiet or hidden story that a lot of states were anything other than liberal, were much more deeply blood and soil with de jure segregation than anything we have in this country today. Even in that period where that sort of liberal New Deal mindset was dominant in national politics, or you look at some of what states were starting to do in the 1970s that presaged the Reagan revolution, and there was a lot of that happening even while you had. Gerald Ford was not an ideologically, you know, an ideologically predictably conservative Republican president. And so I think that's the period we're in. We need to be doing that thinking because we're in the wilderness relative to the White House and Congress and the Supreme Court. And we need to be acting to both learn and prove to as many Americans as we can that this is real. The final thing I'd say is I actually think that the ideas of representative democracy, like your vote matters and everyone should get in the chat to participate. The idea of, say, our markets that, like, yeah, we are a market system, that has worked really well for us, but if you have no chance in it, if you're, if you're pushed out of it because of thieves or consolidation, that stinks. That's not okay. The idea of affected government that, you know, you can reopen i95 in 12 days if you have insist on that and nothing else Governor Shapiro did in Pennsylvania and the idea of personal freedom, which is a deeply American idea, that actually the real issue here is how much we can allow everyone else to live their best life as much as possible, are pretty appealing ideas. They're not quite Rush Limbaugh red meat. They're not quite build the wall or ban Muslims. It is certainly true that a liberal tradition doesn't have the benefit of being an extremist tradition. And therefore you can just throw anyone overboard anytime it, you know, makes a bigger splash, but they get close to something that isn't a conversation, you know, we would have and one of the authors of the Incredible Library behind you and become a thing that you could imagine at least talking about around The Thanksgiving table.
- [24:06]
A
Yeah. And because you shouted out the library, I have to shout out the publishers of America who send me free books every week to feature on the podcast. So it's always fun to shout that out. So I will say so a couple of things. So number one, and this is why I think the focus on the states is so fascinating. So like, even within that, you know, 1964 to 1980 period, we're talking about, you did have in the states little previews of what was coming, the California tax of roll in the late 1970s. That is a preview of this Ronald Reagan tax cutting conservatism, you know, before, you know, back to Reagan again. Like Reagan's cracking down on campus protesters and starting higher education fights before Nixon's even president. So we just only focus on the DC version of the story. You'll just miss all these little things that tend to bubble up. And then another thing, because I really think your point about how it's not, I wasn't being unfair when I did this, but like, if you compare democrats, you know, six months into 2025 with the 30 year story of how the right's ideological reality, like, emerged after plenty of defeats. Right. So after the Carter loss, after Watergate, after all these different things, that should really be noted. But I do think something that you've done with your organ, and this actually kicked off the article that I cite in the show notes, you just really pushed back on the idea that this is all about a messaging problem. Because I think when I hear people talk about messaging, I'm not trying to be offensive to anyone. I know some of you are listeners. But the more you talk that way, that's an example of what I mean. When you only think of ideology and ideas and politics through the lens of a political party, if you are the type of person who works in a congressional office or at the DNC or the rnc, you talk about politics in terms of messaging. You're just a little gapped from, I think some of these dynamics which you've done, which, which if you're rooted in ideas like you're just not going to think that way or if you're more focused on the ground. And I think a great example of this would be, and I'd love to hear some sort of leading edge ideas that are deeper than just like messaging. So for example, let's talk about the young man thing. So you could say to yourself, wow, Joe Biden attempted to pursue student debt forgiveness. And regardless of the merits of the policy, that wasn't A political win in the way the administration and a lot of people who advance the sort of progressive policies thought it would be. Maybe there's a serious project over the next years of like how do we message or better articulate this? How do we run the focus groups? When me being a person who's centered in ideas, I think of that as just. Well, actually it just turns out that there's just like a whole portion of the rising electorate that Dems are doing increasingly worse with who just a aren't interested in the sort of college for all model. Because if we look at sort of post 1990s, what, what's our theory of the case? Like what's a big idea? When it came to sort of Democratic politicians, they would basically say globalization's happening. You have the Internet, you have technology. The world isn't the same where we lived in. It's not the 1950s anymore. You're not going to go work at a factory. So our solution to that is people are going to go to college. They're going to go to college the way people went to high school in the early 1910s when they left the farm. And that is going to be the way that we advance this. Making forwards and a. At a policy level I think we've seen huge gaps in that actually working or not. And all of the debt people can't pay because they're not getting degree premiums is an example of how that is a policy failure. But if you just talk to. I'm in Austin, so I'm around Joe Rogan world. I know that audience, a huge portion of that audience isn't interested in your student debt forgiveness matches messaging because college just isn't appealing to them. So the bigger idea that exists before the messaging problem is what's our theory of the case for how people can succeed in a post 2020s economy with AI coming down the pipeline with college not working quite the same way. So that's just sort of an example from my world. I'd love to hear something that comes to mind from like your perspective in your work.
