Drunk Parties Seeking Designated Normies
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No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome back to Beyond the Polls. There's been a lot of talk about Joe Biden's polling weakness among blacks and Latinos. Noted progressive election analyst Rui Teixeira is here this week to tell us what's behind that and how Democrats can fix the danger. Let's dive in.

Well, there's been lots of talk about Joe Biden and Donald Trump and non-white voters and working class voters. In fact,

From a subject that was kind of dry and outside the mainstream 15 years ago, it's now center square. And one of the people who can explain why it's center square and why it's so much of a concern to the Democratic Party is my guest today, Rui Teixeira, who is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor at the Liberal Patriot, and a contributing columnist at the Washington Post. Rui, welcome back to Beyond the Polls. Hey, good to be here, Henry. I'm sure we're going to have a crackerjack conversation.

Well, I am the cracker and you are the jack. So to speak, to stretch the metaphor to the breaking point. Yeah, well, I'll put it another way. I'm the cracker jack and you can be the secret toy inside. Okay, that's me. Yeah, I like that. I'm the secret toy. The secret toy. Well, you have recently written a book, co-authored a book called Where Have All the Democrats Gone? That touches upon this. Why don't you give my listeners a synopsis of the thesis?

Well, of course, for the real deal, you know, John Judis and I recommend that you actually pick up a copy of the book and peruse it carefully because it is, you know, a long and detailed story. But in broad brush, Democrats have evolved away from their working class roots over the last period of time, the late 20th century and this century.

Initially, they were bailed out on by segments of the white working class, first in reaction to some of the cultural and social changes of the 60s, and then afterwards by

a sense Democrats no longer had their backs on a lot of economic issues, on trade, on what was happening to their communities, and it embraced a sort of soft neoliberalism based around compensating the losers that just was not really in the wheelhouse of a lot of these voters. And that was then kind of was in that era, the Reagan era onward, that

Democrats lost their advantage on the party that could best keep the country prosperous, a famous old Gallup question that's been asked for decades and decades and decades. So that was a big part of the story as you moved into the latter part of the 20th century. And there was certainly a sense among these voters as well that the Democratic Party was evolving in a way on social issues that was kind of out of their wheelhouse. And what we see in the 21st century

is that Democrats, while their economic philosophy didn't change too much, they did pretty much move to the left very seriously on cultural issues. We have a whole section in our book called Cultural Radicalism, chapters on race, on immigration, on gender issues, and even on climate, where Democrats...

Because, reflecting the fact they're increasingly dominated not by the unions, of course, and working class voters in general, but more by their college-educated, liberal-ish base, you know, sort of concentrated in big metropolitan areas, for whom especially these white college-educated voters, who become an increasingly important part of the Democratic base, these are really important issues for them. And they become much more radical and much more left on all of these issues over time.

So the Democratic Party has become responsive to those demands, as it were, and has encapsulated and enshrined a lot of these commitments into their own approach to issues. I mean, a lot of the things Democrats say today on race, immigration, gender, and so on would have been unimaginable for the Democrats to say 30 years ago, and certainly 50 years ago, or maybe even, you know, heck, 15 years ago, back to the Obama administration. So

Democrats are really have steered themselves away from the heart of the working class and more toward the heart of the college educated liberal elites that loom so large in our society today. And they've kind of captured them. You know, Democrats are no longer the party of the working class. They're the party of the college educated. They're a party of some of the most affluent areas of the country.

