C (3:03)

Well, first of all, there was no Camelot. There was no Camelot. Jack Kennedy never heard the word Camelot. Pierre Salinger said he would have puked if he heard that word. It was completely made up afterwards when Jackie Kennedy gave an interview to Arthur Schlesinger.

C (3:20)

That's all I'll say.

B (3:22)

No, and totally accurate. And I think the key thing here is that there's the myth, right? When you do it with the Kennedy ethos, there's like the myth versus the actual. But what I want to really posit for readers who should check out your book is that there's something different about Bobby Kennedy that I think a lot of people in today's political moment could take something from that doesn't require them to buy into the broad myth. There's something unique. Like. What is that unique thing?

C (3:46)

Well, I think it was an honest identification with victims. I think he. Everybody around him that I've been able to figure out thought that he. Unlike Jack, Jack was sort of like an FDR figure and a Lou figure looking down on people from a distance. Bobby would find. He would find himself within the world of the. The losers, if you will. He thought of himself as the. The. The runt of the litter, his father called him. The one that wasn't tall and handsome like his brothers.

C (4:23)

He. He went to a Protestant school in New England and he was the Catholic in the school. He was. He was an enlisted man in the army. Unlike his brothers, who were all officers, he. He was like that. And, and to some extent, Ted Kennedy was like that too.

C (4:43)

I always wondered if I ever met Jack Kennedy. He wouldn't look upon me as somebody that wasn't quite of his caliber to know him. Whereas Bobby and Teddy. I think Bobby especially was a. He made friends who were heroic. His. His idea of a great friend would be John Glenn, the astronaut, or a Whitaker, the. The mountain climber. It'd be somebody who. Or Rosie Greer or somebody from football. Somebody that achieved something on their own, not through their pedigree. That's how he looked at people. And I think we like that better. I think we all do.

B (5:19)

I think you refer to RFK in the book as a tough liberal. I think my pitch for a lot of my audience, which are sort of center left, like aspiring political leaders, I think RFK and his liberalism is A rebuttal to the idea that you can be. That you can't just be a liberal and be focused on justice and be focused on growth and be strong. And I think what so much of what's been lost since his death is a liberalism that's confident, that feels like it can both be in many ways center left, but also strong on the issues, but also identify with people who seem to be left out. So that's what I, when I sort of read your book and think of my RFK understanding, that's the different version.

C (5:59)

Yeah, I think that's what I want to believe. I want to be known to believe. When Bobby was sitting at home, out in his house, his mansion out in Virginia, watching the U.S. capitol burn, the city of Washington burn after the assassination of Martin Luther King, he was decrying that behavior. He said, why are you burning your city? This makes no sense. This isn't the, it is not the, it's not the right way or the, it was a bad way to be responding to the horror of the tragedy, assassination. And, you know, I, I think he didn't believe in capital punishment. I believed he didn't believe in, in the kind of punishment the worst kind of person believes in. I think he, but he did want some kind of law and order and he didn't mind using the term, even though it's now become a bad term. But he said, you know.

C (6:50)

You'Re not going to have liberalism without law and order. It's not going to happen. Nobody's going to buy into it if you don't support that. And, and I, and I think that's what's going on with, you know.

C (7:04)

Getting rid of the police. It's all those cries. I don't think they were the great. Correct. The right response to what we've been going through the last couple years.

B (7:13)

Yeah. And that's why I talk about his liberal confidence as being something that matters here. Because I think when I talk to my politician friends who got swept up in the worst version of defund the police, it's because they are just centrist, center left people who just could not reconcile the idea that we could pursue racial justice and reform with also recognizing that, like, police should exist. They didn't have the language or the mentality to understand those two things at once. And I think your understanding of RFK gets at that. If you are confident and you believe in those two things at once, this should not be a conflict.

C (7:48)

Yeah. If you don't have a gun, you want the police.

C (7:51)

You know, we have to have somebody to deter crime. I mean, there has to be somebody out there that comes to you within a reasonable amount of time to have some good besides just, you know, drawing a sketch around the body. You want somebody around and you want somebody in a uniform to come by and be a policeman, a real policeman, and which is a courageous act.

C (8:14)

I think we've, it took the country a while to get around to that in the last couple years and.

C (8:22)

George Floyd and all that. We've gotten through it all. We've not gotten through it. We've, we've learned from it. And it's, it's still hard to, hard to sometimes for people like me to accept the fact there are bad cops. But there are. And because of the way they, they behave with people, especially minorities. And my dad was a court ster. He wrote down what happened in court. He did it. He was the senior guy in Philadelphia. He was the guy that did that. And he would tell me what, what goes on in court. He'd come up and say, what's going on in court? He'd say, well, the cops beat up people on the way home to the police station. They beat them up, the young black guys, they beat them up in the car. Sound good? No, it doesn't sound good. It's what people did. And the cops did, officials.

C (9:06)

They were being bad guys, you know, believing they get to administer corporal punishment, really, you know, and it's a tough world out there. I mean, I, I.

C (9:18)

I didn't agree with my dad about a lot of things. You know, I think his experience with blacks was very difficult. And he was good about other ethnic groups, very good about not being a bad guy. But with blacks and whites, I mean, the world he lived in, the court system was just too much for him. I mean.

