579 | Liam Kerr: Deciding to Win: A Centrist Autopsy of the Post-2024 Democratic Party and the Center's Missing Story

Summary

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The Realignment, Episode 579:

“Liam Kerr: Deciding to Win — A Centrist Autopsy of the Post-2024 Democratic Party and the Center's Missing Story”
October 30, 2025 | Host: Marshall Kosloff | Guest: Liam Kerr, Co-founder of Welcome

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the centrist Democratic response to the 2024 election aftermath, discussing the report “Deciding to Win: Towards a Common Sense Renewal of the Democratic Party,” authored by Welcome. Host Marshall Kosloff welcomes co-founder Liam Kerr to analyze the data-driven insights, ideological rifts, and the broader quest for a revitalized Democratic “story.” The conversation traverses the need for narrative coherence, lessons from both left and right populist movements, and how the center can rebuild political confidence and community.

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Main Themes and Purpose

• Centrist Diagnosis and Recommendations:
  Examining how and why the Democratic Party veered off course in the post-Obama era, and the pitch for a pragmatic centrist reset.

• The Missing “Story” Problem:
  Exploring the challenge for centrist and moderate Democrats to articulate a narrative as compelling as those of the populist left or right.

• Learning from Movement-Building:
  Reflecting on what centrists can learn from the organizational and storytelling prowess of both the left and right.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Deciding to Win” Report and Its Takeaways

[00:00–03:47]

Marshall introduces the Welcome report, which offers five strategic recommendations for Democrats to regain electoral competitiveness:

1. Center Policy on Economics: Focus messaging on lowering costs, economic growth, job creation, and expanding the safety net.
2. Prioritize Popular Economic Policies: Push for issues like prescription drug negotiation and higher minimum wage; downplay less popular policies such as student debt forgiveness and EV subsidies.
3. Align With Voters’ Priorities: Elevate economy, cost of living, healthcare, border security, and public safety; deprioritize climate change, democracy, abortion, and identity/culture issues in messaging.
4. Moderate on Unpopular Issues: Shift rhetoric and policy on immigration, crime, energy, and select cultural issues.
5. Critique Power Structures: Offer a substantive critique of corporate, lobbyist, and elite influence—without veering into anti-capitalist or socialist territory.

“The type of politician that can succeed in a moment like this shouldn’t need a poll to tell them that ‘defund the police’ is unpopular.”
— Marshall [06:22]

2. The Critical Role of Story and Ideology

[03:47–11:07]

Marshall reflects on the political realignment—comparing the Democrats’ current drift to the Republican Party’s “autopsy” after 2012—and posits that transformative movements require a compelling story, not just data or polling.

“This is where story and ideology come in… Whoever realigns the Democratic Party… will have their own story. Biden notably had a story in 2020 and he won … The problem for Biden is that he couldn’t deliver ‘normal.’”
— Marshall [06:35]

He argues the center lacks such a story and, without it, risks irrelevance as ideological contenders set the terms of debate.

3. Diagnosing Centrist Weaknesses—and Owning Vulnerability

[11:16–17:27]

Liam Kerr agrees that centrist Democrats often validate elements of the populist right’s diagnosis (crisis at the border, crime, cultural excess) but oppose their extreme solutions. On the left, they share some policy aims but not the assumption of existential crisis or anti-American sentiment.

“The modern political center, particularly the Democratic center left, does not have the confidence and optimism and coherence that marks a successful story.”
— Liam Kerr [17:27]

He distinguishes between just following poll numbers (“wonkery”) and inspiring people with a broader narrative and community.

4. Storytelling as Strategy—And the Community Challenge

[21:16–27:19]

Story, Kerr and Kosloff agree, isn’t just comms spin but central to mobilizing volunteers, recruiting candidates, and creating resilience among moderates facing attacks from both left and right.

“We thought a lot about the tactics of community building, but the narrative and story of community building is essential…. It’s about bringing new people into the community. … It is a community and a story to believe in.”
— Liam Kerr [24:50]

Political science data show moderate candidates are less likely to run today—not because they can’t win, but because they lack supportive community and narrative infrastructure.

5. The "Second Sentence" Problem and Status Quo Critique

[27:19–33:55]

Marshall asks how centrists can add a powerful follow-up sentence after “the status quo is broken”—as Trump or Sanders could. Kerr says centrists must clarify which aspects of the status quo need changing—the ones that create chaos and insecurity, or those which actually undergird voters’ existing stability.

“The second sentence challenge is a real thing…that happens when, I think, often you’re not confident in your own story.”
— Liam Kerr [29:59]

Calm, confident over-performers—especially governors in “crossover” states—are exemplars of the centrist style.

6. Losing—and Rebuilding—The Old Centrist Story

[34:39–39:15]

Marshall details how the Cold War/Clinton-era storyline of steady technocratic progress, globalization, and demographic destiny collapsed over two decades:

• Globalization’s promises frayed (manufacturing, college-for-all not delivering);
• Demographics didn’t deliver a guaranteed Democratic future;
• Cultural and economic shocks undermined “the old story.”

“That was the old story. And you can't just sort of snap your fingers and expect [key figures] to have a new one. That’s actually a joint collective, really, really difficult project to go through.”
— Marshall [34:39]

7. Competition of Stories & Specificity as a Character Trait

[39:15–43:50]

Kerr endorses the need for a “competition of ideas” to forge a new centrist story and calls for more specificity:

“A competition of ideas will be very healthy…encouraging or even demanding more specificity for people who want to put forward a vision for the party.”
— Liam Kerr [39:15]

8. Party Versus Ideology—How the Right Does It Differently

[43:50–45:13]

Marshall highlights how the right foregrounds ideology over party, something the Democrats struggle to emulate. The discussion spans Kerr’s personal journey—from AmeriCorps through education reform to centrist Democratic organizing—underscoring the importance of networks, mentorship, and story-driven community.

9. Movement Building and “Main Characters” in Politics

[45:13–52:53]

The hosts lament the absence of movement “characters” outside of elected office—figures like Michelle Rhee in education reform—who drive credibility and trust.

“We just need more main characters, and everybody wants to shout that out.”
— Marshall [49:33]

Movements that offer both “a sense of what’s possible” and “the world is very, very messy” produce better, more pragmatic leaders.

10. Rethinking Theories of Change

[52:53–56:04]

Marshall contrasts Gen Z’s mass-mobilization paradigm with the “mid-level, staff-and-thinktankers” theory of change that catalyzed conservative and GOP realignment. He advises young activists to interrogate whether “movement size” is the true metric of impact.

11. The “Deciding to Win” Report—Core Findings

[56:04–61:01]

Kerr summarizes:

• Democrats shifted left (measurably) since 2012;
• Voters noticed and believe Democrats no longer share their priorities;
• Internal “reckoning” remains incomplete and diffuse;
• Lays out side-by-side popular/unpopular policies, rebuts “mobilization myth,” and grounds recommendations in analysis of over-performing candidates.

12. What Moderation Means (and Doesn’t) for Centrist Democrats

[61:01–67:00]

Kerr emphasizes that real moderation isn’t about “selling out” or mindlessly splitting every difference. Over-performing moderates distinguish themselves via core, authentic and sometimes controversial beliefs. Both agree the “parody” of moderation—just finding the midpoint, or shifting positions tactically—is a recipe for failure.

“The biggest part … was … to demonstrate your authenticity to voters, you actually have to believe the thing you’re differentiating on… and that is accessible to them in a way that shows, not just tells, that you’re different.”
— Liam Kerr [58:53]

13. Practical Exercise: What Do You Really Believe?

[67:32–75:19]

Marshall shares an exercise: Go through a list of unpopular and popular Democratic policies and indicate which you genuinely support. Think through your “why” and embrace clarity about tradeoffs—even if some positions are unpopular.

“Polls don’t tell me what to do. They tell me how to accomplish what I want done.”
— Marshall [71:56]

Kerr agrees, framing the problem as one of “intersectional purity” around multiple unpopular issues. Centrist coalitions can’t and shouldn’t replicate the maximalist litmus tests of the ascendant left.

14. Beyond Popularism and Embracing Factions

[75:19–82:33]

Both agree: Popularism alone isn’t enough—especially as complicated tradeoffs arise around policies like abundance or housing. Instead, storytelling and reasoned advocacy can shift unpopular positions into persuasive narratives. Marshall and Liam praise the left’s organizational dynamism; Kerr observes centrists often fail to distinguish between multiple left factions (Warren vs. Bernie camps), and lose easy coalition opportunities as a result.

15. Closing Thoughts: Community, Factionalism, and Building for 2028

[82:33–83:32]

Kerr offers high praise for the progressive left’s entrepreneurial prowess and community, and calls on the center to emulate their dynamism—while building competing, well-defined factions and stories headed into the next presidential cycle.

