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- [00:00]
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- [01:04]
Simon Bazelon
Par le tu francais hablas espanol? Parli italiano.
- [01:08]
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- [01:56]
Charlie Sykes
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome to the to the Contrary PODC podcast. We're gonna step back from the daily news and talk about a report that came out last week that sounds some alarms for Democrats, but also has some very, very practical advice. In fact, this report, Deciding to Win from the welcome Party, opens with a quote from Nancy Pelosi. Winning an election is a decision. You make a decision to win, and then you make every decision in favor of winning. There's a lot of controversy about this, of course, because there are a lot of people in the Democratic party who would prefer to, I would say, wallow in a little bit of denialism or scratch their ideological ID than to ask the tough questions like why Are these crazy people beating us in elections? And there are these moments when political parties are open to all of this. I mean, I can remember back in the early 1990s, after the Democrats had been shellacked by the Republicans in three consecutive elections, blown out 1980 by Ronald Reagan, blown out even bigger in 1984, and then losing in a landslide to George H.W. bush. And there were Democrats who said, you know, maybe we ought to rethink some of our ideological approaches and the things we do. And there was a group called the Democratic Leadership Council, I believe, headed up by Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. He said, you know, we need to moderate some of our positions. And sure enough, he went on to serve for eight years. So let's dive into this particular report. And joining us on the podcast today is the lead author of this report, Deciding to Win, Simon Bazelon. Simon, thanks for joining me. I appreciate it very, very much.
- [03:40]
Simon Bazelon
Thanks for having me on the show.
- [03:42]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so I wanna start with the why writing this? Because I think we need to establish the entire point of this is not to tell Democrats to become Republicans. It's tell Democrats to be the kind of Democrat that used to win elections. Right. I mean, the whole point is that you are pro Democrat, you understand the stakes of the Trump regime and the stakes of the midterm elections. I mean, let's just establish that as the baseline, that this is an inter party discussion. I mean, intra party discussion.
- [04:16]
Simon Bazelon
Right, Absolutely. And I think we try to be really clear about that in the report. I mean, if you look at the report, the first sentence of the executive summary, it begins with, Donald Trump is damaging our economy and threatening our democracy. I think that's the premise that we begin from. We don't think that Donald Trump is doing a good job governing the nation. We think it would be a lot better if Democrats had control of the U.S. house and the U.S. senate. We think would be a lot better if Democrats had control of the presidency after 2028. And we said we really, really start from the premise of what is it the Democrats actually need to do in order to win elections.
- [04:46]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. And yet as you, as you point out, defeating Republicans at the ballot box in 2026 and 2028 is a moral and political imperative. So let's again start from that. You argue in this that since 2012 we can talk about whether that's the right date. Highly educated staffers, donors, advocacy groups, pundits and elected officials have reshaped the Democratic Party's agenda, decreasing our party's focus on the economic Issues that are the top concerns of the American people. So these are sometimes referred to as the groups or the elites. And you basically go back to 2012. So describe the process by which Democrats lost connection with much of their blue collar working class base, the swing voters. They used to be able to win in elections. So what happened between 2012 and now?
- [05:41]
Simon Bazelon
Absolutely. I think we allowed an increasingly out of touch set of donors, staffers, advocacy groups, pundits, loud voices on social media. We let an increasingly loud set of those folks have an increasingly great share over our communications, over our priorities and over our positions. And so we really think that the way forward is to listen less to those kind of Democratic elites and more to the actual voters and what they actually think.
- [06:08]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so who are we talking about here? Are we talking about the identity politics groups? Are we talking about people who had one issue? Let's be more specific about this because there is a whole group of people out there within the Democratic Party and within the never Trump movement and says, no, no, no, the Democrats are still the centrist party. They never moved to become left. That's, that's Fox News line. So who are we talking about here?
- [06:36]
Simon Bazelon
I think we're talking about a really wide range of folks. I think we're talking about people who donate to Democratic campaigns, both small dollar donors and big dollar donors. I think we're talking about the advocacy groups who, you know, the groups in quotes is a phrase that gets thrown a lot around, around a lot in Democratic politics. I do think that, you know, the groups have played a role in this, but I don't think that they've played the only role. I think it's also just important to understand that, you know, these shifts have been driven also by, you know, highly educated Democrats themselves. We have a bunch of data earlier in the, early in the report looking at what issues highly educated Democrats care about relative to working class voters, relative to swing voters, relative to the general electorate. And what we see is that those differences really line up with the issues where Democrats are now perceived to care too much about them. So, for example, an issue that stands out, two issues that stand out, climate change, political division. Those are two issues where highly educated Democrats, people who voted for Kamala Harris, who had an advanced degree, cared much more about those issues than people who voted for, you know, either were swing voters or didn't have a college degree or just voted at all. And then on the flip side, you know, issues like border security, issues like crime, the budget deficit and government debt, those are issues that highly educated Democrats just care a lot about, care about a lot less than working class voters or swing voters.
