Pete Buttigieg: Time for Radical Change

- Hello, welcome to the Bullock podcast.

I'm your host Tim Miller, coming at you from I'll Stop and Grows at Des Moines, Iowa on Sunday evening. I was at the Liberty and Justice Dinner, put on by the Iowa Democratic Party.

It was conveniently for me at Prairie Meadows Casino, where I spent a lot of time on the Crab's table, back in my heyday, so it was nice to get back into town. And I was here, have a little chat with the keynote speaker at that dinner.

I'm delighted to be able to sit down with him today. You might know him as the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, former Secretary of Transportation, Navy veteran, winner of the 2020 Democratic caucuses right here in Iowa. It's Pete Buttigieg.

- Hey Pete, it does go in. - Good, thanks for having me.

- How was it on Sunday night?

- Great, really good energy. Really, I felt kind of like a reunion because there are all these memories of when I was here in 2020, but also I just really feel good about our chances in Iowa. - Yeah, to me, it felt like even in the room,

some of the Iowa Democrats have been depleted. You know, I've tried to come back to Iowa every year. I got a lot of old friends here from my campaigns past. And I don't know, I went to an event in 2024. And it's just Republicans controlled the state for 10 years.

I'm like, after a while, eventually you get beaten down. And it did feel like there was a little bit of a jolt of energy among the Iowa Dems.

“- Yeah, I think so, and it's not just vibes.”

I mean, people are seeing it in the numbers. You're seeing it in what's possible. And as the Iowa Democrats are quick to point out, this is maybe the only place where you have a chance to get that many house seats flipped and a Senate seat

and the governor's office at the same time. And I also think, I mean, this is a little provincial of me, maybe, but I think this Midwest region is an especially important place to prove that out. Because I think we can show how what we believe about policy

and what we believe about just how people ought to treat each other and how people ought to act all kind of comes into alignment in the way that people in this part of the country really care about. And then in turn, the other thing that it strikes me

is I think when we have more wins in places like this, we have more voices inside the party who are elected who are from places like this. And it really makes a different start of vocabulary and our body language and our ability to connect versus the places

that are kind of already the biggest strongholds of the party. - So I can do a state center from Sue City side who is there. And to the end of the conversation, I like to add around like, you just talk like a regular person, which is really nice.

“I think a lot of times the Democrats talk about talking”

like a regular person and then you end up actually still kind of using the types of terms that you do is like a granale symposia more and like activist me to hang through whatever and it's just different, you know? - Yeah.

- And I think just having that kind of normal human style and approach in vocabulary is rewarded in some places maybe more than others and I think it's a rewarded here in the politics of the place like Iowa. - I want to talk about your speech and the big themes of it

for a lot of the show, but we do have some news today. We're taping this Monday afternoon so it could be more that comes out by the time this publishes but there's a man that's killed today and another ice shooting and bit of her main.

He's a 26 year old from Columbia with work authorization. We don't exactly know what that was like in asylum applicant. He has shot six times while he's driving after the shot and they still pulled him out of the car,

dropped into the ground and handcuffed him. It appears there's a three year old girl on the scene, maybe he's daughter in blue Epijamas. Just not the one of these things, so obviously the shooting in Houston earlier this week.

So I just wanted your initial reactions.

- I mean, first of all, it's stomach turning

and upsetting, we don't know a lot, we don't know everything, but we know that this keeps happening or some version of this keeps happening and we know that this kind of thing doesn't have to keep happening.

And another thing that's on my mind, again, we've just learned about this more information is probably coming in the next hours in the next day but this administration's Homeland Security Department has already been caught in another case saying

that somebody was trying to ram federal agents and that turning out not to be true, right?

“So I think we have more questions at a moment like this”

than we would if we could trust our federal government. And then you think about people who are caught up in this. I mean, if these reports turn out to be true about a three-year-old child on the scene. It's like, what could possibly?

- And whatever else anybody winds up learning or saying or claiming, like, for God's sake, like, obviously she does not deserve to be mixed up in any of this and I don't know, we'll learn more but it's so upsetting and again,

word of this kind of violence that is not making anybody

safer or better off, it's not making America better place and it doesn't have to be like this. You're talking about the response from the Midwest and from this part of the country. And I thought the Minneapolis response

to the violence by his there was just maybe the most inspiring thing to me that's happened in Trump 2.0. And just seeing those people in the streets, you know, you'd kind of JD Vance's whole trick is about how, you know, a diverse America, you know,

makes it harder for our cohesion. And it's like, you have this diverse community in Minnesota, like so cohesive, everybody, different race religion, everything coming out saying, no, this is not us. And really, the people of Minneapolis pushed back the ICE agents,

I mean, not physically but like with their voices, with their putting their bodies in the streets and like as a result of that, this stuff died down for a while

and it kind of feels like with the story in Houston

and with this in Maine, the administration sort of regrouped, we have a new secretary now and they're kind of back to the same old thing. - Yeah. - Part of a Minnesota showed was that you can,

in fact, get this administration to back down. - Yeah, it's not easy, but it can be done. And the other thing I took away from what happened in Minnesota wasn't just how they were pushing back against the abuses against what ICE was doing, against the administration.

But the way they were very much kind of showing that they were for each other, right? They're all these stories of neighbors, helping neighbors. People taking shifts to take care of kids or get groceries to people's houses

who couldn't go out. And yeah, just the sheer determination going out

“in sub-zero cold by the thousands of by the thousands, right?”

- Did you go out there, I can't remember. - I wasn't involved in any of that, but talked to a lot of people around at that time. And I did visit St. Paul while some of that was brewing. - I just felt like we also visit that there was,

it was all brewing, it was so fucking cold. And we're gonna out there outside of the detention center and it's like you had seniors and people at the end of their work shifts, like going out there, doing these shifts and my feet are freezing,

cause out there for 30 minutes. - Yeah, these folks are prepared. It's not just that they're, you know, Northerners and they're used to it. So the clue that propelled by the sense of right and wrong

of fairness, I think for a lot of them, they were propelled by faith. And you could tell also that cut across a lot of the old lines. I don't think all of the people marching in those streets were lifelong registered Democrats, it wasn't about that.

- Yeah, what do you think about the responses on what it's called now from, you know, Democratic politicians?

“I think the challenges for particularly acute”

in the case of the situation Houston, we know more about Lorenzo Rojo. And it seems to me like Republicans feel like they can act with impunity when it comes to people who came here legally, even if they've been here for 35 years

and that, you know, I think that there was a sense that, you know, this is kind of part of the risk we come into the country illegally. Like this thing could happen, which is obviously insane, but I think that they felt like they could just push

this under the rug and move forward because it's like it was different than the case of pretty and good, et cetera. Now we have this situation main. Like what's the appropriate reaction, right?

And I do feel like at the beginning of this term, a lot of Democrats felt like immigration to loser for us. We shouldn't focus on this. Like what is what's called for from Democratic politicians? - Well, I think a lot of that has changed.

I think events have demonstrated that Democrats can and should take a stand and we can bring most Americans with us on this. Look, we believe that you gotta have borders, borders have to be enforced.

We have laws, laws have to be enforced. All of that is something most of us agree on, but also most of us agree that you shouldn't be killed over an immigration violation. And most of us agree that this is not

what we were told we would have gone after the worst

of the worst and the violent criminals first or only.

“I think it was really telling that when Kilmar”

I very go Garcia got unlawfully deported or unlawfully shipped out. A lot of people in kind of insider political world were saying like don't talk about that, don't touch that, don't go that.