“We do have to look at [the left] as entrepreneurs and practitioners, and really admire what they built. In addition to having that confidence of a very clear story…”
— Liam Kerr [79:51]

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “The type of politician that can succeed in a moment like this shouldn’t need a poll to tell them that ‘defund the police’ is unpopular.”
  — Marshall [06:22]

• “The modern political center...does not have the confidence and optimism and coherence that marks a successful story.”
  — Liam Kerr [17:27]

• "Polls don’t tell me what to do. They tell me how to accomplish what I want done.”
  — Marshall [71:56]

• “We do have to look at [the left] as entrepreneurs and practitioners… and really admire what they built— that confidence of a very clear story…”
  — Liam Kerr [79:51]

• “A competition of ideas will be very healthy… encouraging or even demanding more specificity for people who want to put forward a vision for the party.”
  — Liam Kerr [39:15]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–03:47: Introduction & executive summary of “Deciding to Win”
• 11:16–17:27: Defining “the story” challenge for the Democratic center
• 24:50–27:19: Community & resilience lessons from other political movements
• 34:39–39:15: Collapse of the old centrist “story”
• 56:07–61:01: Highlights and conclusions from the “Deciding to Win” report
• 67:32–75:19: Practical exercise—what unpopular/popular policies do YOU believe in?
• 79:51–82:33: Factionalism, coalition-building, and learning from the left

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Conclusion

This episode offers a nuanced and searching critique of the Democratic center’s predicaments, foregrounding the “Deciding to Win” report as a tool for reassessment, but just as importantly—calls for the centrist wing to embrace real storytelling, specificity, and community-building. Marshall and Liam Kerr both agree that without a persuasive new “story of America”—rooted in clear values, operationalized through coalition, and embodied by authentic leaders—the centrists risk irrelevance in the new era of political realignment.

Listen for: Candid assessments, guidance for young (and seasoned) politicos on building durable communities and narratives, and actionable exercises for self-definition within a fractious party.

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Transcript

[A]

Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment. Earlier this week, Wellcome, an organization that seeks to elect centrist Democrats running in red and purple states, released a post2024 election autopsy titled Deciding to Win Towards a Common Sense Renewal of the Democratic Party. We're still waiting for the official Democratic National Committee autopsy, so Deciding to win is a great data driven articulation of the Democratic Party's centrist factions. POV on what went wrong in 2020 and what should come next. So for today's episode, I interviewed welcome co founder Liam Kerr about the report and the broader state of the Centrist project. Liam's a longtime Realignment listener, so he knows some of the rifts I've been trying out the past few months. So our conversation contextualizes deciding to win through the lens of my interest in the need to have an ideological story about where the country has been and where it's going, why it's key to start why it's key to start from the assumption that the status quo is broken when it comes to voters and how divided fractions and how divided factions from the center left to left can unite together. I was so excited to talk about Liam's work in the context of the realignment that we actually took a bit longer than normal to talk about the actual findings of the report, so I wanted to offer a quick set of takeaways that they offer in the Executive summary. You can find all this linked in the show Notes so quote to give ourselves the best chance to win, we recommend the following changes to our approach. Democrats need to 1. Focus our policy agenda and our messaging on an economic program centered on lowering costs, growing the economy, creating jobs, and expanding the social safety net. 2. Advocate for popular economic policies such as expanding prescription drug price negotiation, making the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes, raising the minimum wage to 15 an hour rather than unpopular policies such as student loan forgiveness, EV subsidies and Medicaid for all. 3. Convince voters that we share their priorities by focusing more on issues that voters do not think our party prioritizes highly enough, AKA the economy, the cost of living, healthcare, border security and public safety, and focus less on issues voters think we place too much emphasis on climate change, democracy, abortion, identity and culture issues. 4. Moderate our positions where our agenda is unpopular, including on issues like immigration, public safety, energy production and some identity and culture issues.

[B]

5.

[A]

Embrace a substantive and rhetorical critique of the outsized political and economic influence of lobbyists, corporations and the ultra wealthy, while keeping two considerations in mind. First, voters frustrations with the status quo are not the same as the desire for socialism. And second, criticizing the status quo is a compliment to advocating for popular policies on the issues that matter most to the American people, not a substitute. Taken together, we could think of these five changes as representing, roughly speaking, the approach of Barack Obama in 2012, the approach of Bernie Sanders before 2020, and the approach of candidates like Dan Osborne, Ruben Gallego, Jared Goldin, Marie Gusengamp Perez, Mary Pilota, Adam Gray, Kirsten McDonald River, Tom Sozi, Marcy Kaput, and Vicente Gonzalez in 2024. Like I said, the report is linked in the show notes and gotten a lot of press and coverage. So if you'd like an interview or a WR focused on the actual results and conclusions, there are plenty of great options. Before we dive in before we dive in, I wanted to add a real summary of the realignments POV on the report itself. I do read the comments and people will note I've been ranting a little on the podcast lately.

[B]

What's been really unique for me is.

[A]

That after six years of doing this, I've not just felt like I'm a.

[B]

Person who asks questions, but I think.

[A]

I have some answers myself. So as I'm listening over and seeing these rants are increasing, I'm realizing that what I'm actually trying to do is.

[B]

Express my actual thoughts.

[A]

So I'll start adding more opening segments to the interviews so that moving forward I can get my POV out and.

[B]

Then actually just ask a lot of.

[A]

Questions and have more back and forth rather than thinking the only way I could get my POV out is by asking long questions, long setups. So a any party focused autopsy is haunted by the post 2012Republican National Committee autopsy, which was officially called the Growth and Opportunity Project. The GOP was really lost in the wilderness after Obama beat Romney and the RNC autopsy was supposed to chart the way forward. Reading the report, one could conclude the answer was to pursue immigration reform to accommodate a diversifying America. Especially given the backlash Romney received for saying his immigration policy was, quote, self deportation. The type of GOP nominee one would expect in a post autopsy world would be a Senator Marco Rubio or a former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Given the RNC's understanding of of the problem the GOP faced, well, we all know what happened next. Trump came down the escalator. He said he'd built the wall, called Mexicans rapists, attack the GOP establishment over Iraq, trade their proposed cuts to Social Security and entitlement programs and other vulnerabilities the autopsy never contemplated. Trump did literally the opposite of every single thing the RNC recommended and he realigned the American political system. B Polling has its place and I think it's important that this sort of document be grounded in polling results. That said, the whole point of the realignment by the realignment I mean the actual phenomenon is that the actual tectonic plates of American politics are shifting and old sets of ideas and issues just have lost their relevance in that environment. Then polling driven candidates are going to be left behind by aggressive politicians and movements that can skate where they see the puck moving. Thinking Back to the 2013 polling in the RF RNC report, none of those polls would have led a conventional GOP or conservative politician to conclude that moving to the right on immigration after Romney's backlash was the answer. But Trump saw the opportunity and went for it anyways. The type of politician that can succeed in a moment like this shouldn't need a poll to tell them that defund the police is unpopular or that voters care about the cost of living. My worry is that too many politicians use polling as a crutch rather than the harder task of developing their own understanding of the country and where it needs to go. Which during a realignment moment is going.

[B]

To be a little less obvious than.

[A]

You would normally think during normal political times. See, this is where story and ideology come in. I welcome fest. I asked friends of the show, Rep. Jake Auchincloss and Abundance co author Derek Thompson what their story of America is. They both said they didn't have one in 2015. Donald Trump and Steve Bannon definitely did have a story. That's what MAGA is. As I say on the show, the populist left also has a story as well. Whoever realigns the Democratic Party in 2028, 2032 or 2036 will have their own story. Biden notably had a story in 2020 and he won the primary and the general election with it. In his understanding, America wanted to return to normal after all of the chaos of Trump's first term. With that story, Biden was able to withstand calls to decriminalize the border on the debate stage when most of the other candidates went all in on that and he didn't get bogged down by wonky battles over who had the best single payer healthcare plan. The problem for Biden is that he couldn't deliver normal and instead pivoted to making Norm's defending democracy the central pillar of his 2024 case. It didn't work. Obama had a story but it only worked for him and was fundamentally about him. So he couldn't transform American liberalism, transform the Democratic Party, or build on the potential that the change you can believe in movement had in 2008. D Liam is admittedly still working on the Dem centrist faction story, and I really, really, really admire him coming on and admitting that vulnerability. But decid story is essentially this. Since 2012, the Dems have moved left on unpopular cultural issues over listened to interest groups who either don't actually represent those they claim to or overstate how popular their ideas actually are. Wellcome wants to pull from the successful centrist center left and left candidates and focus on economics while moderating on culture. Agree or disagree, that's a coherent story, but it's not enough and it's too political. Party centric realignments transform the ideology of the winning party. Trump's GOP and conservatism is not that of George W. Bush's or Reagan's, and Reagan's wasn't Eisenhower's MAGA and the New Right replaced the staleness of the Reaganite vision of the 1980s and took over the GOP as a vehicle for their ideas and vision. Critically, in this sort of metaphor, you should understand that obviously Trump is a Republican, but fundamentally his pitch is not that he is a Republican. He didn't wake up in 2014, 2015 and think about the GOP's problems. He instead built a movement built around him that then told a broader story.

[B]

That resonated with voters and then that.

[A]

Enabled him to take over the GOP over the incumbent forces. Liberalism is basically in the same position as 2013's conservatism was. Today, the post1960s liberal project has just.

[B]

Run out of gas.

[A]

Ezra Klein talked about this with Ross Douthat a few weeks ago on Ross's podcast at the New York Times. Interesting times.

[B]

And the key thing is that, as.

[A]

Ezra said, in many ways post 1960s liberalism was all about electing a candidate like Barack Obama. It was all leaning into the idea that America was moving progressively towards a more progressive future.

[B]

We're going to diversify. And Obama so perfectly embodied that idea.