where their sort of social liberalism and mild economic progressivism is quite palatable for these voters. And the working class, correspondingly, has moved increasingly away from the Democrats toward the Republican Party, and we can argue about

you know, why is that? And don't they realize these Republicans don't do what's in these voters' economic interest and so on. But obviously they're willing to entertain Republicans over Democrats because of the sense Democrats have lost their way, no longer their party. And importantly, I mentioned early in this conversation

this brief synopsis that the white working class was the initial bailout for the Democrats in a working class sense. We saw that continue in the 21st century and crest in 2016 where they really managed to elect Donald Trump. There's just no doubt about that. They're the key factor. But very interestingly, and this is the subject I suppose we'll get into and it's increasingly talked about, is that non-white working class voters are becoming increasingly less interested in the Democrats

increasingly less sort of adopting them as their default party and are actually moving away from the Democrats at a fairly rapid clip. This is true particularly among Hispanics, but we see some leakage as well among blacks. And just generally, that whole non-white working class group that was more the bulwark than anything else of the Democratic Party, because it wasn't just non-whites, it was non-white working class voters. Blacks and Hispanics are overwhelmingly working class populations, working class...

Hispanics and blacks used to vote more Democratic even than the college educated, but that's now reversed. And we see the slippage among the Hispanics and blacks really taking place primarily among working class voters. Particularly, and again, you look at Hispanics, they probably, Democrats probably lost 20 margin points off of the Hispanic working class voters in 2020. And that trend is just continuing to this day, if we're to believe the polls. So

Frequently, actually one sort of little data point on this is if you look at the Obama election of 2012, he carries non-white working class voters by 67 points.

You look at the 2020 election and he carries them by, Biden only carries them by 48 points, a big shift, 19 point drop. And at the same, over the same two elections, Henry, college educated whites improved their performance for the Democrats by 16 margin points. So that tells you a lot about how the party was evolving. And now if you look at the polls today, the second to last New York Times poll, I think had

The non-white working class advantage for Biden, only seven points. The latest one has it significantly better, but it's still only 25 or 27 points or something like that, which still would represent a huge decline from an already declining 48 point margin in 2012. So something's afoot here.

And it has to do with the increasing divorce of working class voters writ large from what had been sort of the historic party of the working class, the New Deal Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party, as so many other left parties across the world, particularly industrialized world, have evolved to sort of more being this Brahmin left formation as opposed to mass working class parties.

So that's in very broad brush the story we tell and where have all the Democrats gone. Doesn't mean they can't, as it were, come back. Doesn't mean that, you know, the way we see the parties lined up today and their demographic bases can't change. But right now, if you look at the trend, that's where we're going toward an increasingly working class Republican Party and increasingly non-working class Democratic Party.

And of course, since even though college educated voters voted higher rates than non-college educated voters, non-college voter eligible people are overwhelmingly the super majority in the electorate. And so consequently, they remain the large majority of the actual voting class, even despite the differential voting pattern. So if you want to be anywhere simply from sheer numbers, you want to be the party of the working class, meaning voting.

although, of course, we know that there are many definitions of working class, the simplest version is doesn't have a four-year college degree. And if you can get a majority of them, you don't need to win the college-educated class. In fact, maybe it's not a bad idea to campaign against the college-educated class. You could make that argument. I mean, right now we're seeing in the polls this sort of

Sometimes I say we're kind of living in the upside down because Democrats in these polls, they'll carry college educated voters by like mid-teens.

And or more. And they'll lose working class voters by mid-teens or more, a little bit less. Right. So, you know, these are not equally sized groups. So to be carrying the smaller group by the same amount you're losing, the larger group is not a good a good tradeoff. And again, this represents a further decline from 2020 when Biden, according to Catalyst, lost.

working class voters overall by four points which is highly unusual for the democrats and now it looks like we're seeing further slippage

And, you know, this pushes the Democrats into relying more and more, unless they're going to correct course, which they don't seem too interested in doing at this point, on their college-educated supporters, because they're higher turnout, they're more engaged, they've got more money. They're part of the group that controls the commanding heights of cultural production, as they sometimes put it in this country. So a lot of forces are now pushing them not just to be a Brahmin party, to be even more of a Brahmin party.

because that's where their most enthusiastic base is now. And to emphasize issues that are of huge interest to this, to sort of the educated part of this Brahmin left party, the more liberal part. And I think we're seeing that today, that I think it's very hard for Democrats to change course, really, from the way things have evolved in the last 10 or 15 or 20 years, because...