- It seems like a bad guy, whatever. - And actually that was one example where the American public said, whoa, this is like, this is all wrong. - Right.

And I think you actually feel that a lot here in the Midwest too, where people know that this stuff is complicated because they're neighborhood or their community or the farms near where they live. Cannot function without a lot of these people

who do not have status, but who are also here and are otherwise law-abiding tax paying often very important members of the community. And I think I hope that this also builds more pressure to actually do something with the system, right?

'Cause so many of the Republicans, of course, who are capitalizing politically on all the anger and confusion over this,

for years, sometimes for decades,

“to stop us from actually fixing the system.”

- Yeah. - In order for offense to work, there has to be a gate and our gate is all messed up as a country. - Yeah. You very agree with the example of such a good one to me

because of also an early example of seeing that the administration could be stopped. - Yeah. - Again, it was like in Chris Finhal and shut up, like there were some Democrats who were speaking out of this,

but that was at a time where everybody still very cautious about this. And it's like this isn't saying. And like we have like Marco Rubio, we've done an instrument in the Heyverman and Swan book.

I had Maggie on last week. Marco Rubio, who's supposed to be the normal responsible adult in the administration, was like the point man for cutting this deal with Buquelle. But he's like, we're gonna have,

you're gonna have a Gulag essentially in El Salvador. We're gonna send these people. We were sending innocent people there.

“And it was absolutely, I think the most outrageous thing”

the administration has done. And right now there's nobody there, you know? - It doesn't feel like a huge land to have nobody - Nobody in the Gulag is important. - And it's especially important to understand

like you don't have to wait till the next presidential election. You don't even have to wait till the upcoming midterm election to change things that are going on. This administration that swears up and down

that it will never back down.

They actually backed down quite often when there was enough pressure. Whether it is righteous pressure over the mistreatment and the abuse is going on with immigration enforcement or whether it's something like the tariffs.

I mean, it can happen. And that should be a lesson for all of us who were trying to keep up the energy to mobilize against this stuff. - But anything Mark has been doing.

If you hadn't asked for it, I would feel sorry for him. And to me, it became hard to look it in the same way ever. I know this is not in the top 10 of what most people talk about. But when Marco Rubio lied to Congress about whether the aid cuts had killed children.

When he stood there with a straight face and said no children died over this, when we already knew the names of some of the children who had been killed by this, right then you could just tell that this guy's just morally, and I hope politically

never gonna recover from selling his soul.

- You're lips to God's ears, Pete. This episode is brought to you by the New York Times. There's a bunch of stories to cut my eye this week. New York Times, obviously, the story that the administration is investigating them for, you know, we discussed that last week.

And what you guys, they're reporting on how the hand me down to cut a replay and didn't have the defenses necessary to get our president out of Turkey, as a result of that reporting. The other time is now being investigated

by some guy who wants to be Trump's new DNI. It is totally shameful and thank goodness for the work they're doing. Then another story that I wanted to get to, 'cause there's so much going on,

but we'll just do it right now. It was by Jane Bradley, Michael Schwartz, and Adam Goldman, he's entitled to help Putin turn Japan into a den of spies. It's like one of these stories that I call as this real. They found that the Russian spies were expelled

from Western countries after the invasion of Ukraine ended up

“in Japan, where they're part of a secret military intelligence”

unit called the 20th Directorate to help them, you know, figure out Western military technology and strategies so that they can improve their capabilities in the war on Ukraine, the spies poses, diplomats, or business people, it's like the Americans.

I guess it's the Japanese, great TV show. And thanks to this effort, unintentionally, this isn't really Japan's fault. Their technology is propping up the Russian military. Crazy story, you've gotta go read it.

And this is the thing about podcasting. We've got some great reporters here at the bulwark. I appreciate doing on the ground work. I'm here kind of half reporting, and I will. So, you know, I do some, I do some baby reporting,

but you need people out there in Japan. We're not uncovering shit in Japan, okay? So, you need people doing real reporting so that I can chat about it. So, we can analyze it and give perspective

and contextualize it so that you guys know what's going on in the world. And so, I appreciate all the reporters out there doing that. Takes a lot of time and effort to put together stories like this, this story about the 20th Directorate.

It's just one example, there's so many others out there who support your local journalist here at the bulwark at the New York Times and elsewhere, wherever you seek it out, and actually locally support fact-based reporting.

- Let's talk about the speech and the themes. I summed it up this way.

You were basically trying to talk about

how to balance the challenges with the broken political system against the questions of like people's everyday concerns, right? And this is the big challenge for Democrats, the Democratic circles, how do we deal with this?

And I'm gonna read just a little bit from part of the speech

called Republican, I liked this point. Wars of literally been thought of our system,

starting with the first one, the one that broke

at 250 years ago this month, the one that gave this great nation, it's being founders, risked their lives for a better political system. So, don't tell me that it can't stir people's hearts.

And don't tell me that it's worth fighting for. That it's not worth fighting for, excuse me. Don't tell me that it can't stir people's hearts was the line that made me perk up my ears, saying that it listening because that did feel

“like kind of a subtle message to the chattering class, right?”

That like that this issue, that because died in Harris lost and because the whatever pro-democracy movement was not successful in keeping Trump out, you know, there's something we should talk about.

Those are esoteric concerns we shouldn't talk about anymore. Make the opposite case. - Yeah, exactly. What I'm trying to make the case for is that the things that are happening in our economy,

the price of a gas and diesel what's going on with mortgages and interest rates, cannot be separated from what's broken in our political system. The problems with our economic reality

are related to the problems with our political system. And so it is a response to this conventional wisdom that you get from a lot of the political strategists who say, don't go there on the need for political reform.

It's because that comes that you don't never talk about that

when you could be talking about the price of eggs. Nobody cares about democracy when they're worried about putting food on the table. Now, I get that putting food on the table is the most immediate concern.

But I don't think that means we leave behind the other stuff.

“I think that from the moment of our founding,”

Americans have understood that so much depends on the system. There was a time where we're all so jaded about the system. If I say, the system is broken, that would be the most cliche, unremarkable, forgettable thing, I said, I don't know, shit, right?

But think about how crazy it is that we act like that's not a terrifying, alarming thing to say the system is broken and politicians have been saying that for years. And it's true, that's a really big deal. Like the system, in many ways, is awesome.

The system is America's greatest contribution, the idea of a different political system where the people are in charge. It's what the revolution was fought over. It's also a big part of what the Cold War was fought over, right?

So, yeah, I just refused to be on a project out that our system was better than there. So it was like a key part of winning the Cold War. And again, importantly, not just that it was better because it was like academically more elegant

in its representation. It was better because in fact, if you're just trying to get a ham sandwich, you were better off doing that in our political and economic system, right? Then in theirs, in other words,

they're continued to be a direct line. - Tankies are going to be mounted you for that. - The tankies, there's a little Stalinist movement coming up on the online left. (laughing)

- Great, great. I'm just saying, you're gonna get in trouble. I'm tanky to better for saying that it was better. They had good ham sandwiches, I heard, behind the iron. - You know, maybe there were some ham sandwiches out there,

“but it was not a place I'd want to go to the grocery, right?”

