← The Tara Palmeri Show
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- [00:00]
A
You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12 month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary.
- [00:38]
B
Hold on one second. Welcome to the Tara Palmieri show and the Red Letter. For everyone who's joining on Substack, we have a special guest for a very big day in the Supreme Court. Wins and losses for both sides of the aisle, both Democrats and Republicans came out. It was a bit of a mixed bag considering that the court is leaning right. But we have Stacey Abrams here. She needs no introduction, but as many of you know, she ran for governor twice in Georgia in 2018 when she nearly won by 1.7 points. That is what she that was the margin of difference in her race. And in 2022, she ran again. And Stacey has since taken up voting rights as her, as her call to action now. And so obviously, I know you have thoughts on all of this. We do talk that, you know, some of the rulings, they do impact voting. But first, I wanted to ask you, what do you think was today ultimately a win or loss for democracy?
- [01:43]
C
Yes,
- [01:46]
B
I think it was a loss.
- [01:47]
C
No, no, no. You said win or loss. And the answer is yes, because the way we have to understand democracy is, you know, the way I describe it, you know, authoritarianism is three things. It's the taking of power, it's the hoarding of that power, and it's the refusal to be held accountable for what you do with that power. Democracy as the, you know, in contrast, is about how do you share power, how do you leverage that power for the benefit of others, and then how do you have accountability for that power? And so if you look at today's outcome, if you're talking about the birthright citizenship case, that was a victory for democracy because it said we're going to continue to share the power of citizenship as the Constitution intended. If you look at the decision on transgender athletes, that was a failure because it said that certain citizens are not entitled to the fullness of their identity, and that we are unwilling to be accountable for the consequences of making those choices, especially for young people. And then if you look at the NRC decision, which is the decision about campaign finance, that is a failure for democracy, because what it says is that money matters more than people, that if you have access to the acquisitive resources that we have seen, particularly go to oligarchs, you can now pour those dollars in and not just shape elections, but shape who has a chance to have a voice in those elections. And those things have to be read into context with the Calais decision, with the Milligan decision, but also with a series of decisions over the last 20 years, plus yesterday's Slaughter decision that said that we're creating this unitary executive so that presidents have more power than the Constitution or the people intended. And so on the whole, we're at a bit of a draw. But the risk is that if we lean too much into our successes, we're going to get defeated. And if we ignore the opportunities created by our losses, we're going to let them have more than they deserve. We can take these losses and leverage them to our benefit, but we've got to recognize what they are.
- [03:54]
B
Okay, that was a really interesting answer. And we're going to go deeper into all of the rulings. So thank you for touching on so many of them. So, birthright citizenship ruling, this was a 6:3 opinion rejecting President Trump's executive order to end it outright, ruling that it violates the 14th Amendment. Birthright citizenship means that if you are born in the United States, even if you are born from an undocumented immigrant, or you are here and your parent is on a visa, you are an American citizen. And, you know, Speaker Johnson has already said there are illegal workarounds and Republicans plan to fight it. So what do you make of Speaker Johnson's threat to fight it? And I also want to ask you about the court after that. Like, does this show. Because obviously it was a 6:3 ruling, which means some conservatives ruled with liberals on the court. Does this mean that birthright citizen citizenship is a line that the court won't cross? And there are other lines like that.
- [05:01]
C
So the this. And I'll start with the decision and get to Johnson, because when you look at the 63 number, you then have to go beneath that and see that. I think it was Kavanaugh who didn't actually say it was the Constitution. He said it was a statutory issue. And so it's not that we have this 63 majority of stalwarts who believe Birthright citizenship is impermeable. We have five, four, impermeability. We have six, three. And we can still talk about it. You know, we're still, we're going to hold to it. But you've got a shaky one in Kavanaugh. And I think that's important because that leads to Johnson. What Johnson seized on is the fact that it wasn't this absolutist statement that there, there's no question it was, you know, it was contentious. And as long as there's contention about birthright citizenship, that means that those who despise it, like Mike Johnson, like Senator Mike Lee, like the President of the United States, those who do not believe in our citizenship being sacrosanct, they're going to keep trying to erode it. And so we do have to pay attention to what he said. And this goes back to what I was saying earlier about just sort of the nature of who we are as a nation. These are people who despise diversity, they are terrified of equity and they revile inclusion. That's why DEI was under attack. But birthright citizenship is part of that. However, because we have the decision we have, even if they're going to try to undermine it, we live to fight another day. But that means that we can't rest on the laurels of a 6, 3 decision. We have to look at what those three said because that's going to be the roadmap for what they try to do next to undermine it again.