B (9:38)

So your family dynamic, I'm curious because if we sort of think about the way people articulate rfk, it's that he could speak to like, you know, I'm sure you've seen like the Bill epridge pictures of RFK's funeral train going from, you know, Washington and New York. They have an incredible photo book of it. And what people find so amazing about that, especially today, is you see black working class people on the side of the train and then you then in a different community, see white ethnics on the other side of the train. So we sort of say like, this was a liberal who found a way to do something that liberals have not been able to do since, with, you know, a couple exceptions. What did your dad think of rfk.

C (10:16)

Well, he was a Republican, so I'm not sure he thought. But I think about him is more important because I've written these books. Let me tell you about those pictures which still startle me today. The 20,000 African Americans singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the Civil War song in Philadelphia, 30th Street Station when the train came by. And then looking at the white people.

C (10:41)

As they stood at attention, they were. They all looked like they were servicemen at some point, enlisted men, and they had their families lined up in order of birth. I'm not kidding you, those pictures are amazing. And they're all saluting like enlisted guys, and. And they had their kids saluting. And I go. Two different cultures, you know, in a sense, and they go with different ways of reacting. One singing, the other one saluting, and, my God, both heroes. One hero altogether. And I think that's because of.

C (11:16)

The sense that people have who were down and out, both saw him as a hero. And, I mean, one thing I came across mentally, and that's about all it was, is the people that live closest to the train tracks, that live within a walking distance of train tracks, are poor people. Nobody with money lives within walking distance of a train track. You know, that's not your real estate. You don't buy a house within yelling with the distance of the train screeching by. And they do. And especially in those days, the poor whites lived in the same neighborhood as blacks. And that they were not the best neighborhood, but they walked to that train tide right to the side of the train, and some were killed that day. And.

C (12:01)

It'S just amazing. It gets to me. The white people get to me in a way that I just don't find familiar anymore. Where they believed in this liberal guy, and.

C (12:13)

They really did look up to him as a hero. And it's really something else.

B (12:19)

And I think what's really. I think speaking to the zoomers in the audience that's alien to the political culture they've grown up in, which is the idea that a politician can be a hero. And I think one of the most frustrating things when I speak to zoomers who are really politically disinterested or at least feel really sort of disenfranchised, is they both say the status quo doesn't work, and they say everything is broken. Yet they're also cynical. So they would reject the idea that there could be a politician who's a hero or someone who actually believes in things. Everyone's sort of looking for the conspiracy or who's getting Paid under the table. And I think ultimately the problem for liberalism is that if we don't believe that people can be good and can do things while also being realistic, you can't achieve anything. So the post Watergate politics of cynicism, it's just like a toxic cycle. Do you know what I mean? Like, you can't actually believe in a. And I think this is why I'm sure you have your own thoughts and so on Mandani. But I think what made me, as a centrist, excited about him, even though I don't agree with a lot of the policies, is just seeing that he could make people believe.

C (13:23)

And.

B (13:24)

And that's something that politicians in our current moment just can't do. And I'm not going to dismiss someone.

A (13:28)

Who can do that.

C (13:29)

Yeah, well, I think we got to. We got to hope for my body. And.

C (13:34)

I think about the. I'm old enough to remember 50 years ago when John Lindsay was elected mayor of New York. Same kind of guy, a flashy. The young people loved him. A lot of turnout. Biggest turnout in 50 years was 1965. And he turned out to be a failure. Not popular at all. Of course, he was too elite. He wasn't a real guy.

C (13:59)

Look, the mayor's main job is to do the job of Mayor LaGuardia. Mayor LaGuardia and Mayor Lindsay said there's no Republican way to collect garbage. In other words, doing the job of being mayor is doing the job. So show up where there's a snow, a big snowstorm. Make sure you get the streets delivered, cleared. Make life in the city better than it's been. Be a hero to the people who live in the city. My daughter lives in Brooklyn. I mean, I worry about how, if she has a second kid, what kind of apartment can she afford? It's a real challenge. Affordability is a real basic term, and it affects, as we saw this week, it hurt Trump, it hurt Cuomo, it hurt. It hurts Republicans, it hurts Democrats, and it basically made Joe Biden seem unable to handle a job. So it bats both ways. Affordability hits anybody who's an incumbent. So if you're going to play defense in politics, be careful. This is not a good time to be playing defense. It's much better to be playing offense. I mean, go in there and try to score points on the bad conditions, but you can't score points on bad conditions when you're challenging, when you're defending authority. And so I really think Cuomo especially looked bad because he just seems bad. And this president remarkably, in A matter of hours. Seems like he's playing defense again. I just, I'm struck by how quickly the page has turned. It may not. It may turn it again, but I think he is now being judged as the government. That term, the government, it's not a popular term. Oh, the government. Oh, the government. You're for the government. I'm here for the government. I'm here to help you. Oh, yeah, you're here to help me. Is that your thing? I think that's a challenge for anybody today. And I look with, look, I'm a, I studied economics, and maybe you did, too. But there's some basic facts. If you spend more money in the federal government, it just keeps bending and running bigger deficits. If you keep talking about lower interest rates, if you keep talking about tariffs, which are taxes, you are going to drive up the cost of living. Mr. Trump, pay attention to what you're doing, and you're probably making it more difficult for your successor to get elected.