And now I'm having all these images of Tucker in the Russian groceries. These things are all connected, and we can't pretend otherwise. And I think it's also important

because the way that the people in charge now are breaking our institutions and our norms and our political system and the way, in my opinion, they're screwing up every day life in the economy and healthcare and prices and tariffs

and so on. They're breaking everything at the same time. - Yeah, so we gotta be ready to be fixing a lot of things at the same time. And I think if we're not ready to present that governing vision

now, then it becomes a lot harder for us to explain what we're about. I think it's actually very possible that the Democratic Party does well this November, and then lapses into thinking that its job

is just to put everything back the way it was. - This is what happened in 2022. - Yeah. - We relocated Biden the last time you're on the pots, we don't have to do that,

but I do think that a big part of Biden's side to run again was like the idea, then 2022, that the Democrats, they're supposed to be this red wave, there wasn't Democrats out performed, and it created a, do you think a complacency?

- Yeah. - Yeah. - And it could see that again. - Again, being here in Iowa's giving me flashbacks to 2019, 2020, the whole idea of me running,

it wasn't just generational change, it was very much a, we can't return to normal kind of message. - Yeah. - It was the idea that there's no going back to the old ways, partly because that was what my whole form of experience

in South Bend, Indiana was, that we couldn't, we were the city that is best known, of course, is Notre Dame is there, but we were the company town for Studebaker and lost our biggest employer, this huge auto company, 20 years before I was even born.

My whole youth in upbringing, we were still looking our wounds from that, and when I become mayor,

basically 50 years after Studebaker closes,

and we're still figuring out what we're gonna be next, and they're still a temptation to say, "Well, we're gonna go back and get that somehow." And so, you know, part of the whole reason I got into elected office was saying, like, we're not gonna make

South Bend great again, like we're doing something new and different, and only to worry that my party has taken the same turn of actually in a weird way,

we'd never say it, but in a weird way, sometimes,

“I think Democrats are giving out off the impression”

that what we wanna do is just get the world to look the way it looked, if not under Biden and maybe under Robama, that we're gonna go back or the Clinton year or something. There's some like date that we had.

It's not the 50s, like where the Republicans wanna take us. - Yeah. - But it's in the past, and that just can't be right. - Or if not that, each other is a little bit in the speech too, that you found yourself in the position of being

the defenders of these institutions that are broken. - Right. - And even while playing lip service, saying they should be changed, or whatever, just because Donald Trump is bringing this flame throw it everything, but Democrats find themselves

being like, wow, you know, defending the military industrious complex, because Trump was saying that it was bad, or defending the FBI, or, you know, like all of these things that, you know, in the past had not been the provenance of the left, right?

And, and how do you, you can get out of that by? Tell you, I think it's easier to identify it than to figure out how to get out of it.

They cut when you're kind of, you're always going

to be the institutionalist party kind of if you're running against, you know, the clowns with flying flowers.

“- So a couple things, I think this is exactly right.”

We hated seeing them burned down or break down all these things. So of course, me instinctively defended them, and on one level, I get that, you know, it's criminally wrong to just burn down the USAID, because the Department of Education or Unayment, right?

But that doesn't mean everything was going along just fine. So how do we get through this couple things? One, I think we need to be going back to first principles. And we think we're like the intellectual party, like the thoughtful party, but I think in many ways,

we've actually lost a step compared to the right. I mean, I imagine you may have come up in this world, right? Where if you're like a young Republican staffer of our generation, like you, by the time you show up for your first campaign or capital Hill internship,

like you have like a copy of high-ech or freedmen issue by the heritage foundation under your arm, like you're thinking about like the big things. And you would think the left would have that too, but actually, because the academic left got less and less

connected to politics and in some ways, I think, to reality, we actually have a bit of a weakness on our side. So I think we need to be investing more in the same way that the right did for decades in thinking about, okay, what are our basic commitments

in liberalism? And what do they mean for a 2020's answer to what a Department of Education should look like or what housing policy ought to be like or how we do international development?

“I think that's a really important piece.”

- A project of 2029, if you will. - Well, but more like a project 2050, right? That's what I'm getting at. Like I know there's a lot of attempts at a project in 2019, some of them are doing really good work.

But the thing that became project 2025 started in the Heritage Foundation in, I believe, 1980. Like that's when they started this iterative process that they updated every few years that became project 2025, which means

if we wanted to do a project 2050 and we started today, we'd already be like 2029. - That's behind the tip of that, right? So, like of course, we need answers for kind of immediate moves

and what I admire about the project 29 stuff is it's looking at kind of tools and laws and departments, things that exist right now and how you could run with them and make change right away. That's great.

But who's thinking about 2050 and kind of solving back from that to what we ought to be doing in 2026 if we want to get to where we ought to be in 2050? I think that's the level of ambition

that the last generation or two of right-wing tank leaders in the smarter politicians on the right had. And I think we've been punched in the face so much on the left and among Democrats that we have a hard time kind of seeing over the horizon

into that. The only thing I would say, I mean, some of that sounds like very kind of like big picture and cosmic and academic, but it also sounds a little institutional.

It's still kind of like an institutional answer.

It's not even the answer is now like,

oh, we're gonna come in and say, like, look at these mistakes in Iran and maybe we should get rid of bases in the region. Maybe we should get out of the region altogether. Or look at how cash has screwed up the FBI.

Maybe we need to rip the FBI, written branch and start it from scratch. You know, I don't know, we should have, we should be ready to do that kind of clean sheet thinking, especially because right now we have clean sheets

and a lot of places 'cause they just burned everything down. I think how we got the clean sheet, but that's where we're at. So I think that is the level of ambition we ought to have. But the other way to think about it is ground up. So for example, I've been talking to more and more mayors

who are very frustrated with dealing with HUD as we know it.

that like the Department of Education or USAID have.

“But, you know, obviously not being led in the best way right now,”

but my point is, I don't think anybody would say the way it looked five years or 10 years or 20 years ago was ideal. Certainly from the perspective of the mayor trying to build housing or get housing to be more affordable. So I've been talking to mayors saying, okay,

what if you really got to start over? Like, what would be different? What would give you the flexibility you need to actually build something 'cause I talked to some mayors who say they're better off finding a different source of money altogether

than trying to use federal money to solve a problem? Actually, experience a version of this in transportation. Like the signature transportation policy that I had as mayor, the one that got me recognition from the US Department of Transportation, I felt so proud the answer you need to do.

- Did you get a certificate? - Yeah, I got plaque. - Oh, yeah, from the Secretary of Transportation. And I was really proud of that. - Norma Mineta? - No, it was Anthony Fox, it was a big deal for us.

But we actually did that project without federal funding because partly because it would have been too hard to get and to use the federal funding,

“that was the kind of thing I tried to work on”

and change when I was in Washington. So what I'm saying is kind of from the top down

in terms of getting back in touch with our first principles

and big ideas and from the bottom up in terms of looking at what actually works. We should be ready to have everything look different including things that are chair because the reality is so different, including on things that we cherish.

We care a lot about the UN. And in many ways, even though it's easy to take a shot at the UN, rhetorically politically and there's lots of justification for some of that. But like, if you talk about the mission of preventing

another world war, like as of today, done pretty well with that, right? But more broadly, like the way that place works, the bureaucracy of it, the set up of the things that don't have any real effectual impact there,

probably reflect the fact that that was set up in such a different time. Like the security council was set up at a time when nine out of 10 people living in China were impoverished rural peasants.

“And now, I think it's probably safe to say”

that a person who lives in a city, like a middle-class city dweller in China, on average, may live a more like technologically advanced life than a middle-class city dweller in the US. I'd rather be in the US, sure, sure, sure.