That's who they got. And that's who's putting pressure on them to move even farther in that direction. And of course, just in very recent past, they feel like to the extent they were successful in 2022 and 2023, it's because of these voters. I mean, as many analysts have noted, the Democrats are now much more low turnout election specialists, right? They actually, to some extent, benefit from low turnout. They're well situated in elections where

Their voters, their highly educated, energized voters are more likely to turn down and respond to issues like abortion, democracy and so on. And, you know, threat of incipient Trumpian fascism, et cetera, et cetera. So that, you know, I just think they want to crank up the volume at this point. And I think that's what we're seeing them do because they don't really have a lot of confidence they can close the sale.

on other more mundane issues of concern to the working class. They're not sure they can do that. But what they are sure they can do is speak loudly and often about the threat posed by Trump, by the abortion dead-enders in the Republican Party, by the January 6th

you know, to January 6th, supporting people who are just going to, you know, redo it no matter what. I mean, you know, there's no there's really no limit, Henry. And I think you appreciate that from reading the same stuff I do. There's really no limit to the scale of the rhetoric. And it's in sort of doom laden nature when it comes to talking about the other side for most Democrats these days. And

Obviously, it's not a completely crazy case that Trump's a danger to democracy. But on the other hand, I think there's a lot of incentive there for them to double, triple, and quadruple down on this particular approach. I mean, your peregrination over your lifetime is kind of a proof positive of that, which is to say you are a progressive. You have always been a progressive. You have not changed your strategy.

stripes as far as the sort of America that you want to see. At least I have not seen that in your work. And yet you are at the American Enterprise Institute, which is not known as a home that usually cottons to progressives. Can you tell my listeners why you made that switch and why it's indicative of the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party that you write so eloquently about?

Sure. Well, you know, I was present at the creation of the Center for American Progress back in 2003, and its original incarnation, it was supposed to be

the incubator for the new ideas that would move progressives forward in this country. And of course, there was an opposition then to the Bush administration and what they perceived to be the, you know, this going off the deep end of Bush and the Republicans at the time. But also slightly to the left of the Brookings Institute, which is, say, you had some, see, CAP at the beginning, and certainly now does, but even at the beginning, CAP had its disagreements with establishment democratic political economy.

Yeah, they did. They did. And they were determined to emphasize that. They thought Democrats needed to take a harder line, be more the disloyal opposition as opposed to the loyal opposition. And, you know, I thought that was a reasonable approach at the time. I did think Democrats needed to stiffen their spine in some ways. There did need to be a lot of pushback on some of the things Republicans were standing for. I mean, obviously, Iraq War was an issue, but there are other issues around democracy.

where I thought Democrats could afford to be less enamored of the sort of neoliberal model of economic development and leaving so many things to the market and sort of being so nervous about public spending and public programs. I thought that was fine. I was willing to sign up for that because my concern was and always has been, how do we help out

The broad majority of people in this country, the working and middle class, how do we lift them up? How does the Democrats become even more the party of universal uplift and appeal? The party, as we talked about in our book, the party of the common man and woman. How can we really make that happen and make that happen better? That's really what it's all about.

and universalistic approach and universal programs are the best way to do that. And at that time, there was no real dissent from that at CAP and in most of the left. But I think we saw over the course of the last, let's see, CAP was founded in 2003, so that's a couple decades in the past now. The Democratic Party has...

gradually and then pretty rapidly evolved into a party which seems to prize a lot of more divisive issues about race, about gender, about immigration, about crime. There's been this whole tendency to see anybody who wants to be tough on an issue like crime or tough on an issue like immigration or sort of

Doesn't completely buy into the idea America's a white supremacist society and trans women are women and all this, you know, this whole litany of things, right? That you now have to sort of believe in or endorse to be a Democrat in good standing. And none of this has that much to do with what Democrats have historically stood for and what I thought Democrats were good for. I mean, they're really America's social democratic party.

to the extent we had one. And I'm a social Democrat, so I think it was good. You know, I'm a class first kind of guy. I want to lift up the people who are, you know, having the hardest time. And I think government has a role to play. I'm not allergic to government programs, government spending, industrial policy. I'm for all that stuff. But, you know, there's...