[A]

That ultimately they just couldn't move past that into something new. Which is why when you talk to many people in the Democratic Party, when you talk to many liberals, they themselves are sort of skeptical and unsure of where everything is going next. One of my big goals with the realignment right now, especially when I'm talking to Democrats, especially Democrats on the center and the center left, is to think of themselves as more ideologically rather than putting their party first. When you do that, the story vision and open questions that need to be answered become that much clearer. The other problem with party first thinking is that you quickly realize the incumbent forces of a party will be really reluctant to engage with the ideas and the critiques and the need for fundamental change.

[B]

The people who ran Eisenhower's GOP were.

[A]

Not the people who ran Reagan's gop. The people who ran Bush's GOP are not the same people who run Trump's gop. Hard for people and parties that are really built around incumbents and people who've had long careers, it's hard for them to accept change in ways that fundamentally are required during realignment periods. So just thinking ideologically rather than thinking.

[B]

Of your party is just a better.

[A]

Starting point, and it's just a really interesting thing. I'm going to focus on other episodes that the Democratic Party has become so much less of an ideological party than the GOP has become now.

[B]

So lots of stuff there.

[A]

Really appreciate you all taking the time to listen, and I hope you enjoy this conversation with Liam Kerr about Decid to Win.

[B]

Liam Kerr, welcome to the realignment.

[C]

Great to be here.

[B]

So you are a co founder of welcome, and this will probably not be the first time listeners have seen welcome and its various iterations, especially welcome Fest.

[A]

Referenced on this podcast.

[B]

So welcome has a really interesting new report on the future of the Democratic.

[A]

Party that came out earlier this week.

[B]

It's called Deciding to Win. Though, before we get into the actual report, I wanted to really talk with you, Liam, because we've been talking about this in about the story narrative that I introduced at welcome Fest. So welcome Fest was great. I need to sort of open there. It was a really, really great event. Lots of programming, lots of polling. But as I was setting up for my interview with Representative Jake Auchincloss and Abundance co author Derek Thompson, I just started thinking about this idea of story, and this is really just organic on the spot. Y' all didn't give me any editorial direction in a good way. So I just had the chances to think like, what do you want to really say? And what I just noticed is that at this centrist event, which was the first centrist event I'd been to, I did not see a coherent here's where America has been, here's where we think America is going. And then the polling, the messaging, the policy proposals really stemming from that. And this thought just came to mind because over the course of the realignment six years. I spent a lot of time in three different spaces that for all of the reasons we could agree and disagree with them, I think one thing they've done excellently is they have come up with very coherent, very easy stories to tell that then lead people either to be attracted to them as movements or to understand what they're trying to say. So firstly, we have the populist right. Elites have screwed everything up since the 1990s. These elites include the pre Trump GOP. The answer then is to make America great again, burn down broken institutions and the administrative state that leads to policy proposals, build the wall, kill supposed drug traffickers in Mexico and Venezuela because we're no longer doing forever wars in the Middle east where we're protecting the homeland from drugs and focusing on rebuilding American industry. We then have the next group I've really studied, the populist left. Their story is since the 1980s, runaway capitalism and oligarchy have destroyed the country. The Republican and Democratic parties are captured by wealth and corruption. Oftentimes these are the same sets of people and actors and at their worst use cultural issues to divide Americans against their class interests and need for an anti inequality politics. The answer from their perspective then is wealth, taxes, repealing citizen United, Medicare for all, worker power and unions, antitrust and democratic socialism. The final category, and this is a category that's more elite centric than just sort of popular movement base. But they've played a huge role in funding a lot of like the foundation work and the think think tank architecture. So for example, the Hewlett Economy and Soc Society program that has funded this podcast for the past five years. These are the post neoliberals.

[A]

Their story is the New deal order.

[B]

From 1932 to basically the 1970s, built the middle class, regulated and limited capitalism's downsize and believed in government as a force for good. And neoliberal order rose in the 1980s, first on the right with Reagan and Thatcher, but then on the left with Bill Clinton. Think Bill Clinton saying the era of.

[A]

Big government is over.

[B]

Neoliberalism devalued public goods and elevated the market over everything else, dreaded government and devastated the economy, killed antitrust and left us less resilient for a Covid supply chain crisis. The answer then is we need to build a new intellectual paradigm to replace neoliberalism's failures. So before I ask you what your sort of story is, I'd be curious what in those three either seems directionally correct or interesting to you and what just seems just utterly incorrect? You don't have to do all three. But I'm curious if anything pops out there there.

[C]

Yeah, I think when centrist Democrats look at particularly the Democrats who are in Trump districts, that our pack focuses on a lot of the Trump diagnosis seems validated and then wrong solutions following from them. So there is a perspective that, okay, Trump name problems on on the border and immigration, on crime, on maybe Democrats getting too far ahead on identity and cultural issues and there needs to be a course correction. And the Trump solution is just incredibly aggressive and often detached from reality in a way that central left Democrats would never before those solutions. But. But those who are very successful typically acknowledge some of that problem diagnosis is correct. On the far left, there's actually probably more policy prescription agreement, but less agreement on the problem statements, some less agreement that the world is completely out of control and rigged. In Obama particularly, I think Obama was terrible that Democrats haven't made any progress, that things are as bad as they were generations ago, and that we should not be proud to be American, for example. So in a way it's merging a Trump reality of what the problems are with some of those more progressive solutions.

[B]

So I would be curious now that we could say you're very identified with the centrist or moderate faction of the Democratic Party. You don't have to have a perfect story because we're kind of trying to work things out here on this podcast. It's a use of the format, a useful way. How do you think about the story that if we're thinking of welcome Fest 2026 or just any of the work that you do, how do you really want to integrate story and how do you think of the story that you're trying to tell?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, firstly, I've been. I've not been part of political movements that have had a coherent story, but I have been part of other kind of entrepreneurial, social and civic movements that have. So the decade prior to doing Welcome, I was working on education reform movement and there was a set of language, a set of vision statements, a set of practices, there were metrics to judge how well we were doing. And we collectively felt like this was not only an important problem we were addressing, but we were aiming towards similar goals and we were traveling along a similar and an optimistic story. Prior to that, I was kind of in the venture philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, early 2000s, just this zeitgeist of energy of we can fix things things. And the modern political center, particularly the Democratic center left, does not have the confidence and optimism and coherence that marks A successful story. And so I think, you know, coming out of welcome Fest, I think your kind of consistent, sharp critique is one that we think about a lot. And I think there's, I think, two ways that we're currently thinking about this. One is on a pure political sense that, yes, kind of billionaires and ideologues are rigging the system, just not in the way that the left thinks. They are funding think tanks and advocacy groups and misleading polls that are helping drive polarization and pull our country apart part. And that there actually is, you know, a war within our politics that we need depolarizing patriotic people who cut through that and when, you know, not only within the party, but can bring the country back together. And so starting with, yes, our politics have been somewhat corrupted by unaccountable etc. Groups, very wealthy people and ideologues. Bernie is basically right about that. It just so happens where it's been pushed is more on, you know, climate and other issues out of step with the working class and voters who aren't as obsessed with politics. And then I think there's a second story that many of us will come to differently in the center. And I think we do have an authentic challenge in weaving those stories together. I alluded to kind of my education reform background. I mean, I got into this because I did believe in something specific and tangible, because I did believe that, yes, we can change how government work to make it more effective to deliver results for people. And that was represented on the debate stage kind of famously in 2020, with John Delaney, the congressman from Maryland, saying, we're not going to be able to do all these kind of hashtag revolutionary proposals that Warren and Bernie are putting out, and Elizabeth Warren just cutting him down to cheers and viral video clips saying, why even do this if you're going to focus on what we cannot do? There are many people, from education to a wide range of other policy advocacy issues who feel similarly, but do not really have the intersectional home that they have on the left. And weaving together a community and a story out of that community of people who are. Who aren't into this just to read polls and do whatever the polls tell them. They're into this because they actually want to see tangible differences in people's lives. But they don't have a political home. And we need to build a political home for those people.

[B]

Yeah, and I want to talk about why, especially because you and I have been chatting about this, so I know you've been thinking about this, why storytelling just isn't just vapid and isn't just sort of like comms media speak why it really, really matters. Because think of a perfect example. And I've actually witnessed this with the abundance crew, which I'm much a part of, but I really see this weakness. I'm sort of very much on everyone's team, but I have friendly critiques, which is there is this urge within the Democratic party which is really driven both by, let's say, the diploma divide. So there are lots of people who work at think tanks and lots of people who went to good schools. So the way you demonstrate you're serious about a policy issue is to talk about the policy and the ideas or to cite poll numbers. You really want to be rooted in truth and serious seriousness. And I think that's all very important. And I think that's something that if you critique the populist left and populist right, the reason why we could agree with some of the diagnosis and then have like a breakdown is the lack of truth. So for example, when I told the populist rights story, one of their solutions is to re industrialize America. But why has that process been a total disaster the past six or seven months? It's been. Well, when they were coming up with the tariff policy, they didn't say to themselves why what percentage of American factories would rely on parts that actually come from outside the United States to actually build their things. That's an actually very empirical question. And that is where wonkery is desperately, desperately, desperately important. You can't just vibe on your storytelling and actually expect to get things done. So this isn't just to basically say the populists get everything right. There's just a vulnerability. But my point here is that there's an over index on the left of center on the walkery and not enough on the actual. Like what are we trying to do here? Why should we be excited? So in too many abundance conversations, for example, there's too many conversations about permitting and single stair and multifamily housing. When I've tried to talk to normal people and Austin, just my friends about housing, I basically say, hey, isn't your kind of vibe right now that you can't buy a house? And they're like, yeah, that's totally true. Like a story I love telling about this that makes abundance more credible is I have a buddy who is getting married and his soon to be wife wife wants to stay in the city. He wants to move further out into exurban Austin because that's where you could buy a $500,000 house with five bedrooms with a nice bit of land for a, you know, appropriate amount of money. She doesn't like this though, because she's in her 20s and she wants to still stay in the city, but they can't afford anything. So my friend is like, I don't want to just rent for another six years. I went to grad school, I've got an mba, I run a business, I want to like, own something. Like, that's very much his interpretation of the American dream. And I say, hey, so. So I agree with all of that. There's this idea called abundance. And one of the ideas is that the choices should not be rent or move to the exurbs. There's this missing middle style of housing, a starter home. What if you could buy a three bedroom, two bathroom condo that was closer to the city, not right in the middle, but closer. That would make sense for both of your needs. Then you move to the exurbs. But actually because of zoning laws, you can't do that in huge parts of our city. So we're working to fix that. So we started with the endpoint. You want to own something, you feel like you can't own something. And then the tools by which we do that, the abundance agenda comes last when too many abundance conversations are so focused on the tools. So that's why the storytelling thing just matters so much to me in terms of actually communicating with people what you're trying to do.