But I'm just talking about like one example, AI, obviously brings a whole other set of examples. Of all these realities that have changed, the institutions haven't. I think rather than just fine-tuning and tinkering,

it's time to start over. And in many cases, we have to-- - I have like two wolves inside of me on this. There's the political wolf that is like, I want you to go further, because I want to--

I want the Democrats to, you know, capture the spirit of, you know, the being the ones that went after the system, but went after the man, right? Like, I went to a TPSA conference before Charlie died.

And one of the things that struck me about it was,

one of the things I always did is I went up to the young guys.

And I was just always like, why are you here? Like, what is it that animates you about this? And how many of them were basically just like, "F the man, I'm tired of the man, "I don't want to go to stupid wars, I'm screwed."

And it's like, that's so weird that that's the conservative conference, that that is the feeling. And so part of me like, once the Democrats to capture that sentiment more,

then there's like the smallcy conservative part of me, you know, Oakshot, you know, that's like, okay, I read you and notice the other day you did an interview, where you're talking about how you're radicalized inside the Biden administration or something,

but by the fact that some of these big changes didn't get done, but I don't-- I look at the Biden administration, I'm like, well, there was one issue in which they all went for like a big change outside of the norms

in the system, that was student-money form. And that was a disaster. Was a political disaster, you know, it ends up getting overruled by the conservative Supreme Court. People didn't go to college or kind of better,

they're like, why? I'm pissed that I-- why didn't I get a bailout? People thought they were going to get a bailout and didn't get a bailout, we're mad. And so you guys tried to go outside the system

and break the system, and you know, you ended up stepping on a rake. And so part of me thinks about that, it's like, oh, it sounds nice to say we want bigger form, but the best example of that from the Biden administration

was the total failure. So there's a reason that that particular policy wasn't on my list when I was running for president. I am not here to say that the administration was wrong to take big swings.

Obviously I wasn't middle of the big swing we took on infrastructure and proud of it. There's a lot of things also that I learned about what makes it harder to do more in the system that we have. But also, you know, good policies that were big swings,

like the policy around the child tax credit that cut child poverty in half in this country, right? The only problem was that there were too many big swings. We could argue that some of them were right, some of them were wrong. But I still think the bigger problem in those years

was that our party was not ready to really dig in

And I get it, if you finally managed to pull off a win

in this structure, are you really gonna immediately turn around

“and try to take down the structure that you want it?”

Well, the people in charge now are. - So what are some examples of that? - Well, I would start, first of all, I think we've lost like 10 good years on money and politics. I think if we got to work on constitutional change

around citizens united, but precisely because that kind of thing takes 20 or 30 years to do, if we've started 10 years ago, we'd be halfway there if you believe it takes 20 years. And we just don't have that much work to show for it.

I think that the commitments on Supreme Court reform could have been a lot more ambitious. Again, I'm having flashbacks to people looking at me really funny. Here in Iowa, in 2019, when I'm saying, I don't think we have the right number.

Adjust this is on the Supreme Court. I don't think we have the right way of choosing just as this is on the Supreme Court. And now this-- - I'm gonna give you credit on this one.

I looked at your funny on that one.

The very first time you would not remember this.

The very first time we met, my friend, Liz Smith, who's gathering a little round table for you. I was living in Oakland at the time, and I was in some conference room in San Francisco, Europe, the mayor of South Bend.

And I'm sitting in there like 20 dudes in land and you were doing this. We need a full Supreme Court reform. We need 13 Supreme Court. We need rotating justices. And I'm in the back on, I don't know what that was happening.

Who is this mayor? It's a Wall Street president. Thanks for what you should do. You have 13 Supreme Court justices. But that was OG, and you didn't even announce yet.

That was where you were from the start. - Oh, I'm surprised you came to that. - At least well, Liz. - That was a favor. - It was a favor.

(laughs) Well, yeah, no, that's the thing. And now, I think we see why that, that most Democrats, not yet, most Americans, are there.

“I think most Americans do believe we need some kind of reform,”

like at least something like an ethics code or term limits. I think we'll go bigger, right? I think there's a whole set of things like that. I think the way that we elect members of the house, which, by the way, is not dictated in the constitution.

- On cap the house, are you gonna go on cap the house? - Well, definitely the size of the house is a weird thing. And look, having dealt with Congress, I understand it to some extent, to some extent, share the instinct that says like,

would we really ever want more Congressman than we've already. - Three hundred more. - You know, that's a good example of something that we've lived with for a hundred years, so we just assume it's in the constitution.

- Yeah. - Just like the number nine Supreme Court justices, no we're in the constitution, right? The number 435 House members, if that feels random, it's 'cause it is, like we just updated every few years,

and then we stopped 'cause nobody could agree on on how to do it. The last time we tried, which I think was in, like the 20s or something, so much. - And it turns out that that is one thing

that has made it easier to jerry matter, and that is one thing that has contributed to the kind of lock of the two-party system that we have right now.

Maybe not the only of the most important thing,

but my point is we need to be asking bigger and deeper questions than these kind of fine-tuning things.

“So I think it's not just acceptable but correct.”

If you think of yourself as moderate ideologically, it's also be interested in radical change institutionally, because radical institutional change is literally the stuff of the founding. It's what 250 years ago, this month, we did

the Made America America, and honestly the changes I'm talking about are not as radical as that. Like about overthrowing thousands of years of our TV and the way you do things and replacing it with the untested Republic, I'm saying we've got

a tune up our Republic in ways that feel radical now, but at other moments in our history have been perfectly mainstream, you know, also feel the way about the popular vote, which I still think has to happen sooner or later,

I think if we did it would be good for every community, actually. It would be good for Brooklyn, if for public and candidates had to turn out the 30 or 40% of votes that they could get out of Brooklyn, it would be good for sure. Okay, you'd still have to turn back, 'cause there's so many of them.

It would be good for Utah, if Democrats had to show up in Utah, and get the votes as they could out of Utah, like that would make us all better. And of course, I think it'd just generally be a good thing if we had the basic principle that if you get the most votes,

you ought to win. - You've been in the green point lately, it's not 30%. Utah brings up an interesting comment I saw this week from Mitt Romney, and if you saw this, he's been interviewed by the K-Copins, and Nits,

I was actually going against him in the primary. I believe it's not memory-correct, I don't know. Time is starting to get long, but I was here, and I, well, at the state fair, where he was on the soapbox, when he yelled at the guy, corporations or people,

my friend, I can remember that vividly. And you made a reference to that last night, or in the speech, talking about how that's part of the Constitutional Amendment, corporations or people. I was interested in this interview that Nick gave.

He was talking about the malign influence

and he basically was saying, we need to do, we have not been in this situation before. This is, regardless of what your position is in the past on politics, we've not been in a situation

when you have a trillion-air, but spending half a billion

on a single race, and then being able to get influence in the White House, and then being able to oversee how their company is regulated. That is not something that we've dealt with. I maybe have back in gilded age times, right?

It was the last time, maybe, maybe not. And so I thought that was intriguing, that the same week that I saw making that criticism. You were referencing his remarks, and to me, I think that says a lot about how that is potentially

an issue that there could be broad-based support for this night. I think among the American people, there is. I mean, the American people don't need to be sold on reforms like overthrowning citizens

“and I didn't do it with a constitutional amendment if that's what it takes.”

I was just in Montana, and there's an initiative there.