That doesn't mean you have to endorse all this other stuff, or it shouldn't mean that at any rate, especially if you want to not divide the working class and you want to keep the working class on your side. Don't substitute the issues that are most concerned to you because of your cultural outlook and your economic background and the community in which you live. Don't substitute those issues for what the working class and sort of normie voters are concerned with.

And Democrats now have a really hard time keeping that balance. Back in the day, when it was more of a working class party, unions had more of a role in the party, there was a certain cultural anchor there where the people running the party or running the associated institutions were, you know, there was this kind of tug. Whatever their cultural views might have been, which probably were to the left, the most working class voters, they realized...

You know, we're a big tent party. We have to keep people around. We can't seem too crazy, too boutique, too out there. But I think that whole constraint system has disappeared, essentially. And it's because of that, to circle back to your question, you know, it's like, why do I want to be in an orthodox society?

Democratic Party oriented institution where I can't raise these issues. I can't talk about them. I can't write about them. I can't question them. I mean, this is madness. You know, I mean, this is boring for one thing. I mean, it's not very interesting to hang around with people among whom you can't really have a good discussion. And my feeling about the way the Democrats had lost their way, which really crested in the George Floyd summer of 2020,

just made me think more and more, I don't belong here. I'm not interested in singing from the, you know, the hymnal that has now been passed around. We all have to be on exactly the same page in that hymnal. I'm interested in, you know, singing a different hymn, singing a different song, questioning things, thinking things through, because there's a lot of stuff to think through. There was a lot of problems. I mean, the...

Backing up to four years before the George Floyd summer. Look, when Trump won in 2016, to me, that was a signal. Something was going on here.

with the Democrats' appeal to the working class. So it's not adequate to characterize these voters as all being troglodyte racists and xenophobes, and otherwise why would they vote for a guy like Trump? I mean, some of these were Obama to Trump voters. What's that about? I mean, we need to understand this. You've been talking about neoliberalism and how it's been devastating working class communities for 40 years, and now you have this populist uprising, and all you can say about it is boo on those racists.

You know, this to me made no sense. But again, this was very difficult for me to talk about it, Cap. Whenever I try to bring it up, it's like, oh, no, we can't go there. I mean, you know, I just can't get over how racist these people are. And, you know, to be honest, Henry, for years, I tried to get people to think more about the white working class and its critical role in American politics and its numerical significance. But and I tried to get projects going.

Basically, to talk about the white working class even before 2016 in a lot of Democratic circles was almost considered borderline racist. I mean, why are you so worried about these white people? Well, I'm worried about them because, you know, they vote. And, you know, they're working class people. Their lives aren't fantastic. You know, we want to help these people and want to get their votes. And come on, you know, what are Democrats about if it's not trying to reach working class people? So I was just appalled.

And of course, from 2016 through 2020, things just got worse and worse. And I think, to be honest, I don't think the party's changed much under Biden's watch, even though, as I sometimes put it, he's the designated normie of the party. The party as a whole, I don't think has changed very much.

Yeah, the party continues to drink a lot and they're hoping that the desiccated normie drives them home to election victory. Exactly. That's a good, I like that metaphor. Yeah. But every time voters look at the car, they see the drunks in the back who are hanging out of the window and they wonder, is the normie in the front seat? Right. Yeah, not quite. Especially when the normie might fall asleep at the wheel. Well, that's an added point. I'm going to go a little bit, veer a little bit into our geeky territory, but you are Portuguese heritage.