B (16:20)

And I will say. And this takes us to the lessons of Bobby, too. I think so. I do some work for pbs, and I was reviewing a transcript of an interview that Andrew Cuomo did with Margaret Hoover on Firing Line, and she asked him the question, like, what did you learn from the primary loss? So this was before the actual results earlier. And he actually just straight up said, I've run nine campaigns. I didn't learn anything new. Like, you run campaigns, and campaigns are tough businesses. And I think what you really come through about RFK in your book, and any of you did a longer book about RFK back in the 2010s, or any RFK biographies, that RFK was a person who learned, right? Because what's crazy about him is if you read an RFK biography, the rfk of the 1950s, the sort of pipsqueak HUAC Committee staffer who is annoying and no one likes him, or the screaming campaign manager of 1960, he is not the RFK who is literally talking down angry black people the night of RFK's assassination by quoting poetry at them. Right. I talk about something no politician today would ever do.

C (17:29)

He's, he's saying, marshall, what do you make of that? Speaking in Indianapolis to people in a regular black neighborhood, quoting Aeschylus. I mean, what is that about? I still, I'm stunned by that. When I hear him speaking from memory of that wonderful quote from Aeschylus about learning through pain like he had, and thinking that an audience of people on the streets is going to react to that, I guess they must have said, well, this is Bobby, and we have to accept the fact that he's been taught to quote Greek poetry by Jackie. But I don't. It's a special case.

B (18:10)

Wait, quick push. I actually wouldn't say to my lesson from that. One of the most frustrating political dynamics you see, especially on the Democratic Party side today, is when people see you have a vulnerability. The easy answer is, okay, so Democrats do very poorly with young men and working class people. Okay, so the way we'll make this very clear that we're not going to, you know, that we're going to solve that problem is John Fetterman. He wears sweatshirts and shorts. So it's all good. Or, you know, you know, they figured.

C (18:42)

Out Fetterman from his clothes. I can't figure him out. He's so pro. What's this pro Israeli thing of his? Through thick and thin throughout.

B (18:50)

I think he's a. He's a perpetual. He's a perpetual contrarian, which is where the shorts come from, because that does not reflect his class background. But then Graham Platner in Maine, it's like, oh, wow, we do poorly at the working class, so let's get an oysterman. So everyone's so obsessed with flying voters.

C (19:06)

You are funny. This is a riot. You've dared to see the guy from that little town in western Pennsylvania and named after the British. British warrior, and then to seeing that. That this disguise, if you will, that he's wearing. It's a disguise. He didn't grow up in the streets. He didn't grow up on the curb. He grew up with money. Right?

B (19:32)

Yep. Went to Harvard. Not the background you'd think.

C (19:35)

No. And not. And yet. And yet that presentation works because people who are from the wrong side of the tracks like it. They do like it. They prefer him to say, you know, another liberal show off, if you will. They'll say, wait a minute, this guy is the real thing.

B (19:59)

Well, this is the quick thing, though, and this is why I was talking about.

C (20:01)

He won the same election. He won the same election that David McCormick won. Just think about that.

B (20:07)

Yeah. Well, here's the thing, though, and this is why I think the poetry meant something. What I think people miss, because once again, you know, one of my favorite JFK quotes is that because Joseph B. Kennedy Sr. Sold all his stock before the Great Depression, like they were very wealthy during the 30s. So JFK said, quote, I only learned about how bad the Great Depression was when I read about it at Harvard. So these are not people who have been raised, you know, amongst the people. This is your point about it. That's. And JFK tended toward aloofness. So that's aloof jfk. But my point on this is I think the black people in that audience saw a person who was raw and was authentic. And he was a person who quoted poetry because his brother, one of the lines in the speech, and this is at the end of your book, you catalog his best speeches. He is just trying to relate to a crowd from a way that's true for him, which is he dealt with the trauma of his brother's assassination by reading the Greeks and reading about tragedy and bringing this new self to him. And people respond to authenticity. It's not a contradiction that working class voters. This is fdr. FDR is a rich, wealthy farmer. He joked that he was a country farmer up in upstate New York. Right. But working class voters loved him, and it's because he was honest and authentic. So I just am so frustrated by people just sort of. And I have all these politician friends, and they're all, like, dressing down. They're saying, I'm going to wear jeans now because I'm going to show the working. I'm like, no, if you're wearing jeans because you're trying to tell voters that you're actually just like them, they're going to see through that. And 99 times out of 100. And the lesson of RFK is no, if you are a authentic, real person who can meet the moment, no one's going to care. There was not a single black person in the audience who said, who is this a hole quoting poetry? They thought it was real. That's my.

C (21:56)

So that's.

B (21:57)

What's your, what's your response to that? Because that's, that's what I think people felt.

C (22:01)

You're real. You're. You're. Amazingly. What you think I do. I guess. You know the idea of bidness. George Bush going around the country talking about the problems of bidness, bidness, because he's, he's talking to people that can't speak English correctly. So he's being. Speaking English incorrectly, like them. So I can be bad at my English like you're bad at your English. I can talk about bindness. Stop. We know you know how to say business. You went to Yale, damn it. Stop talking like this. We know you know how to pronounce the English language words, right? Standard English. We know it.

C (22:37)

I think, Bobby, I think there's a realization that you do some projection. You go, wait a minute. If I were him and I've grown up without any financial requirements on my own. And I had 11 or whatever, nine kids or whatever.

C (22:53)

Maybe this is the way I'd be trying to be a good person.

C (22:58)

You know, he should. He did display pain clearly when he was in his room in the White House or in a room in the White House crying to Jesus, praying basically in tears to God that he wasn't. This isn't for some show that he would pretended to care about his brother Jack. He was unbelievably loyal to his brother. When his brother got in trouble with Sinatra or Marilyn Monroe, all the problems that he got into on his own, Bobby would try to get him out of those things. He would try to help his brother see what he had to do. He had a break with Sinatra and a break with the mob connection. He had to stop going out with Marilyn Monroe when he's married. He had to fix his life. And he also didn't believe like most brothers would say, I've got no right to tell my brother how to live, but I do have that responsibility. I do have. And.

