Inside the Democratic Party, in its back

rooms and its group chats and its

conferences and its online flame wars,

an increasingly bitter debate has taken

hold over what the party needs to do to

become capable of beating back Trumpism.

Do Democrats need to become more

populist, more [music] moderate, more

socialist?

Do they need to embrace the abundance

agenda? [music] Do they need to produce

more vertical video?

The answer is yes, they do. All of them.

But none of them in particular. The

Democratic Party does not need to choose

to be one thing. It needs to choose to

[music] be more things.

In a few days, there will be elections

for mayor of New York City, for governor

of New Jersey, and for governor of

Virginia. As of now, Democrats are

leading in all these races. These aren't

unusual leads in what have become

reliably Democratic states. You can

imagine a world

>> where the violence and corruption of

Donald Trump's first nine months in

office,

>> you gambling with World War II,

>> had led to a collapse in support for him

and his party. We'll see what election

day actually brings. But we do not look

to be in that world. [music]

That's all the more true if you look a

year out to the midterms. Democrats are

leading by about 2 and a half points. At

about this time in 2017, [music]

Democrats were up by about 10 points.

Democrats have another problem. They're

going to need to overcome [music] the

chain of redistricting Republicans are

setting off across the country.

>> There may be more of a pad here for

Republicans

>> and the Senate. The Senate is even

harder for Democrats. They will need to

flip four seats in the 2026 [music]

midterms to win back the Senate. That'

mean winning in Maine and North

Carolina. No easy task. And then winning

[music] at least two seats in states

that Donald Trump won by 10 points or

more. The map for Democrats wasn't

always this [music] daunting. Go back to

2010 and 10 of those states had

Democratic senators. Today, none of them

do. Most of those states seem barely in

reach for Democrats.

There's no arguing with this fact. The

number of places in which Democratic

Party is competitive has shrunk. In

American politics, power is not decided

by a popular vote. In [snorts] the

electoral college, in the House of

Representatives, and particularly in the

Senate, it is aortioned by place. This

is the problem for Democrats. They don't

just need to win more people, they need

to win more places. And that requires a

different kind of thinking. [music] If

Zoran Mandani wins the New York City

mayor's race and Rob Sand wins the Iowa

governor's race next year,

>> the Democratic and Republican parties

don't solve enough problems to deserve

their little shared monopoly.

>> Did the Democratic party just move left

or right? [music] Neither. It got

bigger. It found a way to represent more

kinds of people in more kinds of places.

That is a spirit it needs to [music]

embrace. not moderation,

not progressivism, but in the classic

political sense of the term

representation.

In 1962, Bernard Crick published this

strange little book called In Defense of

Politics. Politics for Crick is

something precious and specific. It

quote arises from accepting the fact of

the simultaneous existence of different

groups, hence different interests and

different traditions within a

territorial unit under common rule. I

know that's a a mouthful, but that fact

of difference he is pointing out. The

reality of difference is not always

accepted. There are other forms of

social order like tyranny or oligarchy

that actively suppress it. But to

practice politics as Crick defines it is

to accept the reality of difference.

[music] That is to say, it is to accept

the reality of other people, of how

different other people are from you.

Politics involves genuine relationships

with people who are genuinely other

people, not tasks set for our redemption

or objects for our philanthropy.

Genuine relationships with people who

are genuinely other people.

I love that line because the endless

fantasy in politics is persuasion

without representation. You elect us to

represent you and where we disagree, we

will explain to you why you are wrong.

The result of that politics tends to be

neither persuasion nor representation.

People know when you're not listening to

them and they know how to respond. They

stop [music] listening to you. They vote

for people who they feel do listen to

them. I'm not a pessimist on the

possibility of persuasion, but I believe

it is rare, maybe impossible outside a

context of mutual respect. And if I were

to say where the Democratic Party went

most wrong over the last decade, it's

there. In too many places, Democrats

sought persuasion without

representation. And so, they got

neither. I've spent much of the last

year talking to the kinds of voters

Democrats lament losing. I feel I end up

having the same conversation over and

over again. They sometimes tell me about

issues where the Democratic Party

departed from them. But they first

describe a more fundamental feeling of

alienation. The Democratic Party, they

came to believe, doesn't like them. Many

of these people voted for Democrats

until a few years ago. They didn't feel

their fundamental beliefs had changed,

but they began to feel like deplorables.

They began to feel unwanted. 250 million

people are not garbage. I can tell you

who the real garbage is, but we won't

say that.