- [27:50]
B
First of all, I just want to. I think it's just such a great example and you know that piece was co authored and myself and my partner co found @scurr who together we founded the States Forum and the States Project. And, and Adam talks about the fact that he has a business background that you know, brand is not a slogan or a logo. You know, you know you talked about the Jumpman, you know the, the Nike Air, the Air Jordan. It's like, you know, that it's a. It's very significant, right? That's. That's an image of a person, of a person who did an incredible thing and change what it is to be an athlete, icon, leader. And also, it's sneakers, athletics. And it all fits together. It's not like it started with a picture or with slogan. Just do it. It actually started with an idea and a product that connected on a deep level. Now, obviously, you can always take business analogies into politics too far, but I ask you to take some. The idea that every four years we get just a person who gets a nomination and just a slogan and a set of issues that are largely defined by a bunch of advocacy organizations in terms of how much difference there can be and nothing else is not a path to building a political movement or convincing people of authenticity. Because when everything sounds the same, whoever the nominee is, and when the slogan is just a good attempt at a slogan, really, really smart people, really smart people do this in the Democratic Party. Much, much, much better at this than I could ever be in a hundred thousand years. But you can't build it just on vapors. So I think some good examples. And so I think to your example, an interesting thing about college debt that's sort of ironic, relieving a college debt, which is certainly a policy that I think has a lot of substantive merit, is it's actually part of the same brand you described. Quite ironic, actually. Right? Like that. That idea that you describe is an idea that sometimes people now call neoliberalism of the late 90s and early 2000s neoliberalism on the Democratic side. And it's interesting that there's that critique of neoliberalism, but still a doubling down on the same brand idea, which is obviously college is the only driver to, you know, college in a globalized world is the only driver to success. It's an inadvertent grand confirmation of something where there's some real political critique about how that's failed not just to win over voters on the center and the right, but also created frustration from voters on the left. And so I actually think that you find ideas like that in education. I think that one of the most devastating pieces of data for the Democratic Party in the last year wasn't that its popularity numbers are so in the toilet, though they are. It was that the state of Mississippi has done a better job of improving tech scores and academic outcomes than I think, maybe than every state, but certainly than lots and lots and lots of states that are governed By Democrats. I think that is a devastating arrow in the heart of our case when it comes to opportunity. When you're talking about the sorts of foundational values not here sloganeering the kind of foundational values I'm talking about, they're about opportunity. And so I think that's really difficult. I actually think on the other side an issue that gets areas of attention but that I think is would be a dramatic changer or dramatically change the brand is you know, Westmore, if you what was focused on and cared about a lot in Maryland is universal service. The idea of anyone, any young person in the state being able to take a year to work in the public sector, maybe to work in public sector and nonprofits, depending how you structure it to get paid for that above poverty wages, unlike the AmeriCorps program, maybe even to get a little bit of an investment bond for their future out of that. And the idea that honorable public service work as a young person, regardless of formal degree for a decent life for the foundation for a family and a barbecue and on the weekends and a couple of trips a year and a parent being able to stay home with their new family and their new kid not just for a day or two while giving up their wage, but for a few months at a time or even God forbid for the period until full time school takes it takes it on at 3 or 4 or 5. I think is a really powerful idea that we moved away from. And I also think it becomes. I also think this foundation becomes a way to answer the toughest questions that we have. So how can we build a lot and still protect those without a voice? Well, there's a role for representative democracy. But fundamentally effective government needs empowering government actors to make decisions, government appointees, heads of agencies to build things not courts and just citizens at large. It's representative democracy, not direct democracy. Effective government means allowing government to move. But at the same token bear markets means that there has to that when you ask the question can use and access to social media. You know, there's no way for a kid to be a market participant to make any decision about what's happening with that wildly uniquely addictive product that is more powerful than any before. So, you know, it's easy. Not even a close call. Kids need to be protected from social media.