C (23:54)

You know, I think he, in the rackets committee, he went after some really bad customers. The Torch, the guy that burned everybody to death. And these were horrendous, horrendous characters. You know, the guy that was the cops tried to interrogate when he was dying. And he would say F you to the cop. These guys are right on the Godfather, worse than the Godfather. They were rough and, and he faced them down. I mean, I would today, even today I'd say, or especially today, I'd say nobody's going to get protected from these guys. You can you. If they don't like you, they don't have to like you and the police aren't going to protect you.

C (24:35)

Do you think you're right? I think you're right. I think you're right about understanding the ability to project and to see through the, the veil of BS that the politics, politicians, so many of them learned how to play.

C (24:49)

And I think we are.

C (24:52)

We'Ve been bred to truth about politicians. I don't know anybody. I listen to that, think like you, what's this guy up to? What's, what's the story here? Come on, give me the break. Give me a break here. When they say our prayers, our prayers are with them. Really? You prayed over these victims of crime or something that happened or a natural occurrence. You, you prayed? Really, you did? I don't believe that. I believe they say it as a pro forma line.

C (25:28)

I think some guys are better at it. Bill Clinton would bite his lower lip, and that worked with some people, but it was biting with the lower lip. And you could see it because he'd switch like an anchor person does. And now a good story. Wait a minute. Was that you a minute ago? And now you do a happy story. Which one was you? Give me a break. Is my response to both of them.

C (25:52)

Maybe you and I at different ages have experienced more of it.

B (25:57)

And look in the other sort of right wing example, this is Trump, Trump. And this is Trump's sort of. Trump intuitively gets politics right in a way which is separate than how much he knows. Trump would never dress down in jeans to make his base feel more comfortable. You know, like, I have family in South Carolina. They're very maga. And if Trump showed up at our Fourth of July barbecue, he would not dress down. He just is authentically himself. That's just the funny thing. And I think so much of Trump's directness and authenticity is what really buys people in at a serious level. And I want you could find a way as sort of a normal status quo politician to learn that lesson that doesn't require you to think. You have to be Trumpy. Trump takes that too far. But Trump is just, Trump is also self confident, right? Like, Trump is what he is. He's rich, he's a billionaire. I hate, you know what I hate? I hate when people are sort of like, it's right wing populism is a scam because Trump says he's with the working class, but he's super rich. Like, there's no contradiction. You talk to working class people, they don't see a contradiction. They don't actually care. I think that's also part of the Bobby thing too. So I think that people, but people who think about this too academically, or people who are political hacks, that is just so not natural to them that they only go for the cheat code of go wear shorts to that barbecue. I really want to push people on that.

C (27:18)

I hope you take over the world right now. I think you're right.

C (27:22)

I, I just think, well, you know, there's a natural opposition. The poor people and the.

C (27:31)

Elite naturally unite against the middle. This, this has gone on throughout history. Of course, the middle can also be the revolutionary force and like it is in Cuba or someplace like that. But the working people will look up to Roosevelt even though they know this guy lives in special circumstances along the Hudson river in Hyde Park. And the middle class will resent both the poor people and the elite. It's interesting thing. And so it's.

C (28:07)

It'S the way it work, road works. It's a Trump plays to the middle class.

C (28:13)

It is astounding. I look at Pennsylvania, wherever they're I've got, driving around Pennsylvania, and you go to a little town, white town, if you will, and you get into town and what's left of that town, there's no gift shop. Forget gift shops. That's what we grew up. I grew up with the little store that sold trinkets or something like that you could give to an aunt or a sister, brother for their birthday. But then they got the gift shop existed just to sell gifts. And then you had a barber shop and you'd have whatever else. None of that's there. It's all Walmart. It's all out of town somewhere. There's nobody in town. There's nobody to talk to. No newspaper. There are no newspapers anymore. You can't find a newspaper. Even at airports, you can't find one. People have nothing to talk about. They don't talk about even local issues. They're there ready for the national market, whatever the politicians do. But they're angry at this in Erie, they're angry about it in Scranton. Same things they're angry about and they were. They're white angry people and overwhelmingly moving right. And I think it's still moving right. And I was always amazed. I grew up in the city right on the birds inside the city. But when we went on a religious treat, my high school, Catholic high school, and we went out to a religious place an hour or two from the city, and we're listening in the diner, we're listening to country western music. And I say, what is going on here? This is near Philadelphia and we're listening to country western music. Why are we so rural? And it is, it's, there's, there's more country in this country than you can imagine. And it comes right up to the edge of the city. It's, there are people with cowboy boots and singing country songs and go, what is going on out here? You know, I thought it was all about South Philly and music. And this is, this is not happening out here. And it's.

C (30:04)

It'S, it's, it's, it's country. It's a country of fairs and stuff like that and rural thinking and it's all Trump country. You explain that to me. Rural countries. Rural country is Trump country. And it's still out there. It's, it's taken over Ohio. It's already got Kentucky, it's got western Pennsylvania. I always say, if you want to see where ethnicity divides the country, watch. The more the map as it moves towards western Pennsylvania, because that's where it begins, that Appalachian spirit. That's where J.D. vance actually articulated it back when he was what he was. Now he's after something that he was. He's a Trumpy. But he did understand it. It's where Catholics forget about it, Jews forget about it. Blacks, you get in that part of the country, in the middle part of the country. And it is incredibly difficult to get a vote. And that's a fact. You know, it's just something I've studied. It's, it's, you're fine in Philly, you're fine on the Amtrak route. I always say, stick to the Amtrak route, you have a chance. But you get beyond that, out to the west and God, this country's moving right, and goodbye, you know, Sherrod Brown, God help him. I hope he can win. But he's running again. I think he's great, but it's gonna be tough.