>> When I'd push on the experiences they

had, when [music] I would ask which

Democrats were they talking about, what

exactly had happened, I often found they

were reacting to a a cultural vibe as

much or more than a flesh and blood

party. They had felt something change.

And I knew they were right because

something had changed. It had changed on

the left. It had [music] changed on the

right. But it was diffuse. It wasn't any

one person or any one moment or any one

policy. The structure of American life

changed in a way that has made the

genuine relationships of politics much

harder to maintain. [music] I believe

the first party that figures out its way

out of this trap will be the one able to

build a majority in this era.

When I grew up in a Republican county an

hour south of Los Angeles, my family

subscribed to the Los Angeles Times and

to the extent I heard political

commentary, it was on local radio.

>> 2005 was a tough year for public

California state and local taxes are

>> Good afternoon, Senator McClintto. Good

afternoon, Senator Seinberg.

>> Now, the New York Times is the largest

[music] newspaper by subscribers in

California. And a young

politicallyincclined kid [music] like I

was will listen to podcasts like

>> Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John

Favro.

>> I'm John Love.

>> I'm Tommy Vtor. On today's show, we'll

talk about Donald Trump's latest musings

about doing away with the Constitution

to become president for life.

>> Trump. President Trump. Um Trump.

>> Talk me through your evolution on Trump.

>> Sure. That kid's political sensibility

will be less distinctly Californian and

more relentlessly national. For decades,

we have been losing local media and

migrating to national media. And that

has meant politics everywhere is losing

its local character and reflecting

national divisions. Then there is the

astonishing amount of money politicians

need and the places they go to find it.

In the 1970s, the Supreme Court decided

money was speech.

>> The expenditure limitations are

violative of first amendment guarantees

and they are unconstitutional.

campaigns became more expensive and

candidates often need a whole lot more

money than what they can raise in their

own states and districts. That means

exciting donors who are much further to

the left or [music] right than the

public and winning over interest groups

that seek their support on policy. Money

can polarize. Money can corrupt, but

either way, it pulls candidates away

[music] from their own constituents.

That was all true when I moved to

Washington to cover politics in 2005.

But then something else changed. [music]

>> What we're going to do is get rid of all

these buttons and just make a giant

screen.

>> 800 million Facebook users are coming to

grips with change this week. It features

scrolling news feeds and snazzier

pictures

>> by showing you older tweets it thinks

you care about right on top of your

current feed.

>> We're not going to touch the phones.

>> Can't touch it no matter what happens.

>> It is. It's a serious problem.

>> It really is.

>> How much time do you spend doing this?

[music] The average smartphone user

scrolls the equivalent of 78 miles a

year. That's three marathons. [music]

>> We all know this changed politics, but

for all the words that have been spilled

on it, I think we still miss how

fundamentally it has altered the

day-to-day work of politics. Since the

2024 election, there's been a lot of

talk on the Democratic side about the

power of the so-called groups.

>> There are interest [music] groups. There

were a lot of advocacy groups, a lot of

parts of the Democratic party that

really thought things were fine.

>> They're more extreme than many of their

constituents.

>> The progressive advocacy organizations

and nonprofits that have arguably pushed

Democrats to the left. I've used that

term before. I've talked about the

groups, [music] but I think it is

imprecise. The real thing we're talking

about here is what might be called the

professional political classes. [music]

The people in the groups are the same

people who staff or drive all the other

parts of progressive politics. One year

you're with a nonprofit, then you're

[music] on a campaign, then you're in

the White House, then you're back at a

group. You're followed on X or Blue Sky

by left-leaning journalists like me, by

producers at MSNBC, [music] or by

breaking news reporters at Politico.

It's not a bunch of groups. It's a

professional community that exists

largely online. And so that professional

community's culture and its attention

[music]

is governed not by its own values or

goals, but by the decisions of the

corporations and oligarchs [music]

who own the social media platforms, who

design them to further their own profits

or their own politics. The conversations

[music] pulsing across these platforms

are shaped not by civic values, but by

the hacks that keep people scrolling.

Nuanced [music] opinions get compressed

into viral slogans. Attention collects

around the loudest and most

controversial voices. [music] And the

algorithms, they love conflict and

inspiration and outrage and anger.

[music]

Everything is always turned up to 11.