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A
So I want to push you a bit on the Maryland service because once again just I'm from Portland, Oregon, so obviously my politics were like center left from birth. But then I you know, did my fun. So you were one of the right juncture juncture on. I'm unhelpfully contrary. Now that I'm in my 30s, I'm growing out of it, but I think I've retained a bit of conservative skepticism of the sort of broad public service sort of narrative. So the sort of public service narrative that I'm like, really skeptical of is just the sort of like I call it like the Aspen Ideas Festival style or the we used to serve and we need national service and we in Maryland or we in the Biden administration. Remember there was the Climate Conservation Corps. I'm pretty sure that was a Biden era thing. And this is also sort of the AmeriCorps problem. And then also at the same time the problem with, I think, a lot of this sort of Maryland efforts, which is that while I agree with the idea of it, like they're just sort of, I'm not trying to sound rude here, but they just sort of turn into NGO centric 1990s. It doesn't mean anything. And the reason why I just bring this up is some buddies of mine in Texas, where I'm based now, were thinking hard about this problem. They were like, hey, like you should just have like a Texas Conservation Corps premised sort of on the sort of Civilian Conservation Corps from the 1930s. And unlike the sort of like NGO sort of TFA style, AmeriCorps style, like very DC centric version, to be like, you're outside and you're building stuff. The ccc, they built our state parks and they built Timberline Lodge in Oregon, where I'm from. It was just very visceral and it meant something and it didn't play to type. So I just worry that it's easy for us to say this service stuff is going to work, but then it just ends up meaning nothing because it doesn't actually represent something different. So that's just like an initial. I have a visceral reaction.
- [36:10]
B
But this I. By the way, this is a really important point. Who do you know who's ever done AmeriCorps who doesn't have some family that can subsidize them? It's AmeriCorps is not an opportunity to think about the fact that careers in public service, careers in government, career, careers as a park ranger or a police officer or a frontline worker in a housing agency, serving people who wait online and need help, or the dmv, to the extent a lot of these things aren't getting automated, is actually an honorable, admirable kind of service. By the way, we do still have this with the military. And we do still know that for all of its flaws, many people who joined the military young in order to help find a path to social and economic mobility still find that, while also finding a sense of service and community, a connection to our American values. I think that the idea that AmeriCorps and look, I really do credit Governor Moore for his deep commitment to this, but when you get into the budget process, these things get caught. Exactly. And you know, and you can, you know, you need to go to work at A list of NGOs or local nonprofits that pass certain tests, some of which end up becoming, not purposely, but secondary or in a third level ideological tests that undermines it completely. I'm talking about the idea that you can get a job for a year between the ages of 18 and 25. That job will be the admirable work of public service or the public sector, that you can make a real living with that job. And that if you do that job for a year and you, let's say, stay in the state until you're 30, you can also have a little bit of a savings nest egg that the state provides you, then this is truly quite a vision of a pretty expansive government in many ways. But it's also a vision that is, I think, counter to some of the pieties that we're used to. You see this with early childhood as well? Oh, you know, not, you know, we need a higher subsidy rate for child care, by the way. A higher subsidy rate for childcare, considering some of the ways dollars are spent and taxed, seems like a good idea. But fundamentally, to the point you're making, it doesn't change any conversation at all. What we want is we want children cared for. Well, what about the idea that it really should be possible for a parent to stay home with their kid for a longer period of time? Talked about. Or the idea that informal settings or childcare should be things that get subsidy even if they don't have the same license requirement. Or that we know that for new Medicaid moms, a really expensive program, nurse, family partnership, evidence based maternal home visiting, fundamentally change lives. Every one of these ideas, everyone says, great, but look, Rather than spending $8,000 a family a year, I could serve 800 families by spending $10 a year doing something completely nice but fundamentally irrelevant to changing the path of things. This is where this idea of American liberalism, this is where the idea of the American promise helps you know what to do. Because today the conversation is either do we want the government to run grocery stores or do we think that there's no role for the government to run at all in things like the employment of 18 to 25 year olds? And these are not actually in conflict. They're in conflict when the conversation is for black and invented firm. A leftover neoliberal idea from the 90s and a kind of clearing out of government post Reagan and a statist idea that markets have no role. Those are not the only two views of a left of center coalition. And we need to reject the idea that you need to choose one of those gaps, I think.