B (31:20)

You're really articulating a real problem for Democrats, which is especially if working. So my. So this podcast is called the Realignment. So I've been re looking at how J.D. vance was the first guest on the podcast. I knew him before he was famous and my whole take on working class voters. And I hate to sound so, like, think tanky when I say that, but you know, we talked about authenticity earlier. I'm sort of, now I'm using think tank language. But like what?

C (31:42)

Young. Don't say that. Don't say my dad. I once said to my dad when he was working on the roof of the house up in Summerton in Philly, he referred to blue car workers. He used to stop me in my, he stopped me in my tracks. What did you just say?

C (32:00)

His brother drove a truck. And he said, and my relatives I cannot discuss politics with because I love them and I know I disagree with them. I know they will disagree with me. I'm not going to bring up the issue.

C (32:15)

I think our family were brought by my father. Don't talk like, like a social, social metric star. You don't call people by their job titles. We don't use those terms like blue collar worker. Like, you know, I've heard Ryan Richard, I love this. This is probably wrong. I'm going to talk about this Robert Reich, who's a smart guy, I once had referred to people.

B (32:39)

This is Clinton's labor secretary, right?

C (32:41)

Yeah. And he, he's There's a great movie about him teaching at Berkeley, but he once referred to people as high school jobs. And he would use the. Used the phrase for whom a high school degree will suffice.

C (32:59)

That you have to say that. That in other words, the limit of their education is enough. They have reached the need for their. Their education to go any further. Oh, thank you, Robert Reich, for decing the human limitations of somebody, some worker be.

C (33:17)

A high school education will suffice. He said it in such a nice way. I don't think it was nice. I think it was tough.

B (33:26)

And I think something I'm curious about then is it seems to me like looking at just groups of people who were within RFK's iteration in the Democratic Party who Democrats just can't win. Now, it seems like people have tried to use economics as the way of getting to people. So, like, my wife works in antitrust world, so she's very much in like Lena Khan side of things. And when we talk with her relatives who are in South Carolina, when you talk about corporate power or oligarchy, they will not like, they don't disagree with that. Right. These are not people who love Jeff Bezos. But what I've just found is a real difficult point for Democrats is you can make all those economic policy points and you know, Josh Hawley, who's tried to do these politics on the right, he can go on the picket line. But ultimately, it's the culture that seems to matter the most for people.

C (34:12)

I like dichotomies. I like figuring out people. For example, Bernie. Bernie's out there campaigning. He talks about the oligarchy, right. And then AOC campaigns. As a former waitress, I love the former waitress. I think anybody who's been to a restaurant, a regular diner or a dinette or a nice fancy restaurant, whatever it is, if there's a working woman in there, especially you see how hard they're working. You know, they get three or four tables in a row. They got to think about all the different tables, what they're up to, what their need is. And there's somebody yelling, hey, give me more coffee. You know, and they got to deal with that.

C (34:57)

And I think that she understands the reality of American life better than Bernie. And I think that she's got places to go, not just because she's young, but I think there's something that she understands that people who may be better off in a restaurant, the one, the paying customers, they're still okay people. You don't have to dislike them. They may be behind. They May be buying a stake, but somebody can vote for you. So look at it that way. And if you want to be president, even if you think about that, if she's thinking about that at some point, you're a politician and your job is to connect, connect. And I think she does it.

B (35:40)

And I think for the, for the last section though, I want to. You've just actually raised the central dilemma though, which is that I get to, you know, if we were to sort of Lay Bernie and AOC's resumes together, her, you know, working in the service industry versus Bernie being sort of a lefty gadfly who becomes a mayor and then a, a long term member of.

C (36:01)

Congress, by the way, right there.

B (36:03)

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's the deal.

C (36:05)

A guy, he's never been elected to anything, and he finds a place called Vermont.

C (36:10)

A normal place, and he finally gets elected. And I don't know, I don't know. I think he had an untoward influence on Joe Biden. I think Joe Biden suffered by listening on the phone to Bernie too much. I think Biden ran as a moderate Democrat. He didn't end up that way. He left the border open. I don't understand his position on trans issues. It doesn't make sense the way he's portrayed himself in the new version. Biden never didn't stick with being Biden. And I think that's a problem.

B (36:46)

Well, I'll push you on this because. And this is where Bernie in a weird way may have less in common with people, but I think has a better political formula, which is 2016. So let's put aside 2020 Bernie, 2016 Bernie, because he's coming from Vermont, he is pro gun because it's a very pro gun state. Despite being very.

C (37:03)

That's a challenge.

B (37:04)

Talk about, you know, you said Biden got the border wrong, but 2016, Bernie was very much like a border guy. He's doing his guest worker programs are a Koch Brothers policy. I'm not in favor of that. He's talking to Ezra Crime when he says this. So his cultural politics are actually much more in sync with, I think, the void, with the communities that Democrats are very vulnerable with in a way that AOC is going to have real trouble with. AOC is ultimately, because think about, you know, a diploma divide, right? The diploma divide's at the center of everything, right? Did you go to college or did you not? Like, are you a part of like educated, sort of cosmopolitan liberalism or not? And I don't think working class people like that. Type of politics. AOC has got that weakness in that spot. She still is very sort of driven by capitalist activism, those genomics. And Bernie isn't. So I think that's my one modification on your.