Correct. And just had an election in Portugal where the Social Democrats, well, there they're called the Socialists, the center-right. Right. Social Democrats are actually center-right, yeah. And so you had a massive corruption scandal, and the Socialists lost a third of their support. But...

The mainstream center-right, the Social Democrats, also lost support. And all of this gain went to a populist party called Chega, whose support tilts towards working class voters and saw their biggest gains relative to

the past in areas traditionally dominated by the center-left to the hard-left. I mean, there are... Right, yeah, yeah. Socialist onto communist. Yes, that's right. So, if I were somebody on the left, I would take a look and I would say, well, since there's kind of like no history of...

slavery or any of that stuff in Portugal, but I see exactly the same trend going on there that I see here. Maybe I should listen to this Teixeira fellow a little bit more. How do you see this? Why is it that this is a worldwide phenomenon that working class voters virtually everywhere are abandoning center-left parties that were there

paladins a century ago or even half a century ago and are looking towards non-traditional parties usually on the populist right but sometimes on the populist left you know like Sinn Fein in Ireland seems to have this support why is that why is this a worldwide phenomenon and not simply a bad orange man bad American phenomenon Henry what did Chega hit in that election what was their percent do you remember I

I think I'm a little under 19%. Is that even a little above what they thought they'd get? And they did best in places like Beja and Setúbal. Yeah, Setúbal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, no, I think... Sorry for the inside Portuguese baseball listeners. Hey, it's fine with me. But look, I think there's two very good reasons why a lot of working class voters are bailing out on the left and are increasingly attracted, particularly to parties of the populist right.

One reason we've already touched on, which is that, you know, culturally left parties have become increasingly associated with a series of positions and even a way of just talking, you know, just the kind of rhetoric they use, the things they seem to prize as key issues that are really not very interesting to working class voters. You know, that's

you know, in an economic sense, it becomes cross-hatched with this issue of immigration, typically, which is

Traditionally, social democratic and left parties have not necessarily been sort of, you know, all immigration is great, you know, let's not worry about it, let's let it rip. You know, there's some recognition of the fact that if immigration is just like essentially unrestricted or very open, this actually creates problems for working class people, for their communities, for their jobs, and so on.

you know, in a lot of left parties that's completely been pushed out of the way. And again, this sort of almost cultural attitude toward immigration has taken hold where we just need to

It's just hateful to not let as many immigrants in as possible. You know, there are people too, you know, and if you oppose it, it must be because you're a bad person. Remember Gordon Brown saying about a woman who he was talking to, a working class woman on some campaign stop, and she was raising questions about immigration. And he's like, was he caught on a hot mic or something? I just can't talk to him.

I can't talk to that bigoted woman. I mean, this is typical of the way a lot of left politicians now think about the issue of immigration. You know, it's...

As I think David Landhart put in something, he wrote, more is better and less is racist, right? That's the default setting. And that's not where working class people have historically come from. It's not where they come from today. So those things are very important. And then I think there's the whole issue of what is the program that

of the left of social democrats for economic renewal and advancement for the areas of these countries that have been left behind or have done much less well than the thriving relatively thriving metropolises where a lot of their more educated and affluent voters now reside um and i think there's not a lot of faith that they they've got this you know that they've figured it out i mean to extent they

Really, to the extent people know about the left's approach to economics today, so much of it seems to sort of circle around and be involved in and otherwise pushing a sort of Green New Deal type agenda.

heavily, you know, sort of based around the climate change issue, making that number one. We must have this transition. We must have it as rapidly as possible. Believe, touch, trust on this, us on this. It's absolutely essential and you will benefit. Just wait a while. And I think for most working class people, and I think that's true here in the United States, it's like, eh,

you know, yeah, climate change, that's a problem. We could probably do something about it. But the idea that we need to have this extremely rapid transition away from fossil fuels into renewables and double take the hindmost in terms of prices, reliability, and whatever jobs are going to be affected is not at all their point of view. It is a point of view of elites. It is a point of view of the people who tend to run these parties and some of these supranational institutions for whom nothing is more important than climate change.