[C]

Yeah. And we've thought about community as what they have on the kind of left and the right. There's very defined communities that they have. And I think we've thought a lot about the tactics of community building. Building. But the narrative and story of community building is essential. And you know, some of that is about bringing new people into the community. I think a lot of it is giving people a story that will get them through the difficult times. And that's something from our work, you know, really focusing on Democrats who are running in supporting Democrats who are running in red districts where things are really hard. They're getting attacked from the left, they're getting attacked from the right, obviously. And they then don't feel like they have a community. One thing at the abundance conference that made me most hopeful was the idea that that is a community and a story to believe in that you can tell yourself, I am doing this. I am doing these difficult things because of something larger, because of this community that I'm a part of that will support me when things get hard. Hard, but also Because I'm a piece of changing the world, that it's filling that yearning within me to change the world for the better. And you know the political science on this. Andy hall, the political scientist from Stanford, wrote a book called who Wants to Run? And basically found that moderate candidates are still winning, but they're less likely to run. So actually centrist candidates, moderate heterox candidates, people from kind of more pragmatic backgrounds, more pragmatic approaches, approaches have just become less likely to run in the first place over the last several years. Some of that's due to kind of pipeline and talent things that you talk a lot about in terms of entrepreneurial ecosystems. But part of it's just they don't see the ability to get things done. And I think being at the Abundance conference really made me feel like, okay, there is a community here that would make allow someone to say, I'm going to stick through this, I'm going to pull through this. I'm going to run for city council, I'm going to think about running for state senate. I want to eventually get that committee chairmanship because if I'm chair of this committee, I can do what my community has been telling me will have this incredible impact on changing the world. And centrist, lacking that story is an Achilles heel of saying we'll do the polling and we'll win here and we'll just copy this because things do need to aggregate into a larger story if we're going to have people kind of flood in behind the people that are on the cutting edge right now winning these tough sequences.

[B]

Yeah. And something I'm really curious to get your thoughts on. So the anecdote I'm about to tell was Chatham House Rules. So I can say it fairly. But I think the one thing that unites the populist left, populist right and then the post neoliberals is just like their starting point that the status quo is broken. That's just their thing. And I think that that was hard for a centrist, moderate coded person to articulate in 2014 for sure, 2017. Maybe this is just like a temporary crazy thing, but it gets easier and eas after 2024. So now I've seen lots of people across the spectrum just start with status quo's broken. But I was at a private gathering where I saw a person who is either gonna run in 28, 32 or 36 at the Democratic Party national level. And they gave the articulation of we get where voters are. They think things are broken, they think Things are not working. And Trump says that, and we're gonna say that too. That is one of our ways to win. Right? So that's the early part of storytelling. The story is, is even though I'm centrist coded, I'm not a let's just make things 2012 again. Everything's going to be great. I'm not Michael Bloomberg. I'm not sort of a DC think tanker who's just sort of having a good time with things as they are. I start there, but after this potential candidate made this statement, I just raised my hand and said, great. Super happy, legitimately that you are starting with the status quo being broken. Because that is like the first step. If you're going to build trust with voters, especially the voters we're talking about, you have to really start there. But we should know when Bernie and Trump, sort of populist left poppy is right. When they say the status quo is broken, they have a follow up sentence on that status quo is broken. Trump, it's the immigrants, it is the elites, it's the deep state. Weren't those Covid restrictions terrible? I'm going to make sure we bring in RFK Jr. And he's going to fix all that for you. With Bernie, it's status quo is broken and it's the oligarchy. And I'm unabashedly against that oligarchy. So my warning sign for centrists you don't have to have a perfect answer for, but I would love to hear you start with it, is how do centrists develop the second sentence and maybe the report that we'll get into in a second. Deciding to win is sort of how you start getting there. And this is why this purpose of this episode is not to say that deciding to win isn't enough. I think these are complementary projects. And then there's a version of your report that would just be Vibes based storytelling and it would not be as empirical and specific is what you've really done here. But how should Democrats, especially in the middle, think about adding the second sentence? Because that's actually incredibly difficult if you're starting from that center position.

[C]

Yeah, I think the second sentence problem is, you know, also related to the 20 minute problem of Democrats could do a canned 30 second answer to a difficult question, but why are Democrats not going on long form podcasts as much? It's very hard to carry some of these questions into 10, 20, 30 minutes. That's where Democrats feel vulnerable on particular issues. The second sentence challenge is a real thing. And that happens when, I think oftentimes you're not confident in your own story. And so it gets to this underlying problem of we don't have as full and coherent of a story in the political center. I do think we should be very cautious of which elements of, of, you know, alluded earlier to the idea that, you know, the, the populist right may be asking some of the right questions, but has the wrong solutions. And the populist left sometimes is asking questions people don't want asked. And I think of a South Texas Democrat who told us, you know, who's running for office and said progressives didn't want to make your life better, they wanted to make your life different. And there's this sense that the status quo is a tangible thing that everyone has in their head and they're thinking of the same thing. And when voters in South Texas, according to this candidate, had heard changing the status quo from progressives, they heard changing their life in a way that would make their life very different in a way they did want. They thought about jobs with border patrol jobs and oil and gas, gender and cultural issues in their schools, other, you know, litmus test issues that were pretty aggressive. They said, that's changing our, our life, that's changing our community. We don't want that change. That's not the status quo. We want disrupted. And I think there's this kind of knee jerk sense of, well, Democrats are protecting institutions like we're protecting the East Wing or we're protecting, you know, formal organizations or something, and there's something to that. But there's also a world in which the most popular politicians in America, the politicians who are proven to win over swing voters, are typically very calm. They're energetic, but they're calm. And so, you know, the most popular politicians in America tend to be governors from the opposite, opposite party of that state. Charlie Baker in Massachusetts or Phil Scott in Vermont or Andy Beshear in Kentucky and whatnot, pretty much all of the Democrats who are winning crossover U.S. house districts, whether it's a Don Bacon or Brian Fitzpatrick on the Republican side, or Jared golden and Marie Glues and Camp Perez on the Democratic side, they have stories, they do have personal, coherent stories that are very clear, but they're also calm and measured. And that doesn't mean they're not energetic, but they are not entirely tear down the entire system. Candidates in both parties who are winning crossover voters, and I think discerning where to go with the second sentence is in large part about which status quo is being disrupted. And I think for a lot of voters, they perceive a populist, less left, status quo disruption as upending their life in ways that they don't want of socialism and abolishing private health insurance and, you know, taking away jobs in key industries and bringing more chaos to their lives. And that there's a need to change systems in a way that, that have positive, tangible, positive effects that aren't just making life different and certainly are not making life more chaotic. They're making life better in a specific way.

[B]

Yeah, and I just want to really give this as a shout out because.

[A]

I think of this as a podcast which is really aimed at sort of.