- [40:38]
A
And it's kind of funny, I like your highlighting of the 1990s thing. Before I say something nice about Westmore to make up for my besmirching of his public policy legacy. I think the state legislature, they've got.
- [40:49]
B
To give him more money for it.
- [40:50]
A
It's easy for me to just sort of dunk and say, oh, these NGOs, it's ineffective. But like, to your point about the 1990s, the reason why everyone goes into these NGOs is because the idea was we were going to get government smaller, we were going to have people work for government less. And like, when you're talking about the dmv, like when you're talking. So I, I guess what I just liked about the way that you sort of like square, like squared everything there is. You said, in some ways this is sort of like pushing back on, like the way we used to do things, but it's also doing things that are kind of uncomfortable. It's easier to say, oh no, we're not. Just because. Think of like, what was it like, Compassionate conservative conservatism in 2000. The whole idea was you don't just need to have government doing good things. You could have outside groups, you could have churches, you could have NGOs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So just sort of, in one way I'm saying this NGO thing doesn't work. But in the other way, I'm also making this heavy ask, which is you need to sell people on increasing government employment, which is very difficult. But here's an idea that I've actually really liked from both Governor Moore and Governor Shapiro from Pennsylvania. And that was the idea of significantly reducing degree requirements in state government, because that's the perfect example of if. I'm a political science major from the University of Oregon. I have so many books behind me because I basically didn't do particularly well in school and I just like, learned things and now I'm an independent podcaster. So I can very much understand that there's a gap between the sort of status I get by having a degree and the actual need for that degree to do a job. So I think that's a great start. But I think the reason why that idea, while a great example at a state level taking this idea, college. We're sort of 15 years into the whole like mike row, like dirty jobs discourse, like why don't we have apprenticeships? What happened to shop class? And then like nothing happened on either side of the aisle. We're on year 15. It's no longer a hot take to say that. So this is a great example of taking that idea very, very literally. But it just doesn't break through. So this isn't my idea. But I heard this from someone who will make it public at some point their idea in terms of how the Democratic party could engage in politics better. You should cite those state level ideas and then either create a prominent position or appoint someone to a cabinet level office who doesn't have a college degree and is there because of their career. And what I love about that idea, when I heard that, just instantly synced because it's sort of, it's very public. It's very clear what you're saying and no offense to Pete Hegseth, but I think it's been made very clear that the right is not particularly interested in sort of like the pure meritocracy argument. So I'd love to hear your reaction to sort of like taking that state level thing and then saying based on these ideas, we are going to appoint. Let's say I do a lot of work in foreign policy. So a good example would be a serious like union leader who'd worked on shipbuilding to something high at the Department of Navy or sort of something like that, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I'd love to hear like your thoughts on this.