to change nothing it's an existential crisis we must do this uh trust us we know better you know the kind of people that show up at davos you know it's like yeah god damn it we need to you know we need this transition we got to step on the accelerator and you know if these people don't like it it just shows how clueless they are about about the way the real world works um

You know, I could go into more of a rant on that, but just everybody listening to this, everybody in the world should read Vaclav Smil's paper on, you know, the probability we're going to get to 2050, which just recently came out. It just it's so hard.

I mean, normal people know this. Normal people have a good sense. You can't really have that rapid transition away from the energy system that we currently have today, which is based around fossil fuels and that they realize, yes, you will. They realize you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. They don't want to be the eggs that are broken. You know, I mean, it's really it's not that complicated. It's one of the things that jumps out is that, you know, if you take the left and

The Brahmin left, the drivers of not just the American Democratic Party, but many of these parties elsewhere. It's they identify problems and they basically create solutions that say you will bear all of the cost and we will gain all of the benefits.

Yeah. And class voters sign up for policy that says your social structures are illegitimate. Your patriotism is unjustified. Your job is unnecessary and your standard of living is too high. Yeah. Well, if not said explicitly, that frequently does seem to be implicit. And I think the working class in a lot of these countries has gotten the message.

Right? I mean, this is kind of where these people are coming from. And why should I vote for a party who is basically run by people who think that way? How different? One of the things that strikes me when I'm listening to you and I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking 1920s Republican Party.

that you go through the Great Depression and a party that was the working class party. It was increasingly being put to the test, particularly with recent immigrants. But the reason the Republican Party is dominant from 1896 through the Great Depression is because

workers of all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, disproportionately, not unanimously, but disproportionately, backed Republicans. My students in my classes are shocked when I tell them, you realize that Republicans were mayors of Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, as recently as 1928. Yeah, people don't understand the realignment of 1896. They really don't. And it was primarily about the working class. Yeah. And so, but of course, the reaction to the Great Depression was...

Nothing can disturb those of us in the waspocracy, as my attempt to create a phrase about the northern Yankee British descended people who were in the commanding heights at that time. They published the newspapers. They owned the businesses. They published foreshadowing.

They were still the dominant forces in academia, even if some of them were becoming progressive, they were not full-throated progressive the way many others were. And their reaction was, "You can't possibly do significant change to the system."

And implicitly, it was trust us. We know better than you. And the people said, no way, Jose. And they gave Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Party the unbelievably overwhelming majorities. When I talk to my class and I tell them, you realize the Republican Party had only 17 out of 96 senators in 1936. They had 86 out of 435 House members.

They're jaw-strung because they've never heard of this. And there's a reason they've never heard of that, because it's the worst since the Civil War or since the readmission of the southern states after Reconstruction.

How much of this is history repeating itself? That the progressive elites today who, as you have noted and other surveys have noted, tend to say things like other countries are better than America, tend to say things like I'm not proud of being an American. How much of this is essentially you can't possibly change a system. Don't believe your don't believe your ears. Believe what we're telling you. Don't believe your eyes. You can't possibly change a system which, oh, by the way,

puts us on top. Right. Well, yeah, I don't know about history repeating itself. I think there are some analogies between the situation of Democrats today and the Republicans in the 2020s. But the problem with that is like Donald Trump isn't, you know, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So if there was a way for Republicans to channel that working class discontent into a different sort of approach to economics and public policy and sort of an overwhelming regime change,

Yeah, I mean, maybe, but it's really hard to see that with the currently existing Republican Party. And that's one of the things I'll be speaking with Patrick Ruffini about in the near future, because, you know, that's one of the Franklin Roosevelt changed the Democratic Party from one that had progressive elements to one that was dominated by for that day, progressivism with other elements, which, of course, led to democracy.

recurring battles that ultimately culminated in the 60s and 70s and 80s. But it clearly was a dramatic change within the party and then within the government. We're going to do things we haven't done before. We're not going to tinker on the side. And there is no evidence, Trumpian rhetoric or of anybody

Really echoing that with the possible exception of J.D. Vance being able to actually go there and say, you know, the problem is not just their side. The problem is a bipartisan understanding that puts some people on top and the rest of us on the bottom, but not doing it in the class oriented way that a Bernie Sanders might do it.