Social media has thrown everyone

involved at every level of politics

[music] in every place into the same

algorithmic thunderdome. It collapsed

[music] distance and profession and time

because no matter where we are or when

we are, we can always be online

together. We always know what our most

online peers [music] are thinking. They

come to set the culture of their

respective political classes. And there

is nothing that most of us fear like

being [music] out of step with our

peers.

This has affected the Democratic and

Republican parties in different ways.

Let me start with the Democrats. From

2012 to 2024, [music]

Democrats moved sharply left on

virtually every issue. They often did so

believing they were finally representing

communities that had long suffered from

too little representation. This was what

they were told by the online voices and

by the professional groups that claimed

to represent [music] those communities.

But it went wrong. Democrats became more

uncompromising on immigration and lost

support among Hispanic voters. They move

left on guns and student loans and

climate and lost ground with young

voters. They move left on race and lost

[music] ground with black voters. They

move left on education and lost ground

with Asian-American voters. They move

left on economics [music] and lost

ground with workingclass voters. The

only major group [music] where Democrats

saw improvement across that whole

12-year period was college educated

white voters.

>> [music]

>> If you judged democratic politics

expressively by what it was saying,

[music]

it stood in solidarity with the

struggling and the marginalized as never

before. If you judged it

consequentially, [music] it was breaking

faith with those it had vowed to

represent and protect. Online, politics

is expressive. You need to say what will

win favor with the highly online [music]

voices that dominate your side of the

algorithm. offline. You need to win

elections.

>> I sued EPA and I'll [music] take dead

aim at the capp trade bill

[music] because it's bad for West

Virginia.

>> Yes, that was Mansion shooting the capp

trade bill that Democrats have been

trying to pass with a rifle. But Mansion

12 years later was the key vote to pass

the Inflation Reduction Act, the single

largest green energy investment in

American history. this is a great day

because this is a balanced bill.

>> Expressively to progressives, Mansion

[music] was just a constant irritant.

Consequentially, he was the Democrat's

most remarkable overperformer. He made

their majority [music] possible by

winning elections. No Democrat should

have been able to win.

>> In a state that the president in the

previous election won by 42 points, the

opposite [cheering] party wins. Never

happened. Never happened.

The most important question the party

needed to be asking in that era was

where do they find more Joe [music]

Mansions? How do they make more Joe

Mansions possible?

But today's Democratic party,

particularly its [music] online culture,

has taken forms of disagreement and

difference it once held inside its tent

and pushed them outside.

>> West Virginia's most prominent Democrat

changed his registration to independent

today. There are very fewer and fewer

people like you in the Senate. I mean,

is that

>> a lot of my colleagues say, "Thank God."

>> Yes, they would. Including some in your

former party.

>> Oh, many in my former party. [laughter]

>> In [music] 2010, when the Affordable

Care Act passed, the crucial vote in the

Senate came from Ben Nelson, a pro-life

Democrat.

>> After winning fresh concessions to limit

the availability of abortions,

>> but I would have not voted for this bill

and would not vote for this bill without

those provisions. There were then

roughly 40 pro-life Democrats serving in

[music] the House. Crafting compromises

across these disagreements was hard, but

Democrats were able to pass Obamacare,

[music] which expanded reproductive

health coverage and remains the greatest

Democratic policy accomplishment of the

21st century.

>> We are done. [cheering]

That same Democratic party with all of

its internal disagreements, it had the

votes to confirm Supreme Court justices

who [music] would and did in their time

protect Row.

I've been in a debate recently about

whether Democrats should run pro-life

candidates in red states in much the way

that Republicans run pro-choice

candidates like Susan Collins and Larry

Hogan in blue [music] states. I think I

was taken aback to hear people say in

response to this argument that I just

wanted to throw reproductive rights

overboard. So, I want to say [music]

this clearly.

No, I don't. I thought past episodes

I've done on abortion, episodes I've

done in the context of what my own

family has been through should have

shown that. But what I want [music] is a

Democratic party big enough and strong

enough to protect reproductive rights.

And I feel our politics on this have

failed because they have failed. We

cannot protect or restore [music]

reproductive freedom if the coalition

that cares about that [music] cannot

compete in more places. But this point

is not about any [music] one issue. It's

about a broader approach to politics.

Different places have different politics

and to win in them, politicians have to

represent the people who live in them.

That means representing views Democrats

now find to be [music] anathema on

immigration or guns or trade or climate

or trans rights. But one worry I have

about Democrats right [music] now is

that they do not want to confront how

much of the country truly deeply

disagrees with them. Polls show that the

percentage of voters saying the

Democratic party is too liberal

increased sharply between 2012 and 2024.