[B]

Not in a lame sort of 501c3 foundation sense, but like I want there to be. And I know there are like 30 something to 20 somethings who are like listening to this to sort of guide their work. So my sort of Napoleon found the crown of France in the gutter. Opportunity is like this, developing the story, something that each candidate can do. And there's a lot of movement building opportunity there. And I just want to say the hard thing is, and this is why this isn't just sort of a dunk on welcome Fest. This is an actual intellectual problem that the big problem for centrists is that the story that a centrist would have held until, let's say around 2022 basically collapsed.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So I think of. So I was born in 1992. The story that I was broadly comfortable with with and was raised in sort of growing up upper middle class in the Portland suburbs were, hey, like, we won the Cold War and the world is getting better and globalization's happening. That's really great. So like, I went to, I went to private school until third grade where I. We spoke Spanish. But that's an example of like the cosmopolitan assumptions of the 1990s. Well, Marshall, like, look at this globalized world. Obviously you need to be bilingual because, like, everything's going to be integrated. The world is flat. It's going to operate that way. Well, hell, 9, 11 happens. Okay, okay. Then the 2008 financial crisis happens and then, oh, Barack Obama was elected. But, oh, you get the Tea Party and then you get Trump in 2016. And one of the other versions of the story was, hey, globalization is here. So manufacturing jobs are going away. But good news, we have a solution for that. We're going to send people to college. And this is why the storytelling is so important, because you and I can just tell the centrist 1990s story, story off the top of our head. Not because we've memorized any statistics, because that's how people transmit ideals. Like Danielle Lee Thompson, an episode you and I talked about, like something she's really helped me understand is that like the storytelling is just something really inherent and important. And I used to dismiss it as vapid, but you know, the story is, hey, during the early 20th century, people left the farm. That ended industrialization happened. So we sent them to high school. People didn't used to go to high school. So now it's the 1990s, we're going to send people to college. That's not because we're elitists, it's not because we're cosmopolitan and liberals. It's just the natural progression of how economies go. And once people go to college, they'll be able to take jobs in service industries and in finance and then that will just be a way that it makes sense. Asia will make our goods, they'll then get more democratic, they'll get more capitalistic, and then we'll see the spread happen as that doesn't happen. And then the sort of cultural side of the story is like we're also advancing towards progress. Obama was elected, so the emerging democratic majority of by 2050 we are going to be a yellow, brown, red, white, black nation. And it's all gonna be mixed together. You know that Time magazine cover, it showed the average American in the 2100s is gonna just be like this mix of brown, black and white. And when that goes away after 2024, that was the final pillar of just the story and the world that I was raised in. So I talked to all of my 30 something politician friends. There's lot of a just like we don't really know. So that just, I want to just give people that framework of like that was the old story. And you can't just sort of snap your fingers and expect Jake Aencloss and Derek Thompson or you within six months of the election to have a new one. Like that's actually a joint collective. Really, really difficult project to go through.

[C]

I think one, one reason it's important, you know, Jake is building a story. It may not be the Democratic story, but he's workshopping stuff, right? He's at the forefront of trying new things, things out. Obviously Derek put forward a comprehensive view in some sense, not necessarily in a political factional sense, but a competition of ideas is very difficult to have when people are afraid of expressing. George Stephanopoulos had this great line in 1992, specificity is a character trait. And so Centrists today often stumble on that test of character of how specific will you be be to name problems specifically, name solutions specifically that can add up to this story, that can feel like this is a character I want to follow and be part of their narrative. And I think you asked about 2026 welcome Fest. I think having more of a competition of stories, being more explicit. The first welcome Fest in 2025, Jared Goldman gave the keynote. It was progressive conservatism. And it started, started with, you know, apologies to the defenders of neoliberalism. Right. And he gave a particular vision this year. You know, you mentioned, you know, several abundance themed speakers in addition to many others. But we did not kind of counsel or prepare people to compete with each other for ideas. And I think as. As our community grows and as we get closer to 2028, there is a need for more specific and more competition between ideas, effectively of workshopping. And that's how I think we can stay with that capitalistic side of us of competition is good. And a competition of ideas I think will be very healthy and something that we should be building towards, encouraging or even demanding more specificity for people who want to put forward a vision for the party.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So question I'd ask you then we'll.

[A]

Get into the report for sure.

[B]

But I would love to hear how you conceptualize your role. I listened to the infamous Ta Nehisi Coates Ezra Klein episode and I really enjoyed and wished they'd spent more. Time. Obviously this happened towards the end of the episode. So I get it where Ta Nehisi asked Ezra, what's your role? What's your deal? So my answer to that question, because I think everyone who does the work that we should do should have an answer to that question. I am less. You know, I talked about this on the phone during the pre call yesterday, but as I. I've left my right contrarianism, I've just found more and more, but I still have a lot of narrative DNA from that period. So something the right does is the right. And this evolved out of Buckley and Goldwater and Reagan. The right starts with ideology, then gets to party. You don't see people on the right say, I'm a Republican. That's actually very cringe and embarrassing. If you do that, you probably work at the Republican National Committee and that's just not the cool thing to basically do. Like you say, and here's the thing. So this is something my Democrat friends are surprised by. It's not like a highbrow versus lowbrow thing. Right. So even if you're like a radio shock jock, you'll say, I'm a conservative, I'm on the right. I was talking to a friend of mine who's an elected office, and I was sort of saying, like, hey, I'd love to put together a conference on like, the future of American liberalism. And this person said, that seems a little academic. Don't you mean the future of the Democratic Party? And that was such a fascinating example for me because I was of like, oh, man, the right. Whether it's like, once again, a working class Alex Jones person to like a national person would never say, because they would say, wait, conservatism is different than Republicans. Liberalism is different than Democrats. I'd love you just to like, talk about this within the conception of what your role is, because I see myself as a liberal who's focused on ideology, who uses the Democratic Party as my vehicle. But this report deciding to Win is focused on the Democratic Party. So understanding this, I think will be useful. Useful.

[C]

Yeah. So I think as far as, you know, our role as an organization and kind of my role in, you know, I think we are heirs to a faction within the Democratic Party. And, you know, I place my own personal story through that. I mean, after I was a history major in college, not involved in politics at all, I watched tons of the Sports center, not a lot of political shows. And I did AmeriCorps because I was at a small Catholic college and doing a service here. I was going to do Jesuit Volunteer Corps, AmeriCorps, Teach for America. That's just kind of the ethos that I was part of at that time that was around my story. I did not know AmeriCorps was a Democratic Leadership Council, like neoliberal centrist Democratic Project. I get out of that. What do I get most exposed to is kind of charter schools and kind of education reform of the style of the dlc. And I think I am in this story of having mentors where I get to sit with Elaine Kmark in 2017 saying the far left is really intersectional. And it used to be just the teachers unions against Obama style education reformers. And now it's like Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, the formal Democratic Party, the Democratic Socialists of America, Boston chapter, Chapter three, One Action. And it's like it's us against everybody. Within just a couple years, they built this intersectional kind of community online. And I get to have get advice from Elaine Kmart because I'm part of this network and part of this story. And I think we view our role as trying to re energize that community. And a big part of our programs are structured in elect focusing on helping elect candidates and sending center right USS districts convene bringing people together both in kind of private gatherings and retreats, but also then kind of publicly at welcome Fest, then amplifying on our welcome stack newsletter and some mass market fundraising for candidates is really trying to build a flywheel to kind of elevate and connect people who are part of that story and part of that narrative. And so we don't have that concise name at the this point. We're lucky that we're part of a community that is lots of organizations, some new, some have been around for a while who are all rowing in the same direction. And so it's much different kind of than. Than 1989. But I think it's that kind of connecting role that we, that we play. And there's, you know, people talk a lot about the 80s and a lot about the DLC. Have you read Nixon Land?

[B]

I can't go like, yeah, Nixon Land is actually back there. I have read Nixon Land. Rick Pearlstein line.

[C]

It's on. There's this line. And so I think today feels almost more like 1970, you know, than it does 1992 in some way. Yeah, there's this great line of, you know, the, the head of the garment workers union, you know, says that the left is changing the whole point of liberal politics away from economics to aesthetics and ethics to morality and culture and would throw America's poor to the Republican wolves. LBJ was a son of a. But he was our son of a. And liberals had precious few son of a to triflingly throw away. And we feel like some of the. The Jared Goldens of the world and people who are out there getting hit from every side. We have precious few SOBs to throw away. And job one for us is wrapping our arms in them and getting them whatever help they need even and elevating them and saying we need more people like that, that we have very few SOBs to throw away. People who are willing to take it from all sides, who are willing to say what they believe and push back on the left. Yes. But it's more pushing back on people that are attacking them on the path to winning majorities, not just to fight with the left because it's fun. And I think that is an animating kind of spirit of our community, of kind of connection we may not have to.

[A]

I. Yeah, sorry, go on your show.

[C]

No, no, no. I was Gonna say that I knew I could say because of the, you know, Danielle Lee Thompson saying her story doesn't. So it doesn't.

[B]

Quick, quick, quick, quick side note. It's a real tragedy. I so, like, you called me after that episode and you, like, brought up.

[A]

The, like, it doesn't fuck.