Yeah, I mean, I think that is the hope of the people like Vance and Holly and Rubio, you know, my friends at American Compass and some other people in that orbit. It's like, yeah, there's nothing they can do about Trump being the leader of the party at this point. And if he wins, he wins. And I think they hope that they can, you know, there'll be enough fluidity within that administration that they can make some of their priorities real priorities and

And that may be partly because Trump is such an empty vessel. He'll be able to pour some stuff into it. Myself, I'd be a little skeptical of that, but I think that is the hope. I mean, maybe on the, again, also maybe Trump is like the Al Smith in 1928, you know, the real deal will come around in 2028 and sweep everything away. Again, I think it's a little hard to envision that with today's Republican Party, but it

But it could happen. And that's why John and I argue in our book, not for a realignment toward the Republicans or toward the Democrats, but for this kind of brutal stalemate to continue for a while. Yeah.

I mean, we are at this kind of, you know, 50-yard line of American politics. Nobody has a super clear advantage. Things kind of teeter-totter back and forth, depending on which aspect of one of the parties becomes most distasteful to most voters. But it's a little hard to see...

the figures either now or in the wings who would be able to mobilize the discontent at the center of American politics and really realign things in a decisive way. I mean, I don't think Biden's the guy, obviously, but, you know, who's going to replace him or who would take his place? You know, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, for Christ's sake. I mean, these are not

It's not like there's not some people in the Democratic Party who might be able to strike a different course back toward the center on some of these cultural issues away from this sort of Green New Deal obsession and more toward, you know, how can we actually develop democracy.

you know, this country, you know, sort of, how can we have a new era of economic renewal? What do we do about all the regulations and permitting reform? What do we do about other things besides frigging climate change? You know, what is an industrial policy that might work as opposed to actually just spending a lot of money? So, yeah, maybe those people are there, but would they come to the fore? I don't know. I think that's,

questionable. And in terms of the Republican Party, you know, it's like after Trump, whose turn? Well, you can see some people who might have that kind of class orientation and a more radical approach to

But, you know, I don't think the Republican Party is ready for it now. I mean, international conservatives, freedom conservatives, as I sometimes put it, hot and cold running conservatives. I think the whole issue of what should be the economic philosophy and what should be the policy offer or approach of the Republican Party today is just unsettled.

You know, I mean, who's today's Reagan? You know, and I don't mean just, you know, Reaganomics. I mean, the Reagan who could who could encapsulate a new approach to things and bring people on board. I don't see him. Do you or her to inject elite sympathy? Why are we being why are we saying there are only two genders? But.

No, I don't. But I always, you know, people always ask me the who question. And I always say, you know, the who eventually comes through in the very permeable structure of American politics. It's the what you need to understand. And you and I see a very similar what. We may personally root for different parties to capture that. Right. Sure. Exactly. But we see a very similar what. And, you know,

In 1927, nobody is going to say, you know, the person who's going to make the Democratic Party the dominant party after 60 years of being a second party is that crippled guy who used to be Woodrow Wilson's secretary of the Navy.

but then he gives a great speech in 1928 and he gets elected as governor and in 1964 if you're talking in june of 1964 and saying well gee goldwater is going to go down to defeat who's going to save the conservative movement literally no one will probably say that washed up actor who's running around giving that's a very good point yeah so yeah it's it's possible but

That, again, points to what you and I agree on on this, which is there is not somebody that you can say, oh, well, that person. What's clear to me is that Ron DeSantis is not that person.