- [43:48]
B
I love this idea, you know, and actually I think states are a good place to do it. You know, who are the really senior NCOs and non commissioned officers in the U.S. you know, every state has a department. Just about every state has a department of Homeland Security. Certainly has a, you know, public safety function and wouldn't it be great just to see that? I also, I also would running often ex law enforcement end up in those positions and I bet you that they're filtered in that way. But the idea of someone from organized labor at the labor department feels like an, you know, when you say it, I love the idea. What's upsetting Is that it's like an idea, it seems like clearly what we should be doing. And I think it actually speaks to the same, I think it speaks to the same framework. You know, this is. The framework was 30 years ago. Either your great description of you got to go get a college degree and you know, and people will be retrained, but it's all about college and competing in a global labor market or apprenticeships and there's no role for college. And you know, let's, let's get people working with their hands again, I guess. Right. We even heard some of this discourse come out of the White House around tariffs and. But you know, that's not actually how a lot of people live. The way a lot of people live is they finish high school, they go to community college or try to part time for a while. They also start to work, they figure out, you know, if they end up, you know, on a path to being a plumber or lucky enough to be, you know, to join a labor union, they start a family at some point, maybe they get to go back to school. So this idea that, you know, you're either finishing high school and going to get a college degree and competing in the global ideas economy, or you're graduating college and rolling up your shirt and going to work and showering after work for the next 50 or 60 years is a, is a, it's just, I think shows the disconnect between a lot of the policy conversation, how people are living. And I actually think the signal of that this is a dynamic conversation. And the one thing we know in a world that is changing so quickly is that whatever traditional gatekeeping we had is completely collapsed, I think would be great. I'm shocked. Political talents they are that neither Governor Marvel, Governor Shapiro, nor some of the other great governors that we have in states around the country have yet done this. I actually think this is a great idea to put into our second States Forum journal. We have an ideas journal that actually has some of these ideas I've been talking about today. In addition to convenience and trying to really do sort of accelerators or brainstorms on a thorny challenge. And this is exactly the kind of thing that emanates when you know what you're trying to do with your worldview. Yeah, right. If. If what you're trying to do is take on climate change, protect reproductive rights, increase protections for organized labor, have voting laws that you like, and have a fair criminal justice system. Again, five topics that I believe in, trying to do those five things. Where's the Role for what you described. Yeah. Where does it fit? How does it. How does it make. It doesn't really make any of those things happen. It makes something else happen. It makes the idea of an opportunity, of radical opportunity, the idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness with an individual pursuit of happiness. The idea that government's about effectiveness, not about titles come alive. So I actually think it's a great idea because it's outside of the framework of single issue coalition.
- [47:28]
A
And I'll be sure to connect you with the very serious person who had this idea that he's sort of keeping on the DL right now. But what I also love about it, too, is that it's such a interesting Sister Soulja moment in the best sense, because the way he explained this idea to me, I'm not gonna name the law school because this person would be identifiable if I got this detailedly, but they served in the Biden administration and they were like, it's actually really screwed up to me that a huge percentage of my law school class, this is at a top tier Ivy League school. We're all in the administration together. Like, the country shouldn't work this way. So a person like this saying, I don't like that. I don't like how we've made this system all about. You get power in this country based on how effective you were taking the SATs when you were 17. I'm a part of that world. I'm going to be a class traitor to that world in the FDR sense, and instead we're going to do something different. That's just why it's like the perfect. This is just like. And by the way, this is why Wes Moore would be the perfect person to articulate this idea as a candidate. Because here's this guy, right? Grows up in poverty or, like, grows up in those sort of, like, dynamics, but then, you know, kind of screws up in high school, so has to go to, like, you know, a military school. But he's also a Rhodes scholar. He's also, like, incredibly well educated, yet he understands, because he's rooted in Baltimore, that I just don't want to have everything be the same set of Yalies and Stanford grads tossing power between themselves. So, like, that's just why. And that's why I think it's just like a funny sister social, because, like, it's. It's. It's punching down. Not on, like, minorities or LGBTQ people in, like, the 1990 cents. It's punching. It's punching up at elites that no One likes. So that's why I just want folks to think that way. So.