- [06:43]
B
Okay, another one that came up, 6, 3 campaign finance. So these are majority rulings. Kavanaugh, again, his opinion struck down the Watergate error limits on how much national party committees can spend in direct coordination with candidates. I mean, this means that billionaires and outside money, they're just going to have way more control in our elections. There's really no other way to think about it. Right. Because there are limits on how much money you can give to individual candidates. But if those individual candidates are backed by party PACs or super PACs and they can work together, then sky's the limits. Right. You can just. But it does already sort of feel like it's that way. They basically broke all the limits in the last, you know, with Ron DeSantis and the way he was coordinating with his super PAC. Some would argue that President Trump probably did the same. And who knows about the Democrats? But, you know, it's. We've sort of become used to since Citizens United. And it's got. Gets worse every single year that we run billion dollar elections on both Sides with way too much money in these outside groups. But how does this impact Democrats? Because, you know, for Republicans, they see this as a huge win. But why do Democrats feel like this was a loss for them? Because I would say monkey see, monkey do. If they're doing it, why not do the same thing?
- [08:04]
C
And Tara, I appreciate the question because part of the work that I do on democracy writ large, voting rights as a particular point of entry, but really I've spent the last 18 months trying to make certain we think about democracy as a holistic issue, is that we've got to see this in context. They didn't just overturn Watergate era. What they did was go back to what they wanted. Back when Nixon decided to try to explode the government by funding his success on the backs of voting rights. He wanted people's voices not to matter. And instead we got this Watergate era set of laws that said, no, we're going to actually put some guardrails around it. Because right now Democrats have a structural advantage in the sense that average people invest a lot in Democratic politics and the candidates themselves get a lower advertising rate. This basically comes down to how do you pay for a campaign? Right now, Democrats, prior to this morning, Democrats had a structural advantage in that because political candidates got lower ad rates than even if you had a lot more money going into Super PACs, they still had to pay more. There was a premium for that money.
- [09:18]
B
What this said premium five times, I think, is how much you'd have to pay. So, like if you're a candidate and you want ads on tv, you pay a lot less than a super PAC that has hundreds of millions of dollars.
- [09:31]
C
Exactly what had what it wasn't quite monkey see, monkey do. Because what happened was that if you're giving $5 to the candidate of your choice, that $5 goes a lot further than the super PAC that can get 5 million has to pay 5x for that ad. And what they've now said is that oligarchy gets to have the same impact as citizenship. That's the problem. That's what they've, that's what they've shifted. And it's basically the moral equivalent of having arsonist. You know, you were committing a crime when you did it, even if you were doing it. And now it's purge every day. Now it's like it's a free for all. And they're told, yeah, you can go and do whatever you want. And we know what that does. We saw that when Citizens United was the first real modern day salvo. Against campaign finance reform, because, again, we got to go back to first principles. Campaign finance isn't about where the money comes from. It's about what the money can do. And if you don't have much of it, if you're an average citizen trying to make your voice heard, trying to get a candidate to get into office and lower the cost of housing, lower the cost of health care, make certain that you and your kids have access to safety and justice, then it does matter. If your $5 can get swamped from the beginning by the 5 million or the 50,000. It changes the nature of citizenship and it changes the nature of how America works. And that's why we should all be very concerned.
- [11:01]
B
Yeah, no, it is super concerning. It's already been a huge concern. Just for an example, ELON Musk spent $300 million on Trump's super PAC. That's insane. And this just opens the door. I mean, it's always. The door's already already been open. But now that money goes even further times that by five. And it's worth way more now.
- [11:23]
C
They've taken the door off the hinges, they put up a buy here sign, and they said, come in and take whatever you want. And let's understand, in this 26 election, Democrats. So if we're going to look at it from a partisan lens, Democrats are still in a better position because Republicans have destroyed so much so quickly for such little return between wars and tariffs and just. And the tax bill that kicked 5 million people off of health care. Like, they've done a lot to undermine their structural advantage. So I think it's important that we not look at this necessarily as a 26 decision. This is about what happens in 2028. They're setting up the table for what they want to have happen in the presidential election in 2028. And so that goes back to my fundamental point that we need to pay attention to this, not just about what happens in the midterms, but what are they setting up in pursuit of permanent power? They're trying to destroy our right to vote. They're just trying to destroy how we get to participate. And they're trying to undermine who gets to have a voice in what happens next.