[B]

And then I just run into so many people that open with, like, does it fuck, Marsha? Like, that really wasn't. The problem is this is technically a think tank podcast. So, like, Danielle and I were talking, and at this, for the 2010s, the most obvious thing we would do is just like, just lean all the way into that. So we're trying to find. So a story we're trying to figure out is how do I. But here's the thing. I love that narrative because, like, it just gets to the core of it, right? Like, one of the biggest problems in the world that we, like, we live in. This is like a right and left thing. This isn't about anyone's ideology. It's so hard to be direct. So my last use of the term, the question, does it fuck yes or no? Is just so direct that it's just very, very useful. So I need to find a way of integrating it every six episodes or so without beating it to death. But one thing that I want to say before we get to the next segment, I just really like talking to you, so we'll get to the report. But I think this stuff is important here is I want to really call out the Charter movement in a really positive way. And let's put aside the charter movement debates, because this is the example of what has been lost and leads to the lack of confidence. So something that. That, once again, Danielle is working on. This is going to be a real subject of her book as she talks about MAGA populism as essentially being. It's a story. Like, this is where I got a lot of these ideas from. It's a story, and there are actors and there are players, and the audience gets to respond. There's call and response. It's this really, like, dynamic thing. And Zoran Mandani's campaign has a lot of that, right? Like when Zoran does a, like, scavenger hunt. The reason why that wasn't critical is it actually was the logical endpoint of the style of politics that he actually went about. So the right and the left populist side really have this. And the key thing, if this is like a play, if this is the thing, and she's not saying this disparagingly, you have a bunch of different characters that the audience could resonate with. So when I visit my MAGA in laws and they know me as sort of the family lib who does DC work. So the thing they wanted to ask me about, it shocked me. It shouldn't have shocked me. But it wasn't true Trump. It wasn't like whatever Fox News story of the week. It was, what's RFK done lately at HHS and the fda? He is so cool. He's kicking indoors. He is a person who they are following, who they trust. And the thing is, obviously RFK ran for president for a bit, but he's not like a traditional politician. And I think something that our side, not actually all sides. Lina Khan is kind of an example of this because she wasn't elected to office or anything like that. We need to find more characters who have substance and matter and are trustful, who aren't just elected politicians. It's been very. And once again, like the right and the left. The right especially, really understand this right and what the charter movement did so well structurally, what's put aside the policy debates. Michelle Rhee, the D.C. public schools chancellor, she is a main character. She has the famous time cover in 2009 of her holding a broom in a cloud classroom, sweeping out the refuse. And obviously that descended during the Obama era into a debate over how accurate were the test scores, did the reforms work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But the point was the charter movement, because of the nature of the movement you were doing, you were a reformist movement. So you needed the school chancellors, you needed the person who isn't getting elected to authorize more charters. Obviously that person mattered, but the person who more mattered to your storytelling was the person who did teach for America for 10 years and then founded a charter school network. So these are main characters. And what really, really sucks if you think about Democratic Party problems in the 2000s, is you know what characters would have been really, really useful when Democrats because of COVID because of the culture war issues in schools, because of the phonics debate, because of the learning loss. Michelle Rhee would have been really, really useful as a main character who had credibility as someone who's not just like the pro teachers union person, someone who's very anti status quo. Those characters who by dint of the complicated politics of charters and ed reform after Betsy DeVos came into power in 2017, left the table in many ways, they would have been so helpful. So I just want to really shout out the Charter movement for really having a clear story, a pipeline and just saying, hey, we win not just by having politicians, but by actually finding and highlighting like main character active players who aren't just like senators or members of Congress. Because guess what? During an anti institutional age, whether you're left, right or center, those people don't have credibility. Joe Rogan would probably be much more receptive to Michelle Rhee saying look, I got back into school as first thing I could. I'm fighting learning loss, I'm bringing phonics back to school. Way more of it. No offense to Jake Auchincross, he's been a great guest on the show from Jake Auchinquas. So we just need more main characters and everybody wants to shout that out.

[C]

I think the, the education reform movement, charter movement, there were a lot of jobs, right? There's a lot of things to do, there are jobs to be done. And it onboards people into the world in a way that you have that tangible benefit you're delivering to people, but you also see the world as messy. And so one of the hallmarks of being a pragmatist, of being a political scientist interest is having both a sense of you can make a change to deliver tangible benefits to people. And the world's really complicated. Like Teach America teachers didn't come out and say wow, that was easy, that's straightforward. All we need to do is add an hour to the school day, right? That was not what happened. You know, I did AmeriCorps out in San Diego and working at an adult literacy program with people that had gone through 13 years of public education in America and were under able to read. Changed my entire worldview and mindset of yes, we do need to build innovative programs that can meet people where they are and make a difference in their lives. But also the world is very, very messy. And I think the climate movement in particular, people got onboarded in the climate movement and they didn't go to Mississippi or one of my fellow welcome leadership team members went for Teach America and encounter all the messiness of a public school district, of dealing with parents, of dealing with the bureaucracy, of trying to change things, of trying to incorporate feedback and make a difference. The climate movement got often onboarded into let's try to shut down the chancellor's office. And I think if we think of a counterfactual of what if there was an ed reform like climate movement that was saying let's go try to get a solar farm permitted, committed, right? What would those people have gone on to do if they realized the messiness of the world, they would have become centrists. There's some great, you know, research from some people in the resistance or of, of resistance people who people got more moderate as they knocked on more doors of swing voters. Right. It actually, it is a moderating force to deal with the messiness of the world. And I think another ecosystem like the charter school movement to onboard I mean hundreds of thousands of people into jobs where they're encountering both this sense of what's possible to change things and make it better for people's lives, but also bureaucracy and politics and messiness and complex societal issues would be huge.

[B]

And I gotta say on this point, and this is a slight reframe slash disagreement with you, it's not that you take the type of let's say went to Columbia, 22 year old who goes.

[A]

Into the sunrise movement or you could.

[B]

Expand this to gun control too. So joins March for our lives in 2018. It's not that they become centrists in the way that you and I are probably centrists, it's that their theory or understanding of how theories of change work would be different. So a good example once again Chatham House story. But I could tell is I led an abundance conversation at Blue Bloomberg's Going to work labor event and I was challenged by a Gen Z left activist who said to me I just think abundance has failed. You just don't have a mass mobilized movement. Where are the people in the streets that are demanding abundance? And I said here's just to push back on you a question that I want you to think about. Should we measure policy transformation success by the metric of how many people are out on the street streets? Because under your theory March for Our Lives would have affected gun control and Sunrise movement would have really changed things with Israel. Gaza politics is a little more complicated because there's a very actually more direct theory we're increasing the costs of squishy moderates thinking that they could have all APAC things but also they're two state solutions. That's actually I'm putting the Gaza example to the side because that one's just very specific. So I'm Talking about these 2000 and tens mass movements where I said that actually really worked because for example look at the GOP's transformation under Trump and look at how the GOP has realigned itself on foreign policy. There was not a mass protest movement demanding that the GOP reject the George W. Bush foreign policy crew. Actually what happened was there was a specific cohort of people. Some of these people who are my friends who worked at think tanks and worked in Senate offices and went to get drinks after work during their 20s. And now a lot of these people are in mid and senior levels when it comes to actual policy. So my point to this Gen Z person was your theory of change is actually not accurate. And I. And once again, I find it best not to argue with people about their end. So I wasn't trying to argue with him about his perspective of gun control or with his perspective on climate change. I was just sort of saying, you were probably listening. I said this. I was like, your funders are telling you you need to do a mass movement, but that's their theory of change, and you should interrogate this. And he came up to me three days later and. And said, that was actually so helpful. I'd never thought of it that way. This is what we're really talking about, which is that, like, if you engage with environments that push you to think hard about how the world actually works, that will change how you think about things. So let's actually get to the actual report, because I appreciate you actually doing that. But I think that because this is. You're doing a lot of podcasts, I want to do, like, a specific version of this. So this is our 45 minutes of it, but the specific report is called Deciding to Win. And I would love for you just to give just the quick summary of what deciding to wins. What is it and what is its.

[A]

Conclusion that people should take away from it.

[C]

Yeah, so there's lots of, you know, postmortems, lots of chatter, lots of blog posts. We've done a lot of that ourselves. This seems to be a comprehensive account of where Democrats are right now. Now, just how bad is it, where Democrats went wrong and what needs to be changed to. To win again. And so the arc of that story, which includes, you know, an analysis of election results, studying candidates who have overperformed and done, well, 500,000 surveys with American voters. And it tells this story in a pretty blunt way. I think we have not encountered. Encountered a lot of blowback because this is not about attacking any particular faction. This is a these are the facts story that aims to be comprehensive. And so Democrats did move left. That is maybe debatable, but when you look from 2012 to 2024, whether it's analyzing the platform, looking at bill sponsorships, it's very clear, number two, voters noticed they view Democrats as too liberal. Is that a tough touch? And is not sharing their priorities. And we are now in a half reckoning, effectively people say, yes, the party is run by highly educated white liberals, but we as a party over the last year have not identified that story or identified those specific steps to take. And so we do lay out a set of popular Democratic policies, policies, unpopular Democratic policies, popular Republican policies and unpopular Republican policies, along with addressing things like the myth of mobilization, the idea that you can just amp up your side. And so this is not, I would say highly prescriptive, but it is, I think a holistic view of just how bad of a position Democrats are in right now with kind of guideposts for moving forward. And as welcome always does, as we always do, it's starting with those lessons from those over performers and trying to identify more of them.

[B]

So here's a question for you. So I've pulled specific parts of the.

[A]

Report that I'm really interested in.

[B]

So you have this great poll quote on what you do and don't mean by moderate. And seriously, so many props to the self awareness on this dynamic. By moderation quote, you mean taking popular issues voters most care about and breaking with Democratic orthodoxy on unpopular issues like immigration and public safety. Here's what you don't mean. Once again, quote, reflexively defending the status quo, the establishment or corporate interests, or not always just default taking the centrist position. So can you explain the difference between those two things?