- [07:48]
Charlie Sykes
You know what really caught my eye when I was paging through your report, because I get a lot of these reports, was this one chart you had, how the Democratic Party's priorities have changed. And you rate the terms, the change in the frequency with which they use the terms. And I'm just going to go down to the bottom of it, because a lot of things at the top. So at the very bottom, jobs, jobs, economic, middle class, economy, nation, national work, veteran, tax cuts, responsibility, crime, criminal growth, father fathers, small business deficits. So you go, wait, you know, those are not topics that you want to see to the other side. And yet these numbers would suggest that for some reason, Democrats who used to use terms like this all the time, just stop talking about it. They went for what? Climate, white, black, Latino, Latina, lgbt, justice, hate, democracy, transgender, trans issues. I mean, this is kind of like right there encapsulated. If you're not talking about economic issues, people think you're not talking about things that affect their lives.
- [09:02]
Simon Bazelon
Absolutely. And I think we really see this reflected in the data. So, you know, we confirmed by a bunch of other polling, you don't just have to trust us. But we ran a big study where we showed voters a long list of issues. We asked them, you know, we show them two at a time. We asked them to choose which one they think ought to be a higher priority to the Democratic Party. And when we do this analysis, what we see is that voters overwhelmingly want Democrats to focus on concrete economic issues. So the issues that come up at the top of the list are things like protecting Social Security and Medicare, lowering everyday costs, creating jobs and economic growth, making healthcare more affordable, cutting taxes on the middle class. And then at the bottom, we see more cultural issues that are a little bit more abstract to voters. Things like, you know, protecting LGBTQ Americans, protecting the rights of undocumented immigrants, fighting climate change, protecting abortion rights, et cetera, et cetera. And then when we do, when we do the flip side of this, which is just we ask voters, you know, we show the same list of issues, we ask them, what do you think Democrats currently care more about? And then we just look at the difference between these two things, and we have a great chart in there that I really like. I think it tells a big part of the story, which is just looking at the difference between how much voters want Democrats to focus on a variety of issues and how much voters actually think Democrats do focus on those issues. When we do this analysis, we see that at the top, we have these issues that voters do not think Democrats care about enough. And those issues are securing the border, lowering everyday costs, making health care more affordable, reducing the rate of crime. And then on the flip side, we have issues that voters think Democrats place too high of a priority on. Things like protecting the rights of undocumented immigrants, promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, protecting the rights of LGBTQ Americans. And that's not to say that, you know, those aren't, you know, important issues, but voters don't see them as priorities as much as they do these economic issues. And they really want Democrats to be focusing more on economic issues, more on border security, more on crime.
- [10:46]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I mean, on this chart I'm looking at this, you know, how much voters think they currently prioritize it. You know, people want Democrats to explain how they're going to secure the border, how they're going to create jobs and economic growth, and they just don't have that sense that they're doing it. Now, when you read some of these things, there may be people who are saying, simon, you're just essentially rejecting modern liberalism. But really, these became the priorities only in recent years. And I wonder what you think about this. There's a lot of other people have written about this, that the Trump phenomenon has been so traumatic to the political system, that there was that period, particularly around 2020, when people stopped because it was so urgent to oppose everything that Donald Trump was doing, that a lot of people in the Democratic Party and in the center left kind of turned a blind eye to what we now know as wokeness, some of the critical theories that increasingly sounded discordant to voters. And so at the time, everybody was in a bubble saying, this is great. This is the future of the Democratic Party, when a lot of voters were saying, well, you're no longer talking about things that we care about, and you stop talking about economic issues.
- [12:09]
Simon Bazelon
Yeah, I also would just go further than this and say, I don't think it's just about a change in the way we talk or what we talk about. I also think it's about the specific policy positions that we advocate for. You know, I think immigration is a really good example of this. It's not just that. You know, I don't think the Biden administration was going around, you know, using the word Latin X or, you know, things like that. But what they did do was pursue a border policy that was both substantively wrong and politically disastrous. And I think it's really important for Democrats to reckon with that this isn't just a communications issue. This isn't just what we talk about or how we talk about it. It's also a governance question. It's also a substantive question about our policy commitments on a variety of issues.
- [12:48]
Charlie Sykes
You know, you, I was going through your, I think it was your Twitter feed, and you had a really interesting link to an interview from Liz Smith in New York magazine about this. Let me just read you this because I know that you're familiar with this where she says, I think this is part of a trend among Democrats in recent years where we stop treating voters like adults. When they would say, prices are killing me, we would say, well, actually, inflation is higher in Sweden. When they said crime is out of control, we'd respond, actually, it's lower than it was 40 years ago. You saw those white boards and when they said, hey, shouldn't we be doing something about the border? We said, turn on, off Fox News. That's a right wing talking point. Voters noticed that. They thought we weren't listening to them and that's why they were willing to go vote for someone like Donald Trump. Say what you will about him, he at least was speaking a language of grievance, talking about taking on the status quo that was driving a lot of these problems. And obviously that's, that's kind of, that seems like it sums up a lot of the things that your data supports.
- [13:54]
Simon Bazelon
Yeah, I mean, I like Liz a lot. I think she's very smart. You know, maybe she gives a little bit too much credit, in my view, toward Trump. At the end of that, I think he does a lot of lying and I think that's pretty bad. But with that said, you know, like, I think there's a lot of effort on the left and I think there's been, you know, a lot of the response to this report has been people trying to say like, that some of these shifts didn't happen.