- [12:30]
B
Got it. We've got a member of our YouTube show asking about Samuel Alito's retirement that was announced today. What should we expect? I mean, obviously, retiring during a Republican administration means that they'll replace him with another Republican, probably someone very young and probably someone further to the right. I mean, what do you think about it?
- [12:53]
C
Well, I mean, so, and I will tell you, I've been on another call. So I know it was called that Samuel Alito was leaving, then it was retracted that he hasn't actually announced, it may have happened in the last few minutes, that it turned out okay. But either way, what we know is that he's probably thinking about it because this is like the Dobbs leak. Somebody knows that this is a problem and they're trying to send up a flare. And in the midst of an authoritarian regime, flares are important, but here's what it means. Right now we're at a six three. But we are also in the midst of a massive election. And so you've got five Republicans who have been concerned about the surge away from democracy. You've got Lisa Murkowski, you've got Susan Collins. You, you, you know, I would also put in that list Thom Tillis and Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn. The problem is Cornyn, Cassidy and Tillis actually agree with Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito on a lot of stuff. Susan Collins can't afford to make another Brett Kavanaugh mistake. And Lisa Murkowski, I think, understands that what is happening in this country is bad for the people she represents. And so what, you then look to her, who else is up for reelection and which other voices, if they vote to confirm a version of Alito, risk losing their election in November? And so I think we just have to keep watching to see what happens. But we also need to make certain we are making this a major conversation, no matter who decides to retire. Our constant conversation with anyone standing for public office is what kind of, what kind of leadership do we want in the Supreme Court? And that goes back to authoritarianism. One of the hallmarks of Authoritarianism in our 10 Steps campaign is that you have a complicit judiciary. Do we like the fact that we have a judiciary that's saying that we now have a king? If you think that's a good idea, you want them to replace Alito with someone like him, only 30 years younger. But if you actually want a democracy that works for all of us, we've got to fight and make certain that we have a Supreme Court that actually respects us.
- [14:52]
B
Yeah. Just so you know, the npr, npr, which reported Alito's retirement, has retracted it since. So that is what happened. I do want to ask you about the Supreme Court's ruling on mail in vote ballot voting, which is a win for the, for your cause. And they will allow late arriving ballots to be counted after election day up to five Days now, President Trump called it a tremendous loss, loss, not surprisingly. And he's pushing that the Senate pass the Save America Act. Now, just so you all know, Save America act, they don't have the votes in the Senate. They, he would have to overturn the filibuster because, you know, in order to pass this with a 2/3 majority, they just don't have that. They'd have to do simple majority. And it would, obviously, you know, there's something to be said about upholding rules and making sure that we don't have the whiplash from party to party when, you know, while rules and laws are being passed. That's, that's what the Senate is sort of for. So how does this change the strategy for Democrats in the midterms?
- [16:01]
C
So I, I'm gonna respectfully disagree about the filibuster. I do think the filibuster is an anachronistic tool that is actually not serving its purpose any longer because they aren't maintaining the filibuster because they're afraid of Democrats. They're maintaining the filibuster because they're afraid of Republicans. It is a tool. Having been the minority leader in Georgia, I can tell you if that had that kind of tool. Republicans are afraid of their, their rear guard. And so they're going to keep the filibuster because they do have that, that 5 I just listed. If they don't have that 60 vote threshold, there are other things. They're discharge petitions there. And you know, this, there are lots of other things that could. Now, it benefits us right now, but it also is, it's harmful to us. It's why we also have the composition that we have in, you know, the decimation of our country. So I want to shape it that way. But here's what I would say in terms of the midterms. What this means is that democracy can continue. When I ran for governor in 2018, one of the reasons we surged and had 800,000 more people vote between 14 and 18, that's how many people I didn't register. 800,000 people in four years. But we turned out 800,000 new people in four years. And one of the reasons we had a very intentional use of mail in ballots, because it meant more people could participate. Senior citizens, the disabled, students, military, people
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B
who work, people who go to work and vote.
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C
It's yes, no, I know this is a fantastic outcome. Now let's, again, we can't, we can't rest on the success. They're going to come After California. That's why the person who's, you know, was nominated and then got his nomination pulled for the DNI role through the Director of National Intelligence, Jay Clayton. He, you know, did the conspiracy theory about mail in ballots, but you also have to watch the fact that there was a recent federal court that said that the United States Postal Service could not thwart and stop mail in ballots from being delivered because they didn't have the. That, you know, these states have refused to give these lists to the federal government. So we got to remember that even if the Supreme Court has said, this is not the vehicle, that doesn't mean the fight is over. And I use that to bring us to Calais. The Calais decision, which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights act, came two years after the same Supreme Court said in Allen v. Milligan, yes, it is perfectly okay to defend and protect Section 2. They just didn't like the Milligan argument. We know that what they did in Mississippi on mail in ballots can be undone next year. And so our responsibility is at the state and local level to pass voting rights laws wherever we can because we cannot count on the Supreme Court and Congress to save us.