It's a ballot initiative to basically redefine corporations

to make clear that they don't get to spend on campaigns. So it's different than trying to regulate corporations, which only exist in terms of the powers that a state law gives them. I'm not a legal scholar, but it's, as I understand,

it really smart way to try to do a bank shot around citizens. So it's called the Montana Plan. And what I noticed when I was there was that it's a very bipartisan effort.

And Montana's actually a great example talking about the extreme power you just mentioned, where it really was like that a hundred years ago. And the days of the copper kings, you had, I think one point, the richest man in the country,

the Elon of his day, if you will,

was this guy, Bo Clark, he was a Montana copper magnate.

Almost literally bought and sold the legislature of Montana. It controlled the newspapers too, him and the other copper kings. And it reached a point where the corruption was so extreme. So it just sank so much.

That Montana kind of overthrew it. They passed this law, the corrupt practices act. I think of 1912. It stood as kind of a model of campaign finance legislation passed in 1912, and it lasted until it met the John Roberts

Supreme Court and citizens united. But anyway, I mentioned all this to say. Like that's obviously not like democratic territory in Montana.

“But I think there's a good chance that this thing will pass.”

And there certainly was a lot of support for it on the ground. So I think this can be a unifying issue. There shouldn't be anything partisan about political reform. At least some of these basic reforms. I think most of us think we ought to do.

Practical concerns. You kind of alluded to this, which is the current Supreme Court. What are the stuff can get passed at? It seems like you're obviously already thinking about that. I mean, by mentioning that congressional past reform, number of house members,

number of Supreme Court members, D.C. is a state. That wouldn't have to get through the Supreme Court. Would you be for that? Yeah, of course. Like what, what sense does it make that you get to have two people,

who are both bartenders or soldiers or whatever, who live a hundred yards apart from each other? But one of them's on the D.C. side of that neighborhood, and the other one's on the Maryland of Virginia side. And one of them gets to have a two centers in the member Congress,

and the other one doesn't make no sense. It's just a very fundamental level on fair. So again, it's not just a wrong number of justices on the Supreme Court. We probably got the wrong number of house members in the house, and we got the wrong number of states in the union.

Some of the other stuff, though, is going to be tough to get to the Supreme Court. All of the stuff is going to be tough.

“That's why we need to work really hard on it, right?”

I mean, I'm sure 50 years ago when the right was initiating the project to undo Rovy Wade, let alone some of the other stuff around the unitary executive or whatever that came up, like that stuff wasn't just on the back foot. Some of that stuff would have been considered laughable, right? Started that, right?

And they were willing to take the doctrine that we can start a war without the Senate, but the Senate does need to approve a treaty to end a war with the current RIP Lindsey Graham. Those are Lindsey Graham doctrine. Stuff that would have got you laughed out of the room then is reality now. And we should have that same, if we're confident that we're right,

we should have that same confidence. Okay, so here's the political pushback you get. Let's say we live in the good place, you know, it's 29 and there's a regular Democrat. The president, whatever that means to you and the Democrats have 50 house or Senate members, so you can squeak stuff through if you want to and they control the house.

There's still going to be a lot of pressure to have the priority to be Medicare for all that want it not reforming the number of house members. If they can break everything at once, we can build a lot of things at once. I just, this idea, especially after what we just witnessed, this just like onslaught, this shock and awe of every part, not just within government and policy,

but of society, of everything from universities to law firms to late night comedians,

do that, then surely we can handle health care and house reform in the same session.

Maybe, I don't know, last time you guys try to put up HR1 and that's languished for the

“all four years, which is there because would be a lot better off than past, right?”

So yeah, I mean, again, this, this hard things are hard, right? Yeah. I'm not saying any of this stuff is easy. I'm not even saying that that is Congress or the next president can get half this stuff done.

I'm saying that we've got to get it done in our time, and it only gets done if we get to work on it sooner, like yesterday. Okay, there's another thing that you might have to deal in that situation, which is the accountability side of things.

Last time you were on, you gave us a pricing, the interesting answer from a politician.

Usually, I hate, I have like politicians on the podcast last because you know, you guys were the less interesting, oftentimes, sorry, you know, for just bullshit. I gave you the time machine answer a question, so if you go back, you know, what was you done differently, you know, five years ago, and like the obvious answer, a lot of people give is Merrick Garland, you know, maybe the Biden administration should have put in somebody

else at DOJ who is more aggressive at investigating Trump. You talked about COVID mistakes, we wouldn't go listen to that, agreed with that, but let's

“do the project forward now, like within the context of the Garland, right?”

How do you think about that in 2029? Seems like there's some crimes happening, I mean, President's families getting unbelievably rich, Corey Lewandowski, there's some reports that's been cited deals with DHS, or murdering people in the streets. We don't even know who the shooter was, and one of these killings, I mean, seems like there's

a lot of potential accountability, how do you think about that? I mean, there has to be accountability, and I don't buy into this idea that we have to just kind of paper over and pretend that that didn't happen, especially because this is not about going after fellow Americans who disagreed with us politically. This is about making sure that corruption doesn't go unchecked, and it should be done in a

way that is raising the bar, whether we're talking about Republicans or Democrats or anybody else in power, abusing their power. I believe much more of that's happening among Republicans right now than not, but that's it's not about Republicans' Democrats, right? And I actually think we only get to a place where things get better in this country when

we've established that the kind of self-dealing, the kind of corruption, the kind of pretty confident illegal behavior, but that has to be shown, right, in court, that there's some accountability for that, and if we get it right, kind of a permission structure for people who are part of it to renounce it as well. I actually think that's really important, nobody can make somebody do that, but I know

you and I both know, there are a lot of people who are part of this who know in their hearts that they're part of something that is wrong, and if any one of us is wrong about something politically or ideology, that's whatever, I mean, we're right, we're wrong that is what it is, but people are part of something that's legally wrong or wrong by the

lights of just basic morality in this whole country, never mind the politics of it.

That's the way to talk about that, and over time, that's the way to talk about that openly, so that we get to a place when I'm thinking about 2050, where there are certain basic boundaries and principles that people who voted either way last time around, agree on by that. And the people who are against each other on all kinds of things, still agree on this as

the foundation.

“When we're at the bottom, do we take out a sledgehammer to that?”

Do you take out, do you take out, do you start tearing that down? I mean, I definitely think there's some weird gold filigree that's got to come off a lot of federal buildings and some pictures of the dear leader that they have to go, but I don't know, I mean, to me, the thing about the Baltimore is just what it symbolizes, right? This idea that you tore something down and are raising all this money and spending all this

time and energy, as if the big problem that Americans have right now is, you know, we lack a nicer ballroom for fancy parties at the White House as if like any of the people who voted for this guy. We're going to the polls saying like the reason I want this guy is, I know he built a damn good ballroom and I wanted to send that to Washington, right?

One other quote in your speech last night, seemed to be the reference to what happened recently. It was the state and federal government that stand up for people's rights, they stood out of what's right and then ended with death, the right to be who you are and love who you love and raise your family and peace. It seems like that was a reference to the fact that CPS came to your house and prevented you from raising your family and peace.

I mean, it wasn't only about that, but that's obviously something has been on my mind. What happened to our family a few weeks ago is the most fucked up thing that's ever happened to us

So I don't know how much more I can say about it than I've said, I will say this, you know,

we made this decision to speak out almost right away and I'm glad that we did and when we did, we heard so much more than I expected from so many people. Just like people who are aligned with me politically or my friends but like, you know, some people who spoke out who are not our friends politically. People I've campaigned against, so to me that reinforces the idea that even in this moment we do in fact share some boundaries, some most of us almost all of us at least, some basic sense of what isn't is not okay and what should be and should not be part of the cost.