C (37:52)

Come on. Bernie goes from Brooklyn to the University of Chicago to Vermont. That's an academic route.

B (37:59)

No, but nobody's. Nobody but this, See, this gets to the start of the episode where it's like, but voters don't care. That's like. So, like, put it this way, the famous study in 2016 showed that Bernie during the Democratic primary did really well with voters who then switched to voting for Trump after they voted for Obama in 2012. Yeah, no, there are studies there, there, there are studies that Bernie, to Trump voters who are, they weren't enough for him to win the primary, but they were a real category of people. I just don't think in this moment where things are so bad and people are just looking for confident leadership, they cared that he was a, you know, put it this way, like, if we were to central cast who the socialist challenger to Hillary would have been in 2016, no one would have said the Jewish guy from Brooklyn with a very intense Brooklyn accent who represents Vermont and was the first socialist May. No one would say he's going to be the guy. No one would cast that person. Yet. Guess what? It worked and it mattered. You know what I mean? So, like, that's, that's, that's why I'm like, I think that this is why. This is where we go back to Bobby. Like, I just think that there's so much opportunity in caring less about how you present and more about what you say and being real to that. That gets the opportunity for politicians. That's what I want people to focus on. And I think Bobby did that, Trump did that, and I think Bernie does that too. And AOC is going to have to navigate the ways that I think she is authentic to who she is. Right. So to your point, I think she is who she is, but there are ways that her authentic self are actually a little more. Let me put it this way. Bernie's authentic self being like lefty mayor of Vermont at his core was not in contradiction to the voters he was trying to win over. For aoc, though, her being an urban, cosmopolitan socialist who holds cultural views that are to the left of where those working class voters are, that's a real weakness for her. And she's going to have to. She will be a political. The version of her who could be president, will be a person who has the talent to figure it out. That's my sort of AOC thesis.

C (39:59)

You're so smart. I. I think in terms of her not running for president, I don't think that's realistic at this point. But if she runs against Chuck Schumer, who wins?

B (40:10)

She does.

C (40:12)

You think so?

B (40:13)

Because the, because the base of the Democratic Party. I don't like the gerontocracy argument, by the way, so I'm just going to start there. I'm going to say, like, the case against Chuck Schumer is not that he is, like, in his, like, mid to late 70s. That's, like, a vapid critique. It doesn't really mean anything. Bern. Super old. Trump is super old. The gerontocracy thing isn't the thing. The actual thing is Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage foundation, who's in big trouble over his Tucker Carlson thing. He came on the podcast, though, and he said something that's really stuck with me, which is that he said, quote, we need leaders on the right who know what time it is. I just love the leaders who know. And that doesn't have to be ideological. Just like, does your leader know what time it is? And you know what the case against Chuck Schumer is, man, that you could tell to my Normie, like, MSNBC watching, like, parents who are, like, protesting Tesla dealerships, you could just say, you know, does Chuck Schumer know what time it is? Does he get that this is an emergency for, like, the Democratic Party and this country? No one would say, oh, yeah, that guy knows what time it is. That's the guy who I'm going to trust in the situation.

C (41:15)

Would you know what time it is if you had to spend every minute of your waking hour on the phone raising money? And would you. Would you didn't care? Wouldn't you be, like, in a casino somewhere going, I don't know when they're going to turn the lights on or set the clocks, because they never show any clocks. Because they don't want you to know what time it is in big casinos. They just want you to be spending your money at the tables, the crap tables. And that's what Schumer is. He's constantly raising money. And that why. Because that's what it is to be the leader of the Senate. If you're either party, you're supposed to raise money for Sherrod Brown because that's how you talked him into running. Or Bobby Casey when you talk to him in the running, if you. You want those guys, outliers to run for office and fill your majority. And to make your majority, you got to raise money constantly. And that's why you're from New York, because that's where the money is. Or you're Pelosi. That's where the money is in San Francisco or you're in Texas if you're a Republican. This is what they do all day. Their minds are exhausted. When I listen to Schumer, I hear him reading the staff papers of mediocre people that have never had a clever line in their lives, never renewed a sense of Jewish humor, which I spent. That's what I did most of the time with Tip o'. Neill. Come up with the lines that are funny and get to people and don't just read the standard stuff. And that's what he reads. I don't think he has time to say, come on, come up with something a little snappier than this so I could at least get quoted on the front page. Because that's what I would do. I'd say, look, hold the paper. Give me a couple hours, I'll give you something. And then we did at the right time, and that's how we got in the front page. Tim would say, I don't have to be in the front page every day. Okay? But I made sure he was. But anyway, this is what Schumer is. He's dull. He's dull, and that's what the people hold against him. He doesn't say anything that has any snap to it. And he is the leader, and you expect him to be a leader. And I know what's going to happen. I see this fight with Harry Koopman. If she runs for the Senate, you say she can win. I think it's very possible, you know, after the election of Madani. Madani was a. He's either going to go down in history as a surprisingly great mayor of New York or a disaster. It's going to be like Barbra Streisand. I'm either a superstar or I'm not going to make it. But there's not going to be a little Barbra Streisand. There was never a little Barbara Stein. You're either super great, which you will be, and you were. Well, you're not. But you're not going to be in middle road. It's like Joe Kennedy saying, it's either the outhouse for us or the White House. We're going to end up in the White House or the outhouse. And he knew it. They're not going to be middle level. Stuff there. So we'll see. And.