- [14:12]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [14:13]
Simon Bazelon
And I think what's really important just to say, like, no, no, like they did happen. Like the Democratic Party is just legitimately a lot more left wing than it used to be. There was legitimately a very large increase in the number of unauthorized immigrants entering the United States between 2020. And that wasn't made up by Fox News. It wasn't made up by right wingers on TikTok. It really did happen and voters really noticed and they respond to things like that. And I think the idea that, you know, we're going to see voters say, hey, I don't like the influx of undocumented immigration that we're having, and respond to that by saying, you're being misinformed. You are. You don't understand what you should. I think that's just a really. You know, I both think it's, like, disrespectful and not the right way to approach voters in a democracy. But also I just think it's politically malpractice.
- [14:55]
Charlie Sykes
You know, I lived through this in real time. You know, the number of conversations I had with people who basically just denied that some of these major problems were problems at all. The increase in crime, which was exaggerated and is exaggerated and demagogued by Donald Trump. But it's a real concern. You know, people, you know, actually are concerned about it. We've seen that in some of the New York elections. I mean, that's how Eric Adams got elected. The border, a real problem. You just simply can't say there's no problem there. None of these problems exist. That denial. I mean, I can just remember the conversations like, you know, no, you know, inflation's a myth. You know, the people, you know, are just stupid if they actually care about the price of eggs. Okay, you don't care about that. Crime is a myth. I remember having discussions about, you know, is the Biden administration perhaps misreading its mandate and being assured by prominent never Trumpers. No, no, no. The Biden administration is not moving to the left. They are not making any mistakes on these issues. And I think in retrospect, it was political malpractice.
- [16:03]
Simon Bazelon
Absolutely. I think crime is a really good example of this. You know, obviously people throw around a lot of charts around, you know, crime rates relative to now, relative to 40 years ago. But if you live in a blue state or a blue city, it's just impossible to notice that there was a real uptick in things like public disorder between 2020 and 2023. I mean, I think things have gotten a lot better in a lot of places, but, like, you know, it was very reasonable. I think this helps explain a lot of the swings we saw in the Bronx, in very deep blue parts of Democratic cities in Detroit. Right. You see these big swings. And I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, voters not feeling like Democrats took public safety seriously in either their rhetoric or their policymaking, and voters responding to that, similar to that. You know, the Biden administration throwing these rallies for Biden nomics at a time when inflation was really, really high. I think it just felt like a slap in the face to a lot of voters who felt like they were facing economic pain. And the administration wasn't taking their concerns around costs seriously and at the same time was pursuing inflationary policies, whether it was student loan relief or a variety of other things. They were pursuing policies that had inflationary impacts at a time when inflation was much too high, and they shouldn't have been doing that.
- [17:05]
Charlie Sykes
The hard part about this is that you listen to Trump and to the MAGA folks talking about Democrats as being Hamas supporters and antifa people who hate America and they're communists and their socialists, and it is in such bad faith. It is so deceptive. So on the one hand, you have this sort of toxic caricature, but you also have to recognize. Yeah, but you do have a branding problem. And I think there are a lot of Democrats who react to the criticism because it's so unfair, it's so demented by rejecting all of the kind of critiques you're giving. So who is not buying what you're selling right now? And what. Why do you think there are so many of them invested in this kind of denialism that, hey, we do maybe do have a problem?
- [17:52]
Simon Bazelon
Yeah. So before I answer that, let me just throw in one other thing that I think is a really important point. So, you know, Democrats talk a lot about the idea that, you know, Republicans are attacking us. Republicans are going to attack us no matter what. And I think that's absolutely True. Right. In 2012, Republicans attacked Democrats for being too left wing. You know, they said Barack Obama was a Muslim, they said he was a communist, they said he was a dictator. And in 2024, they say that Bernie Sanders is a communist, they say that Joe Biden is a dictator. They say all of these things, and, you know, many of them are not true. With that said, it's very clear in the data that the degree to which the public believes these attacks is in large part related to how much truth there is in each of them. And so, for example, just to be very specific, the share of voters who think that the Democratic Party is too liberal has gone up by about 9% since 2012, from about 46% to about 55%. And, you know, obviously, Republicans in 2012 were trying very hard to convince voters that Democrats were too liberal. And Fox News existed in 2012, and now Fox News still exists in 2025. Republicans are still, you know, trying very hard to convince voters that Democrats are too liberal. But the degree to which voters believe that Democrats are too liberal has changed a lot. And so then there's this question of why that is, and our view is that this shift in perception of the Democratic Party has a lot to do with the fact that, in fact, like, just substantively, the share of Democrats who support progressive legislation in Congress has gone dramatically up. Share of Democrats who co sponsored Medicare for all was 47 in 2024. It was 24 in 2013. The share of Democrats who co sponsored a reparation study bill was 57% in 2024. It was 1% in 2014. You know, assault weapons ban went from 40% to 90%. Right. So you just see across the board, these really big shifts in the Democratic Party, and they're reflected in the polling data about how liberal voters think Democrats are.
- [19:46]
Charlie Sykes
Well, what are the issues, though, that are absolutely toxic? So, I mean, how does Medicare for All right now poll?
- [19:53]
Simon Bazelon
I mean, a few years ago, I think the biggest issues that are pain points for Democrats are immigration and public safety. And I think we talk about this throughout. Immigration, public safety. I would also throw in energy policy, which I think is really underrated in a lot of Democratic circles. You know, I think there's a real question for Democratic elites. If you talk to Democratic elites and you just ask them straight up, do you think on the merits it is better for gasoline to be cheap or for it to be expensive? I think a lot of them have a hard time answering that question in a way that makes sense to voters. I think a lot of them just, like, legitimately think that more expensive gasoline makes more sense on the merits. And obviously, voters really do not agree with that.
- [20:27]
Charlie Sykes
They really do not.
- [20:29]
Simon Bazelon
They do not think that that's true. You know, voters in our polling say that gas prices are a more important issue than climate change. I don't think the Democratic elites believe that to be the case. But then also, you know, there are a variety of cultural issues that I think are, you know, get a lot of attention but are less salient. But I would really say, you know, immigration, crime, energy, and then a smattering of cultural issues that are a bit less important are really the pain points for Democrats.
- [20:49]
Charlie Sykes
Well, in 2024, you know, one of the. I mean, I think one of the big, you know, wedge issues was the whole trans issue. You know, here in Wisconsin, you could not turn on a single television show without having, you know, being pan, you know, pounded about the use of tax dollars for, you know, gender transition for prisoners. And the overall theme was, you know, she is for them. You know, Trump is for us. And sometimes politics does boil down to those really simple things. Are you for me or against me? Are you for me or you? For them. And also, are you going to help me buy my big ass truck as Ruben guy?
- [21:27]
Simon Bazelon
Yep, absolutely.
- [21:28]
Charlie Sykes
Or are you going to. Or. And you know, quite frankly, it comes down to. Because I remember having all of these conversations and, and there breaking point where, you know, you know, many of us, me, you know, think that just explaining how awful Donald Trump is is sufficient. Well, it's not because it's a. It is, it is, it is a choice. And there was always that moment where whether it was the crime issue, the border issue, guns being a huge issue in a state like Wisconsin, the trans issue, these are the issues where it's like, no, you clearly do not share my values. So let's go back to the groups because 2019 seems to me to be one of those pivotal moments which I'm sure you remember very, very well. And I think that's the one where I've circled around 2019 where all the candidates were running. The ACLU sends out a survey asking, do you support taxpayer support for gender transition for prisoners? And various people check yes, including Kamala Harris, which later became the subject of $100 million in ads. I also remember the debates where they were asked about Medicare for all. And everybody raised their hands or whether or not illegal immigration should not be considered illegal anymore, whether or not we should have free health care for illegal immigrants. And all the hands went up. And it was at that moment he thought, okay, they were all believing that the future of the Democratic Party was this progressive turn. Joe Biden, at least for that moment, was kind of the outlier going, wait, no, no, no, we ought to be appealing to the center.
- [23:11]
Simon Bazelon
But yes, though he did endorse decriminalizing border crossings.
- [23:15]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [23:15]
Simon Bazelon
So talk about that.
- [23:17]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, even Joe Biden. And by the way, so that hung on him for all of these years. And as I was watching that, I was wondering, I understand you're running in a primary right now, but do you guys have any idea how that is playing outside your bubble?
- [23:35]
Simon Bazelon
Absolutely. So I think there's a whole bunch of things that I would love to say in response to this. The first thing that I want to say is that I think a big problem for Democrats is that over the last 15 years, a real cottage industry has sprung up among Democrats of basically advocacy groups, but also sympathetic journalism outlets pushing polling results that, you know, just don't really line up with what we see when voters actually vote. Yeah, yeah. And so there was a real effort, you know, 25 years ago, the consensus, conventional wisdom in Democratic politics was that to win elections, you had to be moderate. And there was a disagreement. You know, people didn't always necessarily agree or totally understand exactly what that meant, but that was kind of the default baseline. And when I talk to, you know, older Democratic political operatives, that's really the realm in which they operated. Then I think, you know, somewhere along the way, there was this kind of realization that. That being moderate didn't necessarily mean taking the centrist position on every issue, that maybe there were some issues where voters being moderate actually meant queuing to public opinion. And in that case, public opinion was actually pretty liberal. And so there was this idea that came out that was like, well, we're going to try to identify the specific policy issues where voters actually turn out to be quite liberal and where a moderate agenda could include progressive policies on those issues. But once that happened, there was immediately an immense incentive that arose, which was basically for advocacy groups to try to slip their work into the mainstream of the party by pushing polling that said that all of their ideas were super popular. And so this is how you get polling saying that affirmative action is popular, or that a carbon tax is super popular, or that universal background checks has 90% support. And so the problem with all of this is just that we know from battle initiatives that these polls aren't true. And there's a huge amount of academic literature that I could point folks to. And maybe if you have links that we can post after the show, I'd be happy to post a paper from my friends. My friends Chris Warren and Jonathan Robinson wrote a really good paper about this a couple years ago showing that ballot initiative results show that issue polling systematically overestimates the public support for both progressive and conservative changes to the status quo. And so when background checks went on the ballot in 2016 in Maine, they lost. They didn't get 90% of the vote. They got 48% of the vote. And so I think there's just been this huge problem, which is this massive misinformation industry has sprung up among Democrats to convince us that every single one of our ideas is super popular with voters. And unfortunately, that's just not the case. And we don't see it in the data. We don't see it in which candidates win elections. We don't see it in what the candidates who win in the hardest places run on. And we don't see it in our own polling either.
- [25:59]
Charlie Sykes
Well, also, you know, I'm thinking back during this period that you're describing, and there was also that growing consensus that there was the Arc of ideology, the arc of politics, which was inevitable and it would be driven by demographics. It was the inevitability that we were going to have. What were the phrases? You know, the rising majority, majority and that the future emerging.
- [26:20]
Simon Bazelon
Well, you mentioned Rui Teixeira. You know, I don't want to give Rui too much, too much heat for that because I do like him. But, you know, the emerging Democratic majority did not turn out to be totally correct.
- [26:28]
Charlie Sykes
No, no, no, no. But, but also, you know, I am sure that he understands that as well. But, but I'm talking about the, the, this, the demographic idea, you know, that minorities and women and young people were all inevitably going to, to be, to be progressive. And so these, these progressive ideas, it felt less risky to get ahead of public opinion because you had this huge Democratic which was coming, that was going to support all of us. And they talked themselves into that, correct?
- [26:55]
Simon Bazelon
Yes. And I think, you know, I think a really important point here is just to remember, you know, according to Gallup, you know, one of the oldest survey firms in existence, you know, 71% of voters identify as either moderate or conservative. That's a super majority. At the same time, a majority of, you know, black voters, a majority of Hispanic voters, a majority of non college educated voters, a majority of swing voters, Majorities of all of those groups identify as either moderate or conservative. In all those groups, you know, liberals are not the majority. Now I think this is a really important point, particularly because there's been a huge amount of attention in Democratic politics over the last 15 years about these swings of black and Hispanic and working class voters against Democrats. Right. We hear about this all the time. Minority voters leaving the party. Why is that? Well, one thing that is really clear in the data that we looked at is that, you know, these shifts in support have not been uniform whatsoever. So in fact, you know, among, you know, Latino and black voters, Democratic support has been essentially flat since 2012among voters who are Latino and black and who identify as liberal. The same thing is true among Asian voters and among non college educated white voters. But at the same time, Democrats have absolutely cratered in support among Latino and black voters and white working class voters who identify as moderate or conservative. So just to take the most extreme example, according to the Cooperative Election Study, black voters who identify as conservative went from supporting Democrats at an 86% rate in 2012 to a 47% rate in 2024. Wow, that's a 39% decline in just 12 years. Right. And the Latino declines, you know, weren't quite as extreme. They're about 15% for conservative Latinos, 15% for moderate Latinos. But we really see is just that the voters that Democrats are losing in these working class minority groups, they're not the liberal voters. They are the moderate and conservative voters. And I think that, you know, given, you know, at the same time, the Democrats have shifted a lot to the left. I think that tells a pretty clear story of why these voters are leaving the party.
- [28:43]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so let's retell the story in a slightly different frame. Maybe we're just gonna say the exact same thing, but slightly differently. So explain to me, how does someone like a Barack Obama win easily in 2012 over a very respected Republican nominee when fast forward 2024. A black woman, Kamala Harris, loses all the swing states to somebody as toxic as Donald Trump. So. So Barack, if the country was in fact moving, you know. Well, just give me your theory of the case. Because Barack Obama. Did Barack Obama not read as liberal and progressive in 2012? You know, for people who will attribute Kamala Harris's defeat to gender and race, you know, we did elect the first black man to be the president of the United States in 2012, which was an extraordinary moment. So could you. What happened?
- [29:38]
Simon Bazelon
Absolutely. The share of voters who said that Kamala Harris. You know, an average of public polls that we were able to find, the share of voters who said that Kamala Harris was, you know, quote unquote, too Liberal, was about 5% higher than the share of voters who said that Barack Obama was Too liberal in 2012. I also think it's just really important to understand that the terrain in which the 2012 campaign was fought was quite different than the 2024 campaign. So specifically, you know, Mitt Romney was much, you know, in terms of moral character, in terms of ethics, in terms of everything that you would want in a human being. Mitt Romney is just far beyond Donald Trump as a person. Right. But with that said, in 2012, Mitt Romney committed himself to a number of extremely unpopular positions on issues that are quite important to voters, which Donald Trump ditched. So, for example, you know, the 2012 Republican platform included an explicit call to raise the retirement age, included an explicit call to privatize Medicare. It included an explicit call to pass an amendment to the US Constitution to give unborn fetuses the same standing legally as all other American citizens. It included an explicit call to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It included an explicit call to ban same sex marriage. Those are five quite unpopular policy positions that Donald Trump explicitly rejected. In 2016 and in 2024. And I think it's just really important for Democrats to understand that a big part of the story of the last 15 years is not just Republicans becoming crazier, though. They absolutely have becoming crazier. They've become much crazier on some things, but at the same time, they've dropped a number of the drags on them. You know, George Bush fought really hard to privatize Social Security, and it was a political disaster for him. And Donald Trump and the Republican Party are in power right now, and they're not doing anything to touch Social Security. They're not trying to ban abortion at the federal level. And the reason they're not trying to do that is because they know that it would be politically toxic if they tried.
- [31:23]
Charlie Sykes
No, they, they, they learned their lessons here. Well, the other problem, of course, and then going back a little bit earlier to, to, you know, 2008, was that, you know, there was a change election and the Democrats have the party of the status quo. And this is part of the age part. The age issue is as, as well. And you know, there's nothing particularly original we can say about that, but we keep running, you know, the candidates who are the, probably the most establishment kind of candidates at a time when people are, are really hungry for this. You know, so, so people are, you know, looking, there's. Okay, so there's one other like, simplistic view of politics. And I always, you know, you know, think we over complexify. And Bill Clinton said this, I think it was Bill Clinton who said this back in the 1990s, that if it's a contest between someone who's perceived to be strong and someone who's perceived to be weak, the strong candidate will always win. So the Democrats have chronically had the problem and Donald Trump is playing this, you know, absolutely to the hilt, obviously, that we are the daddy party, we are the strong party. You people are the mommy party, you are the weak party. Your thoughts on that?
- [32:34]
Simon Bazelon
So I think, you know, I really appreciate you bringing up this establishment for status quo, you know, versus outsider dichotomy. And I think it's really important for Democrats to understand that there is this absolute hunger in the electorate for people who are not part of the political establishment. Voters feel like, you know, Democrats and Republicans, both elites on both sides, have failed the country and are not steering our country in the right direction. And there's this hunger for new, there's this hunger for fresh, for people who aren't part of the failed policies of previous administration. However, with that said, I also think it's just extremely important for Democrats to understand that hunger for an outsider and hunger for unpopular policy ideas are not the same thing. And so we want outsiders who take positions that voters agree with on issues that they care about, including immigration and crime. And if you're an outsider, if you're an outsider who hates the system and wants to shake everything up, but you don't believe in border security and you want to decriminalize border entry and you want to give free health care to every undocumented immigrant living in the United States, that's not a mix that voters are looking for. Voters are looking for an outsider who wants to shake up the system. Who is more in the, you know, Jared Goldin, Marie Gluson, Kemp Perez, Dan Osborne mode. Those are all folks who take positions that voters agree with on issues they care about, particularly immigration and tribe.
- [33:45]
Charlie Sykes
Okay. So your report does list some of these names. And this has been one of my frustrations, by the way, is the Democrats tend to fall in love with the bright, shiny objects. You know, the people who, you know, are, you know, are going to make people excited in the MSNBC green rooms but could not win in any of these swing districts. But you do mention there are some rising Democratic stars. Dan Osborne, you mentioned who ran as an independent. Ruben Gallego, Jared Golden, Marie Glusenkamp Perez. Hope I get that right. Adam Gray, Christian McDonald Rivet, Tom Suozzi, Marcy Kaptor, Vincente Gonzalez, others. I would throw Abigail Spanberger into that, assuming that she's gonna win. So there are Democrats who are doing this. Let me ask you a harder question, though. I'm sorry, you want to comment on that before we.
- [34:37]
Simon Bazelon
Yeah, I was just going to jump in and say, you know, quickly that.
- [34:39]
Charlie Sykes
I'm sorry, go ahead.
- [34:42]
Simon Bazelon
I was just going to say quickly that I think we have a real problem in the party, which is that the people who are best, who are doing best at winning in tough races, the people who have shown a proven ability to win over swing voters, to win over the kinds of voters who voted for Donald Trump in 2024, those candidates really struggle to get Democrats to fall in love with them. There are, you know, Jared Goldin doesn't. He's his he's not going viral on Twitter. He's not raking in campaign cash. What he is doing is facing a primary challenger from the left right now, despite the fact that he has now held a district that Donald Trump won in several consecutive elections. And so there's Just this real question in the party, which is, how can we get excited about the candidates in our party who have shown, who have demonstrated what we really need, which is a way to who, you know, they have concretely proven that they can get votes that other Democrats can't. And so how do we, you know, how do we get Democrats to be excited about that? And I think a big part of, you know, deciding to win is convincing Democrats that, yeah, like, these are the candidates who need to be the future, rather than, you know, some rising stars who don't do as well electorally but, you know, make a lot of great vertical video.
- [35:38]
Charlie Sykes
So you. You've laid out in great detail this kind of roadmap for, you know, the kinds of issues to talk about. Knowing the Republicans the way that we do, we know that one of the things that they will do in the next 18 months, next 12 months, will be to spend, I don't know, $100 million saying that Zoram Mamdani is the face of the Democratic Party. They will make him the most for people who will comment like, well, this is a local election. Who cares what people in New York should be able to do, understand that politics is no longer local. Politics is national. Right. And they will do this. So how does that complicate the project of changing the image of the party? If Democrats fall in love with an outsider who is proposing, you know, is dealing with affordability by giving lots and lots of free stuff and taking lots and lots of culturally, I would say, uber progressive positions, how do you see that phenomenon playing out?
- [36:37]
Simon Bazelon
So first, you know, I think the picture with Zoram Hamdani is a little bit of complicated one. It's a nuanced picture. Right. So on the one hand, you know, I think there are some things that Zoram Hamdani actually does. Does quite well. And we say this in the report, we single him out for praise in a couple different ways. I think the thing that he does really well, that a lot of Democrats fail to do is that he really, you know, whatever you want to say about his policy agenda, whatever you want to say about his past history of statements, he is laser focused on the issues that New Yorkers care the most about. Everything he does comes back to affordability. He listens to them. His website is about affordability. His slogan is about affordability. His ads are about affordability. If you interview him, he brings every question back to affordability. If you ask him about Israel, he talks about affordability. Right. And I think it's just an Impressive degree of message discipline that a lot of Democrats could really stand to learn from, which is that, you know, we need to be laser focused on the issues that voters care about most. With that said, you know, I think there are other things that, you know, aren't as much of a model for Democrats nationally. You know, Zoran is running in a place the Democrats have no trouble winning. The problem the Democratic Party faces is not figuring out how to win elections in New York City. That's not the problem. The problem is figuring out how to win elections in, you know, Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Pennsylvania, how to win Senate races in Alaska, in Iowa, in Ohio. Those are just very different states. And I think a lot of, you know, Zoran's positions, his priority, his approach to issue prioritization, I think is spot on. I think a lot of his positions wouldn't work as well in those states. I also think, you know, I think there's a lot of effort among, you know, moderate mainstream Democrats to get frustrated with the existence of these folks on the left who are then highlighted and, you know, Republicans seek to make them seem to be the mainstream of the party. Party. And I think, you know, it's. I understand that frustration among mainstream Democrats, but I also think that mainstream Democrats need to take a lot more accountability for their actions, for our actions. Right. I don't think that the Democratic Party's problems are caused by the existence of Ilhan Omar or aoc. I think that they're caused by the fact that the mainstream of the party has become out of step with what voters want. And what's needed isn't for senators from, you know, know, states that aren't D + 50 or maybe more like D + 10 or from, you know, Republican leaning states. What's needed is not for them to get mad at the existence of Elon Omar and the squad. What's needed for them is to articulate their own substantive commitments that better match what voters want on issues like immigration and public safety and energy policy. Right. And I think we just need to, like, take accountability for our own actions. To say, like, no, no, like, it's not the outsider, anti establishment Bernie left. It is the mainstream of the party that has become out of touch and increasingly divorced from public opinion.
- [39:08]
Charlie Sykes
And of course, that happened in the Republican Party as well. But then the revolt came from within. Okay. So I'm always concerned that the generals fight the last war. And there's no question that these issues, these economic issues, crime, the border, all of these things in the environment are going to be issues for the rest of our lifetime, for the rest of the next century. But also, so do you think ahead at what the emerging issues are and how it might change the landscape? For example, has the political alignments really taken into account the disruptions caused by AI? Is the vast gap in wealth going to create a new populist moment where people who are, and I'm centrist, economically conservative, and I'm looking at the oligarchy and the billionaires and going, whoa, this is a dangerous moment. And I find myself more open to a populist answer. But let's talk about some of this stuff. Is it possible that there are issues coming down the pike that will be massively disruptive, that will change this landscape? I know you've thought about this.
- [40:17]
Simon Bazelon
You know, I think, you know, I'll just quote the words the great Yogi Berra. You know, predictions are hard, especially about the future. So, you know, it's, it's, it's hard to figure out what's going to happen. It's far. It's hard to figure out which issues are going to suddenly explode onto the landscape. I mean, I think in 2016, if you ask people whether or not a pandemic would play a big role in the 2020 presidential election, obviously they wouldn't have expected that, you know, even, you know, something like inflation was. The Federal Reserve didn't predict, you know, the extent to which inflation would impact the American economy. You said artificial intelligence. Look, if I had to pick a single issue that I think in 2028 or 2020, 2032, might explode onto the scene and become one of the top issues to voters, I absolutely think artificial intelligence would be my number one choice. I think it's a very transformative technology that has a real chance of reshaping a lot of the ways we do things. I don't want to speculate too much on exactly what the path of such an emerging technology, something that's so new, will look like, because any specific story I tell you is probably going to be wrong because there are so many different ways that it could go. But I also think that Democrats can't just count on events to cause a realignment.
- [41:22]
Charlie Sykes
Right, Right.
- [41:23]
Simon Bazelon
We can't just count on a recession to cause a realignment. We can't just say, you know, hopefully or we, we can't just be like, you know, maybe there will, you know, maybe there will be a recession in October of 2028. And Democrats, if that happens, then probably Democrats will be able to win the 2028 presidential election without doing a single thing differently. But you know, that's not a very good political strategy to say, you know, we're just going to wait for the other side to cause an economic catastrophe and hope to capitalize on it. I think a lot of what we're trying to do in deciding to win is show that there are these policy issues that, you know, regardless of which path, path the future takes, there are a variety of policy issues that in a wide range of circumstances, Democrats would benefit from taking different positions on.
- [42:04]
Charlie Sykes
So I don't know whether you've thought about this specifically, but. So you can't, you can't predict the future, but the question is, are you going to be prepared for it? So I agree with you about, about artificial intelligence. Is there some message that Democrats can have to make it clear that yes, we are listening to you. We are the party of the future. We are the party that is not simply going to serve our high tech overlord insect mast that would be effective? I mean, what, based on the kinds of things you're talking about, the, you know, being concerned about these kinds of things, what might a presidential candidate in 2028 say about how they will handle this tsunami coming down on us?
- [42:47]
Simon Bazelon
Look again, you know, it's a little bit difficult to extrapolate from public opinion right now on AI to what public opinion would be on AI if it truly transforms our economy in the way that some people think it might. With that said, the polling on AI is one of the most one sided things that I've ever encountered in my time in public opinion research. Voters overwhelmingly are concerned about AI. The share of voters. It's very interesting. So Gallup tracks a question which is, do you think there's too much government regulation of business? Not enough or just about? Right. And consistently, for the last 40 years, a plurality of voters have said that they think there's too much government regulation of business. Business. So that's kind of the default American conception, which is that we think, you know, voters think, generally speaking, voter, you know, there's a little bit too much regulation of business.
- [43:31]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [43:32]
Simon Bazelon
If you ask voters, what are you more concerned about, that the US government is going to over regulate AI or under regulate AI? The overwhelming majority of voters are concerned that the government is going to underregulate AI, that they are not going to place significant enough safeguards on artificial intelligence. And I think that just suggests, you know, this is a really new issue. This is an issue where traditional lions, the traditional battle lines aren't being drawn. You have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, like Steve Bannon coalescing with Bernie Sanders around a skepticism of a lot of these things, around concerns about, you know, really quite critical risks that, you know, some people are talking about. And I think, you know, it's a good example of like the, the political battle drawns are about. The political battle lines haven't quite been drawn in the same way. But yeah, I think Democrats, you know, voters, voters are quite concerned about AI.
- [44:16]
Charlie Sykes
Just that I am fascinated. So, last, last question. So what kind of reaction have you gotten to this report? You got a lot of attention to it. It. So what is the blowback? And anything about it surprise you?
- [44:30]
Simon Bazelon
Yeah, so I think the criticism has fallen into roughly one of three camps. So the first camp is folks on the left who are just really detest the idea of hewing closer to public opinion on any issue and are trying to come up with lots of ways to criticize various methodological questions or attack the idea at all of compromise or whatever. The second camp has been Republicans attacking me for, you know, saying how, how did it take you guys this long to figure this out? Why did you need a big report to even write this? Which, you know, I think a big part of our frustrations is that it took this long for Democrats to kind of wake up to some of these problems. So I don't take that criticism too, too seriously. And then the third kind of response has just been a quite positive response from a variety of Democratic elites and people in the establishment and, you know, people outside the establishment, people on the left that I didn't quite expect. And so overall, I would say, you know, I think the report, the response to the report was much more positive than I expected. I expected it to be more controversial, expected to generate, you know, a lot more blowback than it's gotten. And I've been really heartened by the degree to which people have been taking it seriously. And I really hope that, you know, it plays a role in Democrats, you know, rebuilding efforts going forward.
- [45:36]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I hope so, too. And also it fills the gap, you know, the, the vacuum created by the fact that the DNC apparently is not doing a serious autopsy or we still see that one. Yeah, and if they're not. Yeah, I, but see, I think their problem is that they're captured by the same elites and the groups that you critique in your report. And so they, they can't break. Right. I mean, because they are a wholly owned subsidiary.
- [46:03]
Simon Bazelon
I think, I think, I think that's right. I think they have a lot of trouble. They have a lot of stakeholders that they are trying to, you know, keep happy. And I think it limits their ability to, you know, soberly can, you know, confront some of the truths that we're talking about? You know, the last thing I want to just say is that you mentioned the politics of evasion at the top of this show. And I think, you know, we explicitly cite the politics of evasion right up top in the acknowledgments. Bill Galston, Elaine Kamar. I read that after Democrats lost the 2024 election and was just sort of marveling as I was reading it at how similar it is to a lot of the things that we're saying now. And we see deciding to win as directly in the tradition of the politics of evasion. And I think our most fervent hope for it is that it can sort of serve, you know, do we think that, you know, the policies of 1992 Bill Clinton are exactly what the Democratic Party needs right now? I don't think so. I think, you know, the political situation is a bit different. It's not exactly Clintonism, that's what's called for. But with that said, it's that same kind of ethos, an ethos of fresh ideas and ethos of reconfronting some difficult truths that we've maybe, you know, put aside and, you know, allowed ourselves to misform ourselves into, into false beliefs.
- [47:03]
Charlie Sykes
Well, the report is deciding to win. We're going to link it again, obviously on.
- [47:07]
Simon Bazelon
Yeah, you can go to just deciding to win.org is the easiest way to.
- [47:10]
Charlie Sykes
Deciding to win.org, lead writer of that is Simon Bazelon. Thank you so much for all your time and your insight. Appreciate it very much. What a fascinating conversation.
- [47:19]
Simon Bazelon
Thank you so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it.
- [47:22]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. You know why we do this, why we're going to continue to do this? Because we need to consistently and constantly remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.
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