That's nice that you were encouraged by something because the whole thing is pretty distressing dimmy, obviously I didn't experience it,

but what actually happened that night or the day where they came to your house, like, what do you think about that process?

“Like the idea that they could say to you, like you have to be separate from your kids for a night.”

I don't have that much familiarity with the system. I have more familiarity now than you did a couple of weeks ago. What do you think about that? We got a lot of questions about how it got to that point and how a system whose entire purpose is to protect children and to protect the innocent could be abused that easily. And have learned a lot about that system in these systems since one thing I've learned is that many places have a way to have confidential reporting that is still not anonymous as far as the state is concerned, which can be important because making a false report is the crime.

We know who made their report. So we've been in contact with authorities because we're interested in the person who did this being prosecuted because we're in contact with authorities. That's all I'm going to say about it right now. But yeah, there's just so much bullshit victim culture sometimes.

“You know, I see this on the right, you see it across the board, right?”

And our society right now, it's like, you can get attention from being a victim and attention matters. One that needs to, and so there's part of me that, like, instinctually does not want to go to the gay place here. And yet, like, it's kind of hard for me to separate this and it's hard for me to imagine that if you were a straight politician that this would have been the criminal prank that was played on you. What do you think about that?

I mean, this is the first time I've heard of this being done to anybody in politics.

When you go into politics, you know, there's a lot of crazy and awful things can happen. I did not have the imagination to guess that something like this could happen. And I hope that it ever happens again to anybody. But yeah, we're the ones that happen to, right?

“First of all, obviously, I believe that anybody getting into politics or public life ought to be treated like anybody else, and it shouldn't matter if you're gay or whatever.”

And also, this is true for people I've nothing to do with politics who just should as they go about their lives have the integrity of their families respected and protected by everybody from their neighbors to the federal government, just the same. And it's clear that we're a lot closer to that than we were when I was growing up. And we're also a lot further from that than where we need to get. To me, it's so hard. And I think that I can't separate it out from the part of that you guys being gay dads because this is like kind of the ultimate fear of gay dads, I think.

Honestly, I mean, it's the fear of any parent to lose a kid. But like, there's, I do think a distinct thing about feeling like it's a gay dad dad, um, like you can be separated from your kid. You know, I'm not the kid who can be taken from you. And I don't know, like I don't, I mentioned this after it happened on a different show, but like, I don't know if this happens to you, but I go through TSA prayer clear. The thing happens now where the person asks the kid, like, who is this that you're with?

Does this happen to you? Do your foos, can they talk you? Not like that. Yeah. We travel all the time. I travel my daughter all the time. And so this is having hundred times. And so, and it's just like every time it's just, there's something that hits you in your stomach that's like, I don't like that question. Because like that question has a subtext to it that's like, maybe that isn't your kid. And maybe the state can take that kid from you or maybe this person, therefore it can take that kid from you.

I mean, like that hits at a very, I think, particular place.

Yeah. And again, I keep coming back to the purpose of these systems, whether we're talking about home security, or they're talking about CPS, the purpose of these systems is to protect families and children. And here's the case where this system was abused in a way that hurt. The family, our family. And then the bigger context is what you're describing. And that's this real, that's there. Part of you just wanted to like fuck you, I'm staying with my kids and so in the cops.

I mean, of course, this is my kids.

“Yeah. Like, but then, you know, you're also, especially because for 24 hours, we didn't know what this even was, right?”

I don't know. You don't even know what you're up against. I mean, you mentioned check, I remember in a much more trivial example, but maybe a month or two ago, I was going to Canada. I was going to this big dinner and conference and Mark Carney was there, and Obama was there, and I was, I was going there. And I'm going through the custom, you know, the Canadian immigration stamp in my passport. And yes, what I'm doing there, and I'm like, well, I'm going to this conference is like, what's the conference called?

I was like, I think it actually don't know. I just have never traveling with me, but she'd already gone through.

And then he starts looking kind of skeptical. And I start feeling like, I start feeling like I must be doing something wrong. Like, I know exactly when I'm there, I'm planning to engage at the highest levels of the Canadian government. Among others in Canada, I have a very legitimate reason to be there. I feel like immediately just kind of like, I don't know, like I'm doing something wrong.

And I was reflecting on it that the next day, not knowing that a few weeks later, something like this would happen.

“But like any encounter with authority can create that effect, right?”

And so it's one of the reasons why it's so incredibly important that you have trust in the authorities that they will treat you fairly, that they will not treat you differently because you're gay or because you're opposed to the government or whatever.

So Columbia and I finally, they got a job and, right, main.

Because in that context, like even if I feel a little weird for a second, like I know that like this wall, like very easily, be kind of clear to this Canadian immigration official in a couple of minutes that I'm there on legitimate business. And even though my head was saying that in this scenario too, right? My head is like, okay, this is obviously either a set up or mix up or something because there's no reason why there's no reason why this would happen.

And you're still saying that while there's a guy in a uniform and a lady in a clip with clipboard in your hand, in your home. In your driveway. And you just have everything depends on us knowing. This kind of maybe in a way this gets back to what I'm saying about the system too. If you're not so sure about the system.

“As is happening in so many ways right now because of who's running the federal government, right?”

If, as you and I sit here, we hear about somebody, it sounds like a father shot possibly in the presence of this toddler. And we have no confidence right now that we can even believe authorities when they give their initial account of what happened because the last time they did they rely. Everything starts to fall apart, including your ability to feel safe in your own home. I'm so legitimately scary, you know, I think just like I would not wish you on anybody. And it's like you're going to happen to you.

Can you hear the secretary of transportation? It's fucking insane. You know, so I can't but I phone call can't be made. I mean, just like, I don't know. I'm getting fucking pissed, just thinking about it.

I just, using a little bit more even keel than your husband on this. I'm just, I'm just making sure he didn't think about January six thing. The CPS building or something in that night. I'll see you doing. Again, we understand that there are people who have a job to do.

We do not understand how that system got abused this way. And you know, it's this little kind of a long road back to normal. Yeah, but it's okay. I mean, he's a really strong person. And, you know, we're getting through it.

But I'll be lying if I didn't say that this, you know, really affected us. Does it change your opinion at all about doing shit like this? I mean, you know, there's a change your opinion at all. Is it informing and thinking about whether you run for something again? Yeah.

Yeah, because it's like, if you're a human being, like, you, it actually does two kind of opposite things at the same time. Like, one thing it does to you is it makes you want to just, run away from the bullshit and into the arms of your family as fast and hard as you can.

whatever it is you can do to make this kind of place where stuff like that doesn't happen

and we're just our politics generally is different. And that's part of why I mentioned the outreach. It's not just that people were nice. It's that I could feel a hunger for different kind of public life in this country. And so I feel like both of those things.

And I do think there's also something weird and twisted it. There's everywhere, but I only know it in the American political culture where like if somebody says that they're like not going to run again or they're leaving office so they can like be with their family more. Like in Washington speak, that's immediately taken as code for like, they've done something wrong.

“It's like this is just like synonymous with like a scandal or screw up, right?”

Nobody could actually. Yeah. Yeah. You know what's on your mind is which is so strange because like I think it's the, you know, it's definitely like the number one regret or complaint of people I know who are in this life.