- [18:53]
B
Yeah, I do want to talk about the Save America act, since President Trump is so obsessed with it that he shot down a housing bill that would have, you know, really helped. I mean, it was a bipartisan housing bill. Nothing really gets passed. Bipartisan, very rarely, except maybe the Epstein Act Transparency Act. But there was a bipartisan housing bill which would have made it less expensive to. For construction loans, etc. And his party wanted him to sign this right, and he refuses because they have not passed this Save America Act. Can you sort of like, paint a picture to me of the person who gets shut out of voting because they have to show proof of citizenship requirement? I mean, I'll be honest. First for me, I would show up with my license, but, you know, I drive. But tell me, like, what type of person doesn't have any sort of, I guess, even birth certificate? I don't know where mine is, but I'm sure I have it somewhere. But, yes, tell me the type of person gets shut out. I've always sort of wondered about this one.
- [19:59]
C
Okay, so let's start with how voter suppression works. It's three things. Can you register and stay on the rolls? Can you cast a ballot? And does that ballot get counted? Well, this act tries to decimate your right to vote using all three of those pieces. So let's start with registration. There is not a single federal law right now requires proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. It is the law right now. What they are doing is making it more difficult and restricting the kinds of proof that you can use. So if you are in the military and you are overseas and the SAVE act passes, unless you decided to bring your birth certificate with you to South Korea or to Oman, you now have to go back and get it and go through the process, which means you could miss out on participating in election.
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B
Isn't a form of identification that you get as a military, as a serviceman?
- [20:54]
C
No, it's not included. Number two, if you are a woman who changed her last name, yes, you've got your birth certificate, but it's not the name that you need to register under. Well, you have to have your birth certificate and you have to have the piece of paper they may or may not have given you when you filed your name change. And if you got divorced or changed anything else, that's half like, that's like 100 million women who could immediately. Number three, if you grew. If you were born during Jim Crow, like my parents, like my grandparents, my grandparents have passed on, but my parents were born under Jim Crow. You were not guaranteed that you could be born in a hospital, which means you may not have a birth certificate. Now, you were able to get additional pieces of paper, but depending on how restrictive that birth certificate rule is, remember what they did to Obama when they questioned the fact that he didn't he had a certified birth certificate instead of the original? Well, if you were not born in a hospital, the birth certificate that you may have access to may not be validated by the group that has to say that you are a citizen, which means you've got people of color, you've got women, you've got the military. And let's say you're rural, you may not live anywhere near where your birth certificate is from, and they may not be willing to send it to you. And you might not have the Internet because we never quite got that taken care of. So you lose your right to vote until you solve a structural problem that is a manufactured problem. So that's the first part. The second part is, so can you register and stay on the rolls? Can you cast a ballot? When people say there's not a state in this nation that does not require identification to cast a ballot, it's not, do you have identification? It's how restricted is that identification? In Texas, you can use your gun license but not your student id. And so we've got to remember that what the save act is going to do is push out any voter they think will not support the policies they want. People of color, children, young people, the disabled, communities that have difficulty getting access and may not have the money half of Americans do not have. So it's 60 million women who would be pushed out. But 100 million people don't have passports. So if you have a passport, you're good. Anything else, it's questionable. And that's the problem. We don't know who could lose their right to vote.
- [23:20]
B
Here's the thing, though. On the flip side, like, do you think that you should have some sort of identification when you show up to vote?
- [23:27]
C
Every state requires it already. This is a. This is a false argument. I wrote a book called Our Time is Now.
- [23:34]
B
What is it exactly? Like, what exactly would I need to vote? What would I need?
- [23:38]
C
It depends on your state. Some states have more restrictive. That's why I use Texas as an example. In Texas, you don't have to be trained to shoot a gun, but you can get a gun license. But to get to be a student at one of their universities, you've got to jump through all kinds of hoops and they will let you bring your gun license to vote, but not your student id. So this is not about proof of who you are. This is about the kind of people they want to have show up. There is not a state in this country that does not require proof of identity. It is a question of how restrictive that proof is and who can afford to get that proof. That's the point. We let them wrap us into this conversation. That is complete and utter bollocks. There is not a place in America where you don't have to have proof of id. It's just a question of what proof you have to provide to make your citizenship valid in their eyes.