- [49:10]
B
Well, it also takes, I mean, it's a funny thing, right, because just, you know, in politics, and we see this a lot in state level politics too, you know, when, when someone comes from, you know, a professional background, you know, that's more working class, you know, Democratic operatives and, and activists get so excited, right? Oh, that's the perfect. So that's the perfect person to go get votes, but not the perfect person to run an agency. Well, that doesn't make any. That just, you know, it smacks of this, of being disingenuous. I actually think it is true that it's great when we get candidates that fight back against the idea of an elite movement and party that's out of touch of the fact that you need to have learned how to speak in a way that is perfectly unoffensive in a college symposium in order to be a Democrat in good standing. Like, we should push back on that. It's not as true as the myth, but it's too true. And push back on that is great. But, you know, those same great candidates would make great public servants running agencies, too much of which is about leadership and setting a tone and not expertise from business school.
- [50:20]
A
And this is why it's so weird because, you know, no offense to former HHS secretary Javier Becerra, but like, he's a, he's a lawyer. He was a, you know, politician. He wasn't, he wasn't a particularly, I won't force you to go on the record about this, but like, he wasn't a particularly popular member of the cabinet. It's just, it's just so frustrating to me. And the reason why I'm just frustrated with the person who wrote this piece said he was well connected into like Democratic Party circles and this idea was not as well received. I think this idea is received differently in 2025 than it was in 2020, but the idea wasn't very well received in 2020. And it's just frustrating when we just live in this. Basically, you don't have to say to yourself, this just leads to RFKs and Pete Hegseth. So I just think it's really important that we like, actually think aggressively outside the box. So for the last section here, because like, we talked about factionalism and the realignments, had a lot of factional debate on it, I had this really great sort of anecdote that I'll close on. Then I'll give you a closing anecdote if you'd like where within a scannon center. I hosted a dinner on abundance back in June with 20 or so Oregon state legislators. And this was right after the Demand Progress poll had come out saying populism versus abundance. Which poll is better? Going after bottlenecks on the abundance side or going after corporate power? And the corporate power polling unsurprisingly was higher. So we had this huge long Twitter centric debate here. And what I just loved about talking about this in a state centric fashion, especially like in a blue one party state like Oregon is, I just sort of was explaining this national debate and then this state legislator from the Portland area just rose their hand and just said hey, just so you know, there's like four or five max competitive seats in this entire state. So I will just tell you at a state level in most of our blue states, no one is choosing between the populist message to win or the abundance message. They're like, we get elected no matter what we do. At the end of the day it's much more like personal and about like an endorsement. So they said, I'm interested in the corporate power stuff because in some issues I care about corporate power. I'm interested in abundance because I really care about power transmission and getting things done in permitting. So it was just so helpful for me as a national political person to just hear that pushback that you just. I'd never heard that perspective just like obviously pointed out and it's just so obviously true. And you're also not going to see congressional campaigns even like doing this like weird fight. And then we just had two weeks of intensive tensive op eds and discourse about this poll. But then you just had a state legislator just point out none of us are experiencing the debate. You all are thinking about this and abundance in of itself is such a state and local issue. Maybe you're missing something by not being able to relate to that. So that was just like a really encouraging like anecdote and experience for me. So I'd love to sort of just have you close out by shouting out like the state like why it's. I just don't want the whole we need to focus on the states things sound like a shtick, but it actually means something. Do you know what I mean?