And it's the number one thing that makes it hard to do. Even just the regular stuff like being on the road a lot and being away from your family, let alone the kind of threats or fear or harm that that can come to your family. Or the effect on your family of the things that happened to you. You know, all of that.

How could that not? Yeah. How could that not be like on your mind when you're thinking about where you sit in and whether you're highest in best use is politics, which sides went and out. Ask me a few months.

Okay. All right. I wanted to finish with politics, but actually can we just, let's pal at Clint a little bit. So it's so fucking awful.

Tell me if funny story about the kids, how are the kids? They're four now. They're four. They're great. What's happening with them?

They're hilarious. I mean, it's fun because now they're beginning to get these glimmers of how the world works. Right. Like they have these pieces, these fragments, but they don't have the picture. So with our son, it's mostly, it's mostly actually about the natural.

It's about animals. Like he is all about animals. He watches this show full of animal facts.

And then like, like, I was just, and he always, he's our morning person.

I don't know how anybody in our household turned out to be a morning person. But he, so he'll just like show up. Like he'll hear the, the, the, the footfalls. And then I'll all hear him like he'll come right up to the side of the bed. Like right up to my face.

You know, and I'm not, it's dark. I'm like, not awake. Like papa. I'm like, what? Yes.

They're okay. What? What's going on? Papa. There are seven species of giraffes on the African savanna.

And that's it. Like he just needed to know that. You know?

“But I'm like, what does he think the African savanna is?”

Like he doesn't understand geography. He doesn't know where Michigan is. You know, you live in a place called Michigan. You know what that means? And same with our daughter.

The fun thing with our daughter is she's starting to form this sense of, like, just the very beginnings of, like, a sense of, like, specifics. Yeah. So one time I, I, I can't remember how he got onto this. I think it was because he was asking about, like, princesses and

kings and queens and which ones are real. Also compared to Taylor Swift.

So she thinks is basically a Disney princess.

And we got on the light kings and the revolution and all of that. And another time we were driving by a few days ago. We're driving by this patriotic display close to where we live in Michigan. And I had the constitution, the letting, you know, the weave of people. I think the parchment as well as an eagle and a bell and some other very patriotic things.

And she's asking about it. And I was trying for the first time in my life to explain to a four year old, what the constitution is. Right. And as a cool, you know, that where those letters there, this part of the constitution.

She's like, what's that? I'm like, well, it's like the basic law, all the rules kind of come from that set of rules. Yeah. What does that mean?

“That's like what's the instructions for the government?”

They know what Legos are. They know what instructions are for Legos. So I'm like, it's the instructions for government. And I'm not sure whether she's ever heard the word government. Yeah.

For or not. But her mind immediately went to who makes up the government. Uh, because the next question he said was like, who? Is that who does that? And I'm trying to think about how I render like, I can't do like the three branches.

So how do I start to explain this? And before I can form a sentence, she says, Is it, is it judge duty? No. Yeah.

I think she was staying. Who's watching judge duty in here? Grandma sounds like she was staying with my in-laws and a little bit of judge duty on. And so what I like is that she's not that far off. Right?

I know. It's not quite. But like she's got, she's like on the right track. And then there's a part of me that's like, like, you know, I'd be better off. We all just imagined that that was just the three branches of government for now.

I would probably be better than what we've got. I don't really think about judge duty politics. But, um, yeah. So we're just in that phase of life where like, you know, the we're stepping on Legos a lot, but we're also like getting to make Legos.

Like making Legos with your kid is like one of the great.

Joy's in life, I think. That's cute.

“I'll tell you where the the animal facts are going.”

Because my daughter's a couple years ahead. She has already done the animal facts show. And now she's doing a show on, um, like the great mysteries. You know, so it's like a kid show, but like the brim you to try and go. It's a real or not or the chupacabra.

That's right. And then they do some real ones. And so I think that's nice actually. Yeah. It's kind of debunking conspiratorial thinking early a little bit.

And she's been coming to me with questions about that. So I've, we were through the African Savannah. I'm sure they're coming back around. But I feel like that's the right trajectory for him. At four, you're lucky.

Let me six. Is Trump just Trump exist in their world? Not really. I don't think so. Yeah.

It was the worst part of that. That's not true. Among the bad things of him winning again was like,

“I felt like I could get away with her not really knowing.”

Yeah. You know, heading out, heading out one again. That now it was too, it's too late. And so now she understands that he's bad. And she expressed a very bad thought about Trump in front of my father on the. And later, you know, it's like, OK, we got to, you know,

We got to stand down the edges a little bit here about what's we have. What's we have in the house. But we're doing, we're doing our best. I love that though. Seven drafts of the African spin.

I didn't know that. Yeah. I don't know if I got to. That might not be true. Well, in fact, he's usually on point, like he knew some.

I had wrong about what Peregrine Falcons eat or I forget.

But like, it's it's amazing the stuff that they hold onto.

And of course, the other thing they hold onto is like any promise you've ever made. Like if you said, oh, you're going to get some candy after lunch. And then, like, they're ready to talk about accountability. Like they're ready to hold you. It's like a prostitute.

It is. Yeah. Day is later. Yes. Promise me, interrupt the candy store.

Yeah. I just like I did. Yes. Why? If that if I do this, we'll do that.

And I'll secure it. I did do that. All right. We'll do a little politics to close. You've been traveling the country a bunch.

So you're here. You're going to dome a hot tonight after this. Do you have any any favorites? And he can't. We got listeners sometimes for like looking for who to support or who to donate to or do not condors for anybody impressing you out there.

Yeah. You know, again, very impressive. What's going on in Iowa. I think when we talk about kind of squaring. You know, immediate economic concerns with like big picture stuff.

One thing. One reason Rob's hand is very effective. And I think we'll be the next governor here is that he is not afraid to talk about these kind of systemic issues about corruption and also talk about the everyday. I was really impressed with him last night. Yeah, I thought that his presentation was what he is.

We talked about a second one.

I saw him after the speech, but he's like in front of a party event. So it's like a democratic party regularers.

“And he's in there saying, you know, here's the thing about if I get in there.”

There are Republicans are still going to control house. And so we're going to have to meet over coffee and figure out, you know, how to meet in the middle. And how to compromise just like my grandpa had to at Hardy's when he met his neighbor who is a Democrat. And I was like, that's a pretty savvy thing to do, you know, message to give the seems authentic to him. That, you know, I just sometimes it makes it's like anything else you want to be able to clap for you.

And so you're a democratic thing, you know, your instinct might be to give a very partisan speech. And I was impressed by what he was doing last night. Yeah, I think he could really, again, I think also when he's elected within the democratic party. He'll be very, I mean, he's already, you know, somebody, I think a lot of people respect across the party. But I want him and more of those kind of tables where there's a lot of people from the middle of the country.

I think I'm going to be in Nebraska next Omaha. I really, really excited to see Denise Powell's campaign from Congress there. I can be in Florida soon. A lot to be excited about there. I've endorsed a couple of candidates there who were veterans, Darren McColley and Leela Gray there who she's a general.

He's a military doctor house for house for house. I got a guy bailed. And you got to check him out. He's over on the Daytona Beach side. He's running against Corey Mills.

He's one of the worst people in Congress. So anyway, it's another one. Yeah, what I love about a lot of these candidates is obviously I tend to agree with them on the issues. But a lot of them also just represent like a different expectation about. Well, about character to use this like very quaint term. These be big when we were growing up right.