C (44:00)

Big time. It's big time in New York. And we'll see. I still don't know whether JD Bass gets beaten by a Democrat. I don't know. He's 39 years old. He's Nixon's age. He run for your vice president. He's young. People may say he's a fraud. They may decide that, but not yet. We'll see. He's got a great wife. Shows some internationalism on his part. He's obviously brilliant. He went to Yale Law. We'll see. I think you never answer your question, but I think Gavin Newsom's interesting because he can talk to Trump. Will it still matter when Trump doesn't matter? I don't know, but he can talk to Trump at his level. And Chris Murphy's trying to get there, trying to get to talk to Trump. The most important thing. Can you talk to Trump? DeSantis couldn't.

B (44:48)

And by talk, you mean, like, when you're on stage.

C (44:51)

So when you talk, he answers. You're at the same stratosphere. Desantis is still arguing with the gays working at Disney World. Is that. I mean, what was he doing down there? Why is he fighting with Disney World? It's crazy what's happening.

B (45:08)

I know, I know lots of people in Desantis world and what literally happened there is they like, over intellectualized. Like, they clearly, like sat in a room. And I know this literally happened. They were like, how do we, like, take the good parts of Trump and like, turn them into using this formula? And we're going to use Chris Rufo to like, do this and it just doesn't. But at a certain point, like, you're sort of at a. You're. It's like a. You're at a company and you're just trying. It's like they're trying to sell a product and it just like, didn't work in an era of authenticity. But I think the one thing I'll add here as we get out and I'll get your thoughts on it would basically just be that the issue. And this is actually everything you just said about talking to Trump. So Trump is not going to be on stage in 2028, though obviously his. If he's still alive. Once again, not, you know, aren't you.

C (45:51)

Aren't you nice the way you just said that? Aren't you nice to say that? Why didn't you say that?

B (45:57)

I said that because of the political environment we're in. And I'm not stupid. And there are a lot of people who.

C (46:01)

Oh, that way.

B (46:02)

Yeah, like, like, like that way. But what my thing is, Trump is going to be haunting the stage. Whether during the 2028 debate. And the thing that was fascinating for me, I'd be curious what your thoughts are on Tim Walls and J.D. vance, because that was fascist. So I watched that debate along with everyone, and you could just see. So here's what happened in that debate. So like you said, J.D. vance is very, very, very smart. And J.D. vance is a Yale trained lawyer. And J.D. as you see on Twitter every day, loves to debate and argue. And Tim Walls, I think, is a nice guy, but his thing too is he told this to Kamala. This was in her book, I'm not a debater. But, like, it's. It's more than that. Like, he is clearly not a guy who reads books on ideas and policy for fun and like, or hate JD that is what JD Vance does. Like, JD Vance goes to long dinners with, like, right wing intellectuals and Peter Thiel, and they talk about the big things. That is literally what he does. So Tim Wallace does not do that. So Tim Wallace comes out with the idea that J.D. vance is just gonna be a weirdo and the couch thing and all those different things. And then J.D. comes out and he turns on Yale. J.D. and, you know, is arguing like he's arguing for the Law Review. And you could see in Tim Walls eyes how intimidated and scared he is of that. And if I to your point about being a speechwriter for these guys, what I would have said if I were on the oppo prep team is, Tim Walls, here's the deal. J.D. vance, think back to high school. J.D. vance is a nerd. And nerds could do some things. They know all the answers and they read all these things that you don't read. Imagine the situation. You're a jock. And if you were in high school and you're sitting there in your letterman's jacket, would you be intimidated by the guy at the front of the class answering all the questions? No, you wouldn't care. You'd say, he's a nerd.

C (47:50)

Whatever.

B (47:51)

That's what he does. If Tim Walls had come in with that mentality rather than like, oh, no, he's so smart, and I'm not smart like that. I can't debate. I don't read. He says, my argument's better than I say my arguments. Like, you could see this in his face. So I'd love to get like, your take from your on, like, what happened on that stage. Because anyone in 2020, it's going to have to be wary of what happened there.

C (48:12)

Well, I love the way you think about things because I used to be one of those nerds. I was on my high school Jeopardy Team, my college ball team with all the other smart guys because I knew the answers. Because I was one of the kids in school that knew all the answers that they didn't teach in school. I could answer questions because I knew this stuff. On the question of Tim Waltz, I didn't think he was a great running mate. I would have had Shapiro. I would have had. Because I think when you have a woman candidate, in the case of Kamala Harris, you need to have a strong running male. I think just today's parlance, today's politics, make sure she picks on her own a strong, fairly strong running mate. Even if he's a little more difficult than he should be. Even if he's thinking about becoming president a little too early. Maybe that's what you need. You need a, a, a, a, a running maid who wants to be the nominee for president. The same with Hillary Clinton. Big mistake she made Tim Kaine. Give me a break. Okay, Tim Kaine, really? With Hillary Clinton, a weak guy. She's married to a Taipei. She's married to Bill Clinton. Why didn't she pick a running mate that's like Bill Clinton. Why didn't she pick Sherrod Brown? Sherrod Brown told me he told her he would take the. Give up his Senate seat and go with her. She offered to be her running mate and she turned down Sherrod Brown. A working class guy, A guy who's the real thing. Why did she do that?

B (49:42)

She wanted a weak.