- [24:33]
B
Are you worried that by, like, talking about this that you're. That some Dems are just thinking it's not even worth it to show up to vote because it's going to be too difficult?
- [24:41]
C
So people make that argument, and here's how I frame it. We've got to talk about what the hurdles are, but we've got to talk about what the solutions are. So what we did in Georgia in 2018 and 2020 and in 2022, what we did in 24, what we keep doing and what I've done across this country is that we got to tell people what they face. It is never a safe thing to do to hope that if we don't talk about it, it won't Hurt us. But then we've got to talk about it in terms of how do we solve it. You solve it by voting in the midterms, but voting up and down the ballot. You solve it by making sure that your state and legislators and actually care about you as a voter. You solve it by making sure that young people get registered to vote the minute they turn 18. And you solve it by having groups like vote writers out there getting people the IDs they need. We know that the powerful want this to happen, and they're probably going to get it sooner than we will be able to stop them. And so while we stave off disaster, let's start solving the problem. So I want people to get the id. I want people to have all of the paperwork they can have, but that paperwork should not determine the quality of your citizenship.
- [25:51]
B
Okay, so some of the people in the chat we're seeing Stacey for president in 2028. There is a lot of buzz, though, in political circles about Senator Jon Ossoff for president. He's in Georgia. He's in your state. What do you think about him? Is he ready?
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C
So I'm going to say this. I'm going to let John speak for himself. And John said he is not interested in running for president in 2028. Jon is interested in being the US senator who gets reelected in 2026. So if you love Jon Ossoff, if you like John Ossoff, if you love America, invest in Jon Ossoff right now. John should win this reelection. We need him in the U.S. senate. That's where he wants to do the work. We need senators who believe in democracy, and that's where he wants to be focused. So let's do everything we can to reelect John Ossoff and send him back to the US Senate.
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B
Got it? Democrats talked a lot about faith and democracy in 20. In 2024, they argued that accepting election results was essential to preserving it. Do you think it's still important that you, you think that's still important in 2026?
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C
Absolutely. And I'm going to. You didn't raise it this way, but I'm going to use this opportunity. So there are those who remember that in 2018, in my election, I very clearly accepted the outcome, but I challenged the system and part of the responsibility of citizenship, responsibility of democracy. You cannot advance a system that you refuse to question, especially when that system is used to harm others. I absolutely acknowledged that the law as it stood meant that what was done to voters in my state was legal but was it right? No, it was not right. Voter suppression is never right. And as a candidate, we are uniquely positioned to actually say what's happening, because we've got the microphone, we've got the bully pulpit. I can question and push for a better system, but you cannot do that if you pretend everything is fine. And so I think we've gotten ourselves in this trick box of you have to accept everything or reject everything. And that's not how democracy has ever worked. We can accept the law as it is and work as hard as we can to make the law and its outcomes better. That's the work I do. That's the work we must do. Because if our democracy was as solid as we needed to be, we would not be in the mess we're in right now. Competitive authoritarianism relies on good people deciding that they can't say anything lest it be used against them. And our silence becomes consent in their attacks. And that goes back to what I said about authoritarianism.
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B
Yeah.
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C
You cannot share a power you can't name, and you cannot share a power you won't defend. And in our silence, in our refusal to have any questions, what we create is clear field for those who want to take everything we have and hoard it for themselves.
- [28:46]
B
I think contesting really, you know, elections is probably the most American thing ever. I mean, we've been contesting elections forever. But is there any distinction to you between acknowledging the certified winner and conceding?
- [28:58]
C
Yeah, I mean, look, I. I did that. I acknowledged the certified winner. I actually, I congratulated him. But I also said I would not concede that the system used to elect him was right and it wasn't. And what we've seen play out since 2018 is every single thing I raise, every concern I had has actually been amplified and exported. I mean, we've got this franchise of voter suppression that Georgia was one of the architects of, and it has undermined our Democratic. And I mean small D, not, not big D, because in Georgia, I have Republican friends who will tell you I argued about the fact that they were denied their right to vote, that they had elections that were not favorable, were not fairly operated, because the same system that may come from my community will eventually break it for everyone. And so our responsibility is not Democrat versus Republican. It's democracy versus authoritarianism. The difference between what I do and what so many good people do when we question systems is different than having an armed mass of people storm the Capitol, manufacture lies, and use those lies as a justification for stripping people of their citizenship and. And Their power to vote. Those are two very different things. Everything I've ever done has been about expanding access to democracy I believe in because my patriotism requires it. And anyone who uses that same power to restrict access and diminish citizenship should be held accountable and held responsible.