Just this idea of the kind of a matter is what you're like, what you've shown, what you're about, what your sense of services. And so, you know, I'm going to continue going to these these places a lot of them are right or a lot of them are up hill. And we know it was in Northwest Georgia, campaigning in Marjorie Taylor Greene's district for Sean Harris there. We're campaigning for for our candidate for Congress in in a little rock. There's so many places that.

They're just haven't been enough Democrats speaking to these communities and these audiences. So it's it's kind of like the geographic version of my my Fox news practice right. Yeah, you can't blame somebody for not embracing your message if you haven't been out there to share it with them. And I'm going to keep doing that to little bell rings. What is a good message for Trump voters right now, do you think?

I think the most important thing that the core of the whole message is he doesn't deserve you.

And I think it's really important to talk in a way that shows that we have a regard for you as a voter. I don't think any less of you as a person because you voted a different way than I voted. What I'm saying is that the things that you may have believed that he would do because he promised you he would. Whether it was cutting prices very quickly. So new dumb wars and especially not a war with Iran.

A lot of things where, you know, I could argue till I'm blue in the face about why he was never believable anyway, but the point is he said he would do these things. A lot of good smart people believed that they supported him. And now he's screwing up. And I think a message like that that focuses on how you was a voter deserved better. And also know that when I say he doesn't deserve you.

I'm going to work to do to make the next step, which is that we deserve your vote than him or in this case in 2026. His congressional enablers, right?

“But that's where I think we show the things that we have done and we'll continue to do to make sure you can have health care, right?”

I'm especially thinking about like Obama Trump voters who voted a certain way.

And that might be part of why they have health care now because the Affordable Care Act. And it went along with what Trump had to say. And now Trump is screwing up. So that was the cultural stuff though. The thing I get a little nervous about when I talk to Democrats is it's kind of like the easy thing to say.

It's true. It's true. And right. And Democrats should say it, which is Trump has let you down on wars and price thing. That might be good enough in 2026 because he really has let them down.

But still to that other part of it about the Democrats not winning them over. Well, how do that isn't those issues? It's more of, you know, culture issues, whether that be policing or immigration or LGBT stuff or whatever. What do you think about that? But here's the thing.

I mean, on so many of those issues too, not all of them, but on so many of those issues.

On something like marriage, where when I was first, you know, worked on my first campaign out of college,

“that was kind of so lethal for Democrats that they were put in on the ballot to help bush, right?”

Yeah. And now we're a country that's like a 60 or 70% issue among the American people. Even immigration, if you ask the question right, if you say, look, of course we got to have borders. Of course we got to control who can be a citizen and who can come into this country. And we also need to be fair and we need to be humane and we need to recognize that the economy has pulled in more people than the law has allowed.

And we need to have a pathway to citizenship as well as a strong border. Like people are on border with that, right? So there are all these things. But to me a lot of the cultural stuff is actually code for something that's a level deeper, which is a lot of people who got the impression that Democrats don't like them. Yeah.

And you think if the voter feels that way, it's not going to matter the, like you think I'm right about taxes or whatever. Right? You can't blame somebody for that. It's why one thing I can't stand is the self-reinforcing version of that that is, you know, whenever you hear somebody accusing a voter voting against their own interests. Yeah.

Right? What's the matter with Kansas? Yeah. And frankly a lot of those voters could look a lot of the people who say that kind of thing and say, "So where are you?" Yeah.

We all vote a complicated mix of our interests and our values. Yep. And the more we show just regard for that, the more respect for that for each other.

“The more I think we're one step closer to finding our way out of this.”

And campaigns matter, obviously campaigns matter hugely in terms of who wins. Campaigns matter for more than who wins, right? The way a campaign is done is a big deal in another self. I think the Democrats I'm supporting across the country and to get that, they reflect that. The ones who win will be fantastic, even the ones who come up short.

I think we'll make our party and our country better because of the way they've run. That's the kind of thing I'm looking for anyway when I'm getting involved. You're not a candidate. So you're just a voter and Michigan. There's a big Michigan Senate primary half of the right now.

Gary Peters came out today in Doris Taylor Stevens. So it's kind of nasty about it. And now we talked about a dual. I kind of feel like you're maybe like a swing voter in Michigan. Are you?

I mean, in that primary? I'm not a swing voter. No, I'm not a general. No, I'm not primary. I'm not primary.

I'm a dual and I kind of, but you look at just as a political scientist. Yeah. I look at this as a political observer and not a scientist. I look at this and I say, well, they have dual voters or people who are with Bernie and also with Warren in the primary and the Hayley voters are probably with Joe Biden in the primary.

And it's like the peat voters, right? They're not for grabs. Yeah. How are you looking at it? I mean, I'm mainly focused.

That we not lose supporters of whoever's going to lose.

And a very effective candidate with a very strong following is going to lose. And we're going to have a matter of weeks because the primary is so strangely late. Really, in our state, to get together and to make sure that microadvers is not the next US senator. It would be rubber stamp for what Trump's doing. So, if that's homecoming.

Try to see the ballot box for you, then. Actually, I do our Hayley could still get so late. They could still call you. I think I'm sure they can. Yeah.

Yeah. See. That's the guess. All right, Pete, anything else? Any other fine.

I'll leave us with an Iowa, Iowa favorite.

“You know, did you get to stop by any of your favorites?”

I didn't get to fair food this time. Yeah. So that alone is great on your break on. Did you get any T-shirts? Yeah.

You saw you're there. I think I may have made a mistake. Okay. Well, we got twins, so I got these, you know, something for both of them. Okay.

And then we have the Ray gun shirts that they like. Okay, do you do the same thing or different? I do different. This is risky. It's risky.

Yeah. Because I got, they're both getting green shirts. But he's getting a squirrel shirt. It says take me to your feeder. I love them.

Right, especially because we've had a lot of rodent situations. I've had a processor last time I was in town. All right. So I'm out of nowhere. No, it was all the different kinds of possums.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we got the technique for your to your feeder shirt for Gus. I got her. She's really into unicorns.

Okay. So I thought, okay, I'll get her the unicorn shirt. But it's, I realize it's a unicorn with a pirate, a sword wielding pirate on it. Okay.

“And so I think it's understood this, it's like a hurt kind of shirt because of the unicorn.”

But now I'm thinking about it because at the cherry festival the other day, which is a big thing in Traverse City where we would. We of course went to the parade. Which was fun. You know, I've been to dozens of parades that I was in.

I could, I've never had the experience.

I just like sit on a blanket with my kids like watching a parade. Watching the marketing. Mark's going on. Mark's going on next year. I don't have a ready for that.

Thank you. But anyway, so we came out of it. And he got the biggest toy. And he got this like light up plastic pirate sword thing. And now I'm wondering is there going to be a contest over the shirt.

Because it's got a pirate on it. And so I don't. We'll find out when I get back. Please report back.

“I know the listeners are going to want to know how that went.”

That's beat bootage edge. I mean, I appreciate all the time. Good luck on the campaign trail. You're the candidate during Dorson. Really, really great.

We're super aligned and all that. And so we'll put a list of where you've been here in the show notes. So folks can decide if they want to support them. And we'll see soon. Come on down to New Orleans.

Mark, you know, I don't have to be Marty, girl. I might turn up. But we'll see soon. Thanks. Thanks, Pete.

But just soft, just whispers louder than the highways called to me. Close your eyes up, be here in the morning. Close your eyes up, be here for a while. The board podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper and with video editing by Katie Loots and audio engineering and editing.

hearing, amenating by Jason Brown.