The percentage of voters saying the

Republican party is too conservative

[music] fell during that same period.

Even now, after the aggression and the

[music] outrages and the violations of

Trump's second administration, that gap

has not [music] fully closed.

I would like to believe that all

Democrats need to do to win back these

voters is embrace an agenda I'm already

comfortable with. Economic populism or

abundance [music]

or both. But I don't think it's true. A

study by the Center for Working-Class

[music] Politics found that in key

Rusfeld states, when you attached the

Democratic label to a candidate running

on an economic populist platform, that

candidate lost 11 to 16 [music] points

in support. That's how Sherid Brown,

once one of the strongest economic

populists in the party, lost his Ohio

Senate seat to a Republican car dealer

who had to settle more than a dozen

lawsuits for wage theft.

Jared Golden is a Democrat from Maine.

In 2024, he edged out a victory in a

district Donald Trump won by nearly 10

points. Working [music] with Republicans

to secure the border and standing with

law enforcement against defunding the

police. I'm Jared Golden and I approve

this [music] message because you deserve

a congressman as independent as you.

>> No other Democrat in Congress, not one,

has survived in such a proTrump

district. He is declaring victory,

admitting it was his toughest election

yet.

>> Now, in what strikes me as an absolutely

insane turn of events, Golden is facing

a primary challenge. Golden even said he

was okay with Donald Trump becoming

[music] president again.

>> Instead of learning from Democrats like

Golden, Democrats who are successfully

representing voters [music]

who are otherwise moving towards Donald

Trump, some progressives want to purge

him

>> because we can do better than bad and

worse. I don't think the Democratic

Party should just move right. [music] It

is good in my view that AOC and Zoran

Mandani run as Democrats and that Bernie

Sanders has become a leader in the

Democratic party. It is good that you

can be an outandout [music] Democratic

socialist in today's Democratic party.

But what happened over the past 15 years

is the Democratic Party [music]

made room on its left and closed down on

its right for all the talk of a Democrat

should learn from Sanders or Mamdani.

[music] And it should learn things from

Sanders and Mamdani. There should be at

least as much talk of what they should

learn from Joe Mansion or Jared Golden

or Marie Gusen Perez.

>> People are valid in their anger

and it's it is a fool's errand to try to

talk somebody out of their [music]

feelings.

That is not that's not a good idea. But

you also can affirm the validity of

their feelings and also

present a productive strategy for

resolving

some of those

the drivers of of of that anger or that

fear

>> or Sarah McBride.

>> You can't foster social change if you

don't have a conversation. You can't

change people if you exclude them. And I

will just say you can't have absolutism

on the left or the right

without authoritarianism.

Right? The fact that we have real

disagreements, the fact that we [music]

have difficult conversations, the fact

that we have painful conversations is

not a a a bug of democracy. It's a

feature of democracy.

And yes, that is hard and and difficult.

But again, how can we expect that the

process of overcoming marginalization is

going to be fair? The Democratic Party

should be seeking more, not less

internal disagreement. It should treat

that disagreement as more welcome. It

should be looking for a gut level

affinity with more of this country.

Moderating on this or that issue is more

straightforward than finding ways

[music] to radiate respect and interest

in people who disagree with you and

people you've come to feel far away

from. [music] It is the building of

genuine relationships in politics, not

the taking of positions [music] that is

truly hard.

But that's also the part that is

beautiful. It's [music] a privilege to

do that work, not a concession.

We are more able to admit complexity and

extend generosity when we see others as

part of our community. Working to widen

that circle of empathy, [music]

to widen our circle of belonging is both

morally and politically [music] good.

Whatever the problems are on the left,

there is something truly frightening

brewing on the right.

>> Putting aside the tribal interest for

the corporate interest, that's

absolutely the case. And that's the only

way the country's going to stay

together. Exactly. That's my concern

>> and I absolutely agree with you. I would

say though that

the main challenge to that, a big

challenge to that is organized jewelry

in America.

>> Paul Gracia, President Donald Trump's

nominee to lead the Office of Special

Counsel, not a small job, said on a text

thread leaked to Politico that he had a

quote Nazi streak. A separate text

thread of young Republican leaders

leaked to Politico had messages about

sending enemies to the gas chambers and

one saying quote I love Hitler

and Gracia had to withdraw his

nomination but Vice President JD Vance

has dismissed coverage of the young

Republicans messages as pearl clutching

and I really don't want us to grow up in

a country where a kid telling a stupid

joke telling a very offensive stupid

joke is caused to ruin their lives.