[C]

Yeah. So when we started back in 2019, you know, we reached out to two of the top over performers in the country. So here in Massachusetts, reached out to Charlie Baker's team, talked to his, his top advisor and then Senator Manchin's communications advisor down in West Virginia. And they said eerily similar things. They said to demonstrate your authenticity to voters, you actually have to believe the thing you're differentiating on. It does not necessarily have to be voters number one issue, but it does have to be something that they clearly identify with the other party and that is accessible to them in a way that shows not just tells that you're different. But the biggest part of both those conversations was not kind of the similar prescription. It was, you know, I said where do you go to kind of learn with other people how to do this? And they're both mild manner people and they both got pretty frustrated. One of them took a glass and slammed it down on the table at illegal seafoods around here and said no one ever asked tasks. And that's one of the big things, not kind of just about the report, but about overall learning from people who overperform. So to, to this point when we look at the candidates who are overperforming the most in the party, they are not, again, you know, kind of classic socially liberal, fiscally conservative candidates. They are not cookie cutter people who just take the exact midpoint between issues and certainly would not describe them as kind of a corporate establishment default. And I think that's a really important thing because we've seen kind of centrism, moderation, heterodoxy really defined by the left over the last decade as simply selling out, as not believing that change is possible, as not believing anything. Where we see actually the people who do over form, taking specific, tangible places, places, issues, often where it's very clear that that's distinct from their party and doing so with confidence. And they're able to do it with confidence because it's what they actually believe.

[A]

Here's something I'm curious about.

[B]

I really don't like. And you use this in the report and sort of left critics use this. I don't like the term moderate or. And you don't use the term moving to the right. Right, because. And this is maybe different leaders or different eras, but when I advocate for, when I advocate against, let's say, defund.

[A]

The police or like when I talk.

[B]

About why it's important that we a protect vulnerable people from ICE and overreach and insanity while also at the same time believing that we need to have a secure border. And then when I warn people, look, the immigration is swung positive again. So like when Trump's in charge, everyone's pro immigration. When a Democrat's in charge and is perceived as not controlling the border, or there's like crime, it goes negative again. So it swung back because Trump literally did everything. Like Stephen Miller could not have better planned to turn the American people against basically right wing immigration policy. But the warning I give people is, hey, let's say Democrats come back in 2029. The dumbest and worst thing you can do do is just say, hey, okay, it swung back, so everything's different again. We're not going to care about the border. And then the caravans start again. And as we've learned from 2014 and 2021 and 2023, the caravans just sort of like activate the Joe Rogan people. They just activate the, they activate the Fox News Channel. That really speaks to voters who like, we don't speak to who are the moderate or who like the moderates who you're talking, talking about speak to. And it's just like a huge problem. And sorry, that's not a messaging Problem. It's just too, too, too, too obvious, especially now that they ship migrants to blue cities and make this very, very salient. So, all that said, I'm not saying anything I just said because I've moderated or turned to the right, that's just like, what I believe. I wasn't public about this because it wouldn't have been helpful. I was on the right at the time, but I wasn't in favor to defund the police. I wasn't in favor of the way that Biden had handled immigration policy. And that's just like, what I believe. So I just think that centrists should be more careful in how they articulate this. And I think Kamala Harris's big problem with her attempt at moderation was it clearly was in many ways a left parody of what moderation was, which is, I took these extreme positions that I probably didn't believe in at the time, but I just did them. Okay, now I'm going to find the middle, middle and then say that thing and, you know, 107 days, that's obviously not going to work versus in 2019. Not that I'm a presidential candidate, but I just wouldn't have signed, I like to hope I wouldn't have signed the ACLU statement. I wouldn't have had cringe statements about defund the police, because this isn't what I believe. And then maybe I wouldn't have done well in a 2019 primary, but I actually would have done better in a political environment from 2022 onwards. So that's just like, where I am. So I want centrist to think harder about not falling into parody versions of what this is. So I'd love to hear your thoughts because this relates. Basically, I think the bad version of moderation is just someone looking at all of the polls that you have listed and saying, okay, this one, this one, this one. Rather than, okay, what's my story? What do I believe? What's my role? And then what are issues that I care about that express what I'm deeply interested in and believe in? So I'd love to hear your response for that.

[C]

Yeah, I, I think that's exactly what we want to enable in people. You know, we have to, because it is a democracy, you know, put things in the context of respecting voters and meeting voters where they are. But the Democratic Party, you know, any particularly, I think, like a lot of straight white guys who stuck around for the last decade in Democratic Party politics, they got used to awkwardly saying stuff that they, they don't Believe or triple checking before any words come out of their mouth. And it creates a lot of awkwardness and a lack of confidence. And so to be very clear of I believe in borders and I believe in humane treatment. I believe in, you know, I believe if you asked kind of any Democratic presidential nominee for the prior decades should we decriminalize the border, it would have been, I mean, I think it's a normal thing for someone to, for Obama to be called deporter in chief by left wing advocates and for Obama not to care that he's called deporter in chief because he knows that as a nation you need to have borders.

[B]

And he was fighting for DACA and he was fighting for immigration reform. Like that's the point.

[C]

Yes, yes, exactly. And he was confident. And I think this is, you know, back to this, you know, not to keep coming back to the story story. I brought up the SOB's quote from Nixon Land in part because we do see, you know, Marie Glison Camperez and Jared golden savagely attacked for voting no on student debt cancellation where if you rewind the clock five years before that, Elizabeth Warren is at a summit and or a town hall in western Massachusetts and a student says can we really cancel student debt? That sounds like just a bit impossible. Who would, how could we cancel our student debt? And you know, Warren says, you know, the Tea Party didn't beat Obamacare but they built a lot of power organizing as a muscle, not a battery. The more we use it, the stronger we get. We got to organize around this issue. And for I think Jared Golden, Marie and camp on that issue and other candidates have on other issues, just saying the emperor has no clothes. Like no people. People don't want that. My voters don't want that. I think that's people took out. These people have medical debt, people have these other issues. And so people who have confidence and they're kind of sobs, they're tough. So you know people that are getting hit from both sides that are willing to just call it like it is. And that is the type of centrism, the type of heteroxy that we want to see and encourage more.

[B]

And this is the thing too where my answer. So we'll do an exercise in a second. Do you have an extra like 10 minutes?

[C]

Yeah, yeah. Great for doing over fact check call but great, great.

[A]

Good to know you're fact checking.

[B]

We'll keep that in the episode.

[C]

See, I'm getting fact checked.

[B]

Oh, getting fact check. Okay. We'll do a follow up episode where we call you out on that. But, you know, you did this interesting exercise. It's not even an exercise. You list like unpopular Democratic policies and you list, yeah, you, you list popular and unpopular Democratic policies.

[A]

Folks can look at the report.

[B]

But I did something personally, but which I want my listeners, especially my politician and staffer friends, to do a version of this exercise we're about to do. So I went through the unpopular popular ones and I selected the ones that I agree are unpopular. And if I were a presidential candidate or just a member of Congress or a candidate, I would not support. So I don't support abolishing the police. And these, by the way, are the top five least popular things. Abolishing the police, providing free health care to undocumented immigrants. I believe, like, emergency services are like, really important. But like, and I'm not sure what the proposal is, like, let's give free health care. If we're giving free health care to people, I would start with like American citizens and permanent residents first so that we can have a different conversation. But it's like top line. Asked me, I would say no, that isn't what I believe. Oh, and by the way, and this is the key thing, I believe in a pathway to citizenship. So we shouldn't have a situation where we have a long term population of people who are just permanently undocumented. So that's part of the answer in understanding the policy there. Another one is unconditional requirements that towns require multifamily housing. That's a tension point with abundance. But I would not support a situation where the federal government says every single city and town in America, you, you must yimby fi and you must do it right. Because I sort of believe in federalism that provokes popular backlash. That's like a parody of what the right thinks abundance is cutting police budgets by 10% and then getting rid of tracking in public schools. So those are just things that, like, I disagree with. I've always disagreed with them and I should be more comfortable. And I wasn't comfortable doing this before just saying that. So that's part of the exercise. The other part though is I went through the ones that are unpopular and I listed the ones that I do support though. So I actually do support increasing STEM visas, especially in critical sectors. I don't want mandates of multifamily housing, but like, I'd be really interested in providing grants to cities and towns that are conditional. So it's extra free money on creating multifamily housing. Now, to be clear, and this is what I loved what you put about the charter movement having different roles. I would only do that policy if I knew we had like, on the ground, local partners in the community who wouldn't, who would actually implement this and do this the right way. So an example, I live in this place called Circle, see, in Austin, and it's mostly suburban from the 80s, 90s and 2000s. But there's this little corner where they built a bunch of condo starter homes. Critically, this was on land that was zoned for commercial. So what that means is you can't see it from any of the homes. It hasn't changed the character of the neighborhood. It just added a bunch of housing. And a bunch of my friends who are in our 30s, like, live in that area. So that is where you deploy. It's not like you're just building a giant apartment building right next to the suburban home. So I would need someone on the ground who could say they got it. I do support subsidizing EV purchases. I support partial student loan forgiveness as a part of a grand bargain of reform. So, like, hey, higher education, this thing isn't working. So we're going to go after the schools, but we're also going to recognize that there are people who've been like, ruined by this system. And by the way, maybe the colleges themselves are subsidizing that. But whatever, whatever, there is some form of student loan forgiveness support. And then I also support creating a $3,000 universal child allowance. So I'm not trying to claim. I'd love to hear what you're claiming, that people should not believe in things that are unpopular. It's just that a quote that I heard, and I'm sorry to rant here, people have decided I've been ranting lately. But I'm just so excited about this, so I'll keep going. I saw this great quote that I wish I'd written it down because I'd know who said it. The person said, polls don't tell me what to do. They tell me how to accomplish what I want done. And I love that because, for example, example. So I don't support the mandate on multifamily housing, but I do support a conditional grant. These are both not quite popular, but it does tell me, hey, if you want to get this done, you actually have to go to the community. You actually have to make a deal. You have to have someone on the ground where there's community buy in. And not in a lame NIMBY way, but just sort of like, hey, you guys need this local Starter home housing because you just closed three schools in your district and there's no elementary schoolers. You don't want to just be a retirement community. So let's work out a deal there. So I would just love to hear your response to this because I think this is what a good version. This was actually me organically taking this away. I just love how you're, this is why I love the report. I just like was reading this to proper. I sort of wait, I'm just going to do this for a second. What do I think about this? And I want everyone to do it because think about this. When I was explaining what I support that's unpopular, I had to give reasons for it. I had to think and think of trade offs. So love to hear your response. Response?