Yeah, yeah, that ship has sailed. Well, look, it sounds like we're basically in agreement on the Blakhanov theory of history. The times will call forth the man, you know, and, you know, we just don't know who that man is and what time it's going to be. But yeah, it's not dependent on sort of picking out exactly the right person now. That's not the right way to think about it.

I mean, there's a thing. If the country falls in some way or divides, you know, then the moment will have passed. The person will not come out. But yes, I've not heard of Plakhanov. Yeah, he was a Russian Marxist. He was the guy with the precursors of Lenin and people like that. And there was a huge argument in the Marxist movement generally, but particularly in Russia, about the issue of sort of voluntarism, right? To what extent is it dependent on...

you know, a party or a small group of people coming forward and making things happen, and to what extent would, in a sense, the times, history would call forth.

or people who are needed to lead the revolution. I would say history provides opportunities, but it requires people to grasp them and see them, and there are certainly countries and times where you could say, well, something could have been done differently, and things could have turned out differently had there been a leader or leaders of sufficient persuasive or organizational ability to

take advantage. I do not think, I think it was inevitable given the Great Depression that things were going to change in Germany, Weimar Germany. It was not inevitable that the Nazi party under that man, Adolf Hitler, is the one that takes advantage of it. Right. Speaking of Hitler, don't you think it's kind of amazing that this is like the preferred analogy of

you know, huge sectors of the left about our current political situation. That it's really like Weimar Republic 1932. I mean, we're on the verge of, you know, I just, I mean, if you know anything about the history of Germany and the times in which, you know, Hitler was embedded, I mean, it seems utterly preposterous to me. But this really is the way people think about things. You know, astonishing, really. Yeah, and they're rather impervious to things like facts and argument.

I saw a review published in one center left. I think it might have been the New Republic, might have been Democracy. Review of a book about the year that made Hitler, 1932.

And the author just showed, the author of the review shows he doesn't understand 1932. That he's talking, at one point he says, the Social Democrats in the center, which was the Catholic Party, didn't team up to stop Hitler. Why? And, you know, his answer was basically, you know, Social Democrats were feckless and the center was afraid that they were losing voters to Hitler. And you don't learn that they only had a third of the votes in the Reichstag.

They couldn't stop Hitler because he's talking about after the 1932 election. It's like, that kind of seems like a basic fact.

Right, it is. Well, there's a certain, you know, getting kind of weedsy here again, but there's a certain similarity between that kind of rhetoric and the sort of third period Comintern approach of the communists, which was like, you know, the people in the center, they aren't, you know, they're not stiffening their spine. We have to. We have to, you know, sort of resolutely oppose these fascists. And that's what will do the trick.

because nobody can be trusted who doesn't realize how late the hour is. Red front, red front. Anyway, I don't want to get too far down that road. No, no, no. Although that is one of the things that was noted, was that Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the German Communist Party, which was quite strong at that time, would not cooperate to stop Hitler because he believed that the rise of Hitler was going to usher in communist dominance. Well, he died in a Nazi prison, executed on Hitler's orders in the 1940s.

But that, of course, was, as you say, in the third common turn era, kind of the sort of thinking that pervaded. Well, the popular front was a better idea. So, I mean, one question I always have, if Trump is Hitler, why aren't we actually trying to build a popular front?

you know, where we basically compromise on everything. All these issues that are dear to the Democrats. If you want to stop the fascist brother, I mean, maybe you should like, you know, put them like pretty far down your list. I mean, you know, we want to unite all that can be united against this threat. I've been saying that to progressives and Democrats for about five years and so forth. And I get, or eight years, actually, you know, I keep forgetting how long ago 2016 was. And I basically get the same incredulous looks

And it's like, why wouldn't you give up everything that you hold dear to stop this man? Why wouldn't you use this as the