C (49:43)

She wanted a weak running mate. I'm sorry. If you want a weak running mate, you got one. That's what you wanted. And she was a hawk. Won a rack. I hated that point of position, that point of anybody took it going along with Dick Cheney. It was wrong. He was wrong. He wasn't telling the truth. But they were with him even though he wasn't telling the truth. There were no aluminum tubes. Nothing happened. There was no nuclear war. Nuclear threat. There was no nuclear program, period. And he must have known it. But he used it to sell that war. He's a hawk. And she should have picked Sherrod Brown and she didn't. Tim Crane did nothing for. Oh yeah, he speaks Spanish. Give me a break. He speaks man. So I'm going to carry Arizona, North Carolina. No, you're not. You're not going to get More votes than Bill Clinton. Run for the presidency and stop running against Bill Clinton. I'm being too psychological here, but I do wonder.

B (50:39)

No, no, no, no, no. You know, you, you are not being too psychological. This is actually correct. And I think the thing that's funny from what I take away from what you're saying is your point about the Spanish thing is what I was getting at with like these like little cheat codes of like the shorts. He speaks Spanish and it's just sort of like, no. Like the question is, are you strong? Are you authentic? Like, are you a thing? The thing that as we actually close out here, the thing that I'm thinking more about is like, we spend too much time focusing on just wonkery. Like, how many ideas do you know and what are the policies? Like, what's your platform? I think actually in this moment, too much.

C (51:12)

Nate Silver.

B (51:13)

Yeah. Yes. The Nate Silverfication, the voxification. This has been a disaster for Democrats, especially because it didn't. Because by the way, the funny thing about. So I just did a. I don't know if you saw this, but this group Wellcome put out this, like, list of poll positions for Democrats that are most popular. And I really like Wellcome. I spoke at their conference last year. I had the co founder on and the warning I issued at the start of the episode to my politician friends who are like, these are people who have just started getting elected in our 30s. I'm 33. I said academically, it is interesting and useful to see what is popular and what's not. So I'm not saying don't do that. But if you are a politician who says, I don't know what I'm doing right now, I'm scared. Like, this is how people are kind of feeling because it's a weird moment. If you just like pick the polling positions as what you're going to run on, you are going to lose because that means you're weak. That means you don't have a center. It means that you are going to be like. Like, for example, like one of Kamala's things that she ran on was like, we're going to build 3 million new houses and we're going to create a new mortgage tax credit. Does anyone actually think that if you'd asked her for some follow up sentences on why she cares about housing and like her deep. No, because guess what? Her team came to her and said, there's a. It's the affordability election. So we've picked these three policies the way that will illustrate that you are serious about affordability. Like, dude, you know, sorry to call you dude, but like, I'm excited to chat with you. You know, like, you and I know how those, like, campaign meetings work, but it wasn't real. So I just. The Nate Silver vacation has been a disaster and we just need to. We just need to not do that.

C (52:44)

Okay? I want to give you a goodbye. This has been great. Al Gore. Everybody likes Al Gore because he's with the consequential whatever, Inconvenient truth. He was a terrible candidate. And the reason why is at the Democratic Convention of 2000, he listed people and their troubles, okay? Different ethnic groups, of course, with their particular Trump people had met in. Along the campaign trail. No, these are not people you met. These are names you're going to forget in five seconds. So don't tell me about these people you met. And then the worst case. And I like the guy, John Kerry, but this is it. He walks into a dinette. And when you find out a dinette at lunchtime is a woman who's got a job to make money for the family, she just has to make money for the family or alone. And she's reading a novel because reading a novel for an hour at lunchtime is her only escape from that life that she's got to take Boss. Boss's rule from. Oh, God. So he comes in and leans over her with the cameras all around him expressing his five point full employment program.

C (53:47)

As this target. And this poor woman who's trying to make a buck and has one hour to herself is reading her novel, which she could escape with a romance novel perhaps. And then I watch W. W walks into an identical dinette. He sees in front of him a family, a young family in their 30s. They've got three kids, two daughters and one son. And he walks into the family and he goes, hey, a word you just used. Hey, dude, what's it like being surrounded by sisters? And the whole family lights up because he addressed them as who they are. A young family with two daughters and a son. And they. And the end. And they know exactly the dynamic that goes on in that family, which is the son duking it out against the sister. The sibs. And I go, that's a politician there. He's connecting. He's connecting with the most important thing in a young family. That they're a young family and this is their world. They may be scraping along, but that's it. Connect with that family. And syw. Kind of like the president. I'm sorry, nobody wants to hear this, but he did win to Florida, and Al Gore couldn't carry Tennessee and he couldn't carry New Hampshire. And all he had to do with New Hampshire was I didn't like Bill Clinton screwing around or whatever he did, but I did like his economic program, and that's what I'm going to carry on. He didn't do that. He said he's the greatest president. History today was impeached. And he gets down to the White House and brags on the guy. And what he should have said is he he should tell the truth, the American people. If he gets into trouble, he's got to tell the truth. And then when he gets near the election, he could say we had we have a hell of an economic program. I'm proud of it. We're going to keep it going. He would have won that election, didn't do it.

B (55:32)

That is the perfect place to end, dunking on Al Gore.

C (55:39)

I'm selling books I built on Bobby Kennedy. I dump on the other guy. But I think he asked the right questions about him and his authenticity. I think he was the Kennedy that really did connect with people who haven't had it handed to him. Perfect.

B (55:55)

Chris Matthews, thank you for joining me on the realignment.

C (55:58)

Marcia thank you.