[C]

Yeah, I think the, the exercise piece is exactly what we, what we want and I think the challenge that the Democratic Party's had for the last several years is an intersectional purity around multiple unpopular issues. Yeah. And so I think the thing that there is, you know, should be broader agreement on is, is you know, if you are, you know, seen as in league with abolish the police and with providing, I mean, you know, providing healthcare to undocumented immigrants that's part of Medicare for all, you know, expanding the Supreme Court, there's multiple of these, where you have these interlocking -20 issues. Right.

[B]

@ a movement level. Right. Yeah.

[C]

Yes, at a very at and low. I think part of why it's helpful for individuals to do this exercise but also part of why we do need people having full throated arguments with these contrasting competing but specific visions for the party is that the same reason that it's exciting to be in a room with elected officials or budding elected officials at the abundance conference who feel like they're willing to pay a price for, for something. And so the allegation against centrists has been for a while and still is, oh, they don't believe in anything and if they do, it's kind of sell out unpopular stuff for their donors or something.

[B]

Right.

[C]

But there are things that I, you know, getting rid of tracking is not popular. But also kind of the statewide common assessments sometimes are not popular. I deeply believe in that and I think as you build kind of coalitions that have to be somewhat intersectional, you do have to say what, what price am I willing to pay? What price would we be willing to pay? And so I think, you know, abundance does have this interesting push pull where people are saying, oh, the popularists have been saying only do things that pull well. But now they're saying, do abundance and all of abundance doesn't pull well. When you use their words, it's like, well, it's hard to simultaneously say they're calling out problems, offering real solutions, and deeply believe in something, but it's not that popular. But then if you're only going for popular things, you're getting attacked for that as well. And so we do need the kind of interlocking set of people and issues and think tanks and perspectives to say, okay, the full breadth of the intersectional purity test from the left were unpopular and could not be replicated on the center. Even if centrists wanted to, there would not be that large level of consensus across the full array of maximalist issue positions. However, subsets of centrists do need to cobble together an interlocking set not only of issues which in the aggregate are popular, but of talent and leaders and ideas and values and yes, story worries that in the aggregate can be popular and can also get specific things done, even if some of those specific things are not at the top of the bright green here for high net positives as specific issues.

[B]

Yeah, and I just want to note that the left has actually convinced me that popularism as a framework is less useful than I think the 2022 version that was just very direct, trying to solve a very direct problem. I think my personal opinion is popularism isn't quite as, because it raises uncomfortable questions, it leads you in weird places. Because here's where popularism matters. I think popularism matters when you're putting together your actual campaign package, right? So like when you're putting aside what are going to be my ads, what's my presentation as a candidate, what's like my material. That's the thing. And popularism should have led Andrew Cuomo to talking about cost of living agenda stuff.

[A]

It's still crazy to me that that.

[B]

Wasn'T an obvious thing for them. But don't let popularism say, well, abundance is over because it's not popular. And David Shore kind of vaguely me to not care about things that aren't popular. That's just like a bad version of that. And I will tell you, having talked to a lot of staff and electeds, there is actually a bastardized version of popularism that's actually very unhelpful. So what I really push people on is take popularism seriously, but not literally. Once again, what do you actually think? And then we get into the actual question of it. And then there's also somebody said, and this is so Giselle Hale came on the realignment a few weeks ago. She leads the abundance of select his network. She was a mayor and she gave a perfect example of how abundance could do a better job. So she's knocking on doors and people were unhappy of her nbism and she stood her ground and said, hey, like where do your kids live? And they're like, well, you know, like they're in their 30s, they have kids, they live in Nevada, they live in New York and Texas. She's sort of like the reason why your kids can't live here and you want them to live here is that we don't have starter homes. That's what I'm trying to do. And people at a one for one love the all Obviously it's like a small race. So she did have the ability to basically talk to everyone. But that's an example of how you could take something unpopular as an opportunity to tell a story and articulate yourself in a way that even if someone still disagrees in a polling sense on abundance, we're like, okay, cool. Giselle really cares about my community and cares about me and my family. So that's a good way to think about it. So the last section here and this is another era of praise for you for this report. I think part of the reason why I think it's been received far better than a lot of sort of like the reformist centrist thing is you have positive things to say about the left faction of the Democratic Party. Right. And it's really funny. You rank order 3 different groups people should pay attention to. So you should pay attention to the, you know, the MGPs who are like holding these like plus two Trump districts yet are getting reoccurred elected. You're calling out hopefully the Ruben Gallegos who are strong and tough on the border. But the first group that you list out is, hey, Democrats have a lot to learn from aoc, Zoron and Bernie when it comes to the cost of living and middle class opportunity precarity issues. So I think I just want to really give you some inside baseball praise for just starting there is really huge because something I've tried sort of like the centrist code person who probably talks to the left the most and hears angry. I get angry DMs every other week on this. I think people in the center confuse annoying center for American Progress lefty staffer with like more serious lefties who just like sometimes actually do just want to be heard and I'm not. And this Is also another way that, like my time on the right was helpful. Coming from the right, this whole factionalism thing is like crazy to me. It doesn't make any sense because the whole purpose of the. And this is not something that comes easy and quick, but the whole 50 year conservative project was how do we get this weird set of people on the team together? How do you just do that? So I've just been trained by like career birth to understand how to do that and just sort of. I think a lot of people on the Democratic Party side. Steve Taoies is really right that factionalism is new to the Democratic Party. You would not say left of left of center and mean something genuine in the 2000s.

[A]

But that means.

[B]

Means you're an Elizabeth Warren supporter, not a Bernie supporter. Those are two very different categories of people. It really, really, really matters. So just like calling out institutional best practices for navigating factionalism, you just calling them out specifically and praising them as a faction, not saying you just agree with them. You also call them out on things you disagree with. But that's just like so important. I want more people to do that. So would love you to close on how you think of like the factionalism thing. Because no group is peer, has 50 plus one there has to be working together. So love to hear you close on that.

[C]

Yeah, I think first on the kind of progressive left that, you know, I think AOC and and Madame in particular are built to top of, they have a dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystem that we've learned a tremendous amount from. It's not just that they have the story in the community, they have the entrepreneurs, they have muscles that have been built up over many years now where they can try new things, where they can take best practices that work in Chicago and move them to New York and vice versa. And some of that we can't learn from on the center. But we do have to look at them as entrepreneurs and practitioners and really admire what they built. In addition to having that confidence of a very clear story that's been a big part of this discussion. Um, I also think one thing that we've done poorly on the center is look at the factions on the left as multiple factions, which you just alluded to of Warren and Bernie are different. And I think centrists have had a tendency to lump in a whole set of people to the left of center or just people who criticize the establishment in mainstream. And I think this establishment critique is something that the center needs to do more and can do more and it has to have that second sentence and also has to be to able and we're looking at its own party of saying we are in a place where we cannot win a Senate majority under reasonable normal trajectories with the current map. How did we get here? How did the establishment allow us to get here? What are the kind of things that we can do to get out of that? And I think on the, I'd say the other kind of factional point, I do think that the effort that Blue Dogs have put in and the effort that some new Dems and kind of abundance adjacent world I put in to bringing more specificity in this year since the election is really important and give them big kudos for that because I think as a party we need to move to a place where there are these more well defined debates across these intersecting set of issues with people who feel like they're, they're part of something. We feel like they identify with a subset of elected officials within the board party in a way that yes, the, you know, mom Donnie and AOC and Bernie have done an amazing job at on their end. You know, I think we shouldn't just be jealous and to be frank, I've been jealous of the community that they had and I think we want to build that sense of community through welcome Fest and, and other things and obviously your show and other kind of networks you're a part of have a real, very clear, authentic set of community. People are friends, people can bounce ideas off each other. People trust things. And we need more subsets of, of those on the center end of the spectrum so that we can have this competition for ideas going into 2028.

[B]

Closing statement and I am so glad that you understand that the left is.

[A]

More complicated because I'm not going to.

[B]

Name any names here, but I think some centrists who take the group's critique too seriously and just put every group on the left will be shocked to hear people in the antitrust progressive movement who agree with every single word this report says on immigration, immigration and crime. So I just so did by just like putting everyone in the same left bucket, which I've heard too many people influence. Do they miss weird ways of like we don't agree with you on antitrust, but actually this could be your. If you're trying to make this an immigration argument. There are some real allies that are getting swept under the table and they notice that and they've been very frustrated. They're sort of like if they won't acknowledge how we've been sending signals. We agree on that. It means that we can't trust them. So there's an example of something that people are missing. So that's really huge. Liam, you have to go be fact checked. This is really helpful. Thank you for joining. And people read the actual report. This is a more meta conversation, but we'll have more to come on this topic. Thank you for joining me on the realignment.

[C]

Great to be here. Thanks, Marshall.