- [53:24]
B
Oh yeah, well I think in, in a few ways and it's important to remember that like well more than 70% of any of Democrats or Republicans running for office are never going to lose their seat to the other party. They're only going to lose their seat to someone in their own party. And so the idea that the 10% of folks in the most competitive seats around the country, and this is true in states as much as in Congress, are going to then subdivide into different political strategy and then from that subdivision of different political strategy a new consensus will emerge is completely backwards. We need to be having a conversation on the merits, political and substantive in that large group. And I think what's actually interesting about states and it's I think a great way to end because you've been talking so much about ideas here, is states are the place where ideas actually become engines of action. I was in the state legislature for nearly a decade, Adam, and I started the state project now nearly a decade ago. And this idea that you need first principles, that the idea of the American promise is so important, didn't come up because I went to graduate school, which I didn't. It came up because as a political matter, it's an organizing principle that works for state lawmakers. I'll tell you this story. Someone I spoke to at the launch of the state's forum a couple of weeks ago, a state lawmaker and I said, you know, this is pretty interesting. You know, there some of these anti corporatists are anti monopolists in the room and also some of these abundance folks in the room. And he said what do you mean? I said well you know, there's you know, some people here who really believe that right to repair, which is by the way a policy that could be enacted on state levels then right to repair. The idea that, you know, you shouldn't have computer chip that prevents you to from repairing a tractor you bought it is a really important issue. And actually the junk fees that like really cracking down on you know, utilities and quasi utilities like cell phone and cable providers, junk fees is really important even if they scream and yell. And he said yeah, yeah, those are both great ideas. And I said, but you know, there are also people in this room who think that we need to build a lot more housing and that when I say we, I mean we need to allow the private sector to be the engine of that housing with private dollars. And the high speed train in Florida, which was a private project, is a really exciting pilot to look at around the country. And the state lawmaker, he said yeah, those are also great ideas. And then I said, but you know, there are certain other ideas that we don't have represented here. Like the idea that standards in public education shouldn't matter, that there should be no testing or standards in public education, that's not represented here. And he said, yeah, no, we can't have that. We actually did that in my state and it's been a disaster. We're trying to figure out how to, how to undo it. And I said, you know, there's no one here who wants to defund the police. And he said, great, because that's. It doesn't make any sense. It's not popular. And I said, and you know, we just talk about a bunch of stuff that reflects a really active government doing a lot of things. He said, yeah, of course I'm in government. Here's why I say that anecdote. This can be misinterpreted as can't we all just get along? But it's actually not. It just sets a different set of conditions that are much more practical to the lived political experience of thousands of state elected officials around the country who aren't locked out of power or in power based on a national melodrama. They're constantly getting state budgets done, constantly trying to find intraparty, excuse me, inter party coalitions. And their lived experience is much more about what common sense would tell you. And there are things they reject that are quite common and we're told to ignore in the Democratic Party coalition. And there are things that are obvious to them that cut across these factions. And that's why I think this is exciting. The idea of representative, actually effective government, fair markets and personal freedom is not an academic exercise. The idea that what was promised in the Declaration of Independence is really powerful isn't a historic analysis. It's a framework that tells us which things to reject and which fights to pick in the Democratic Party coalitions a day. Not because some random, you know, co founder of a couple of initiatives tells you that, but because a bunch of local politicians know it's true because they got to go out and get the votes. Yeah.
- [58:41]
A
And my closing statement would just be what I appreciate about your perspective there. And this is where there's just like a bunch of like foundational disagreement between. Because there, there's the ideological factions and there's like the like reform institutions. And I think one of the big. I interviewed Derek Thompson and Jake Auchincloss at WelcomeFest in June, and we were just sort of talking about sort of theories of change here. And an answer that kind of frustrated me that came out during this interview was just this idea that, well, you're gonna have this election in 2028. This is gonna be a contest of ideas. And then through that contest of ideas, you're going to have something emerge. And it's just sort of, as someone who has friends who work on the transition teams, it doesn't actually work that way. I have it on good authority that as of late October, the Harris campaign had not settled a bunch of big questions. So I think what's so important about the model you're articulating here and focusing on the state and actors and the ability to do things within states is we can actually kind of test and run and expand and explore, and not just and not depend on 20 person, chaotic 2027 debates to determine what the future of the Democratic Party left liberal project is. So I just think this is a very exciting place to look at, and it's very encouraging to hear. So, Daniel, thank you so much for joining me on the realignment.
- [59:55]
B
Thank you so much for engaging. It's great.