- [30:32]
B
Sarah Burr says that you should be running the dnc. And Benjamin has another great question. He said, bottom line, Stacey, how do we get money out of politics when neither party's members want to limit their own revenue streams? And he makes a really good point. I mean, there are some members that pledge not to take corporate money, not to take PAC money, but there, I mean, or special interest money. But really, unions are special interests. Like, there are so many ways in which you can take money that it's. It's kind of tricky. So how, how do we do this? So there's, I feel like there's no handshake that's going to happen at any point.
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C
Yeah, I mean, look, we were, we had a good thing that happened with the McCain Feingold Act. And if you take what we did post Watergate and MARRY that with McCain Feingold, it was about as good as we could get short of public financing. Now the best way to do this is public financing. Public financing says that everyone gets the same amount and that it allows more people to come into the process. That's what we. That's the gold standard. But without that being the gold standard, what you don't want is the asymmetry that we watched play out this past year with gerrymandering. Because when one side disarms and the other side goes on an arms race, you're going to see a dis. You're going to see disparate outcomes. And as long as the system is as it is, we're going to be in trouble. So we've got to elect people who are willing to commit to fixing the system. But we also have to start being more ambitious about what that system looks like. We keep tinkering around the edges. And my argument is we need wholesale reform that you cannot get unless we start to win. But it's not just winning for winning sake. It's winning with people who actually believe what you believe and want what you want, but are willing to work to get there. And that's the place where I think I get into a little bit of trouble with folks. I am a progressive, but I'm a pragmatic progressive. I don't have to compromise my values, but I may have to narrow my vision a bit about what I can get this time and then the next time. But as long as we are clear about what we're trying to get to, when we're trying to get to a democracy that works for everyone, a democracy that serves people, a democracy that guarantees us the basics and then says opportunity is yours to take advantage of, it's going to take us getting that there by increments because we're not going to get a wholesale sweep. It's just not going to happen. But what you can do is build the coalition you need. And we know it works because that's what they did. It took them 60 years, but they built the coalition. They wanted to decimate pluralism in our democracy. They've got what they wanted. We've got to believe that we can get what we deserve.
- [33:14]
B
So I want to be respectful of your time because I heard that you have an event and I really appreciate your time, by the way. But some of our people want to know what are your top three Democrats who you want to see in the 2028 presidential primary?
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C
So I'm not going to do that because I don't know who. So but here's what I'm going tell you. Instead of trying to pick the person,
- [33:36]
B
your endorsement would go a long way. So I do think this is A But.
- [33:40]
C
It's 2026. But I want people to think about things differently because one of the reasons we keep getting what we get is we keep using a metric that is not, I think, the right one. So instead of looking for names, because those are the ones who've been lifted up, I look for archetypes. I want to see who has a plan, who can articulate the nation they want to see the day after the election, not what they want me to believe, but has a plan for what can be. Number two, who is being courageous in this moment, who is not waiting to be called up and holding their fire and holding their horses until they win? Who's being soft versus who is being willing, who's willing to fight. And then third, and I think most important, who has been doing the work irrespective of the power that they hold. Because too often we equate title with capacity. You don't have to have a title to do the work. What you have to have is the will to do the work. And so as you're thinking is as you're shopping with for your candidate in 28, I want you to watch how they're living this moment. Watch what they're doing when the hard things happen. Listen to what they say they want to see on the other side and see how that resonates with your values. We don't know who's going to run, but what we do know is what we need. We need a democracy that delivers for Americans. And if we do not have candidates willing to step up in this moment and help us get there, then we're not going to get what we need on the other side of 28.
- [35:10]
B
Well, Stacy, this was amazing. We appreciate having you on the show. Everyone was tuned in and sending in questions and so thank you to all of the people who watch subscribe. If you follow Stacey on Substack, hit that subscribe button. Hit the subscribe button for the red letter as well. If you're on YouTube, consider becoming a member. Also hit the subscribe button and support independent journalism and independent work. So thank you so much for your time and we will hopefully have you back soon.
- [35:41]
C
I look forward to it. Tara, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
- [35:44]
B
Great.
- [36:50]
D
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