>> Look, I don't want to ruin anybody's

life either. But these were recent

statements by adults who are vying for

leadership in political organizations

with official ties [music] to the

Republican party.

There is no rule of civic generosity or

political practice that Trumpism has not

broken. And for many I know on the left,

it's [music] created a sense that there

is no sense in trying to appeal to the

median voter. No sense in moderation.

[cheering]

no sense in any of the old rules of

politics.

Look at how extreme the right has

become. Yet, they have thrived in this

telling Trump understands what the

Democrats don't. Nothing matters anymore

except detention.

But a few things are wrong with that.

Trump did moderate the Republican party

in crucial areas. Medicare, [music]

Social Security, trade. And the simple

truth is Democrats can't win the [music]

way Trump and the Republicans do. Trump

and the Republicans lead a coalition

built on overwhelming strength in rural

counties. America's placebased politics

gives rural places disproportionate

[music]

political power. Trump and Republicans

can hold power with a smaller coalition

than Democrats can.

And then [music] there's this. Democrats

shouldn't want to win the way

Republicans do. [music] This country

could break. The abyss is dark and it is

deep. And America, like other countries,

has fallen into it before and can again.

I see [music] the simple fact of a free

and fair politics as much more of an

achievement, something much more

precious and difficult to preserve. I no

[music] longer take it or the habits of

citizenship or politics that preserve it

for granted. [music] We cannot trust

that providence or some innate American

exceptionalism [music]

protects us from calamity. It doesn't.

Over [music]

the past year, I have found myself

obsessively reading histories of

liberalism, looking for something, even

though I didn't know exactly what.

Illberalism is winning right now.

But there's nothing unusual about that.

By modern standards, virtually every

past society was illiberal.

That we now call them illiberal. that

exclusion and domination and state

suppression have been made strange

enough to demand a label. That is the

unlikely achievement. [music]

But how did liberalism do it? For most

of my life, when I called myself a

liberal, I [music] meant basically

someone who believed in universal

healthcare and the right to form a union

and racial equality and social security.

But in its oldest forms, liberalism was

built on a virtue that we rarely talk

about today. To the ancient [music]

Romans, being free required more than a

republican constitution. It also

required citizens who practice

liberalas, [music]

which referred to a noble and generous

way of thinking and acting [music]

towards one's fellow citizens. The word

liberalas became liberality. Liberality

proposed, it demanded [music]

a different way of relating across

disagreement and division. It flowered

into [music] religious tolerance when

that idea was truly radical.

It built towards liberalism's great

insight. [music] Liberalism's first

idea. Conflict of interests and beliefs

was to the liberal mind inescapable.

[snorts] If tamed and turned to

competition [music] in a stable

political order, conflict could

nevertheless bear fruit as argument,

[music] experiment, and exchange. Today,

finding ways to turn our disagreements

[music]

into exchange, into something fruitful

rather than something destructive

seems almost fanciful. I saw a poll a

few weeks ago that struck me. It asked

Americans what they thought the top

problem facing the country was. Number

one was the economy. This is what I

expected. But number two wasn't

immigration or inflation or democracy or

even Donald Trump. It was political

division. In that same poll, 64% of the

country said they think we're too

divided to solve our problems anymore.

[music] They're not wrong. Right now,

the project of America feels to many

impossible. And not just on the left. I

hear it every time JD Vance or Steven

Miller [music] speaks. I hear it when

Trump says,

>> "I hate my opponent

and I don't want the best for them. I'm

sorry."

>> When I hear that, I hear something

scary. But I also hear an opening, an

opportunity.

I keep coming back to something Craig

writes. The moral consensus of a free

state is not something mysteriously

prior [music] to or above politics.

It is the activity, the civilizing

activity of politics itself,

something to be valued almost as a pearl

[music] beyond price.

In America, for all our sins, our

injustice, our oppression,

a freer state emerged through the

practice of [music] politics. It did not

do so painlessly. It did not do so

[music] bloodlessly, but it did happen.

And for a time, it gave us confidence in

ourselves and in our system.

It showed what could emerge from genuine

relationships between [music] people who

are genuinely other people.

And I think it [music] still could again

[music]

[music]

[music]

>> [music]

[music]

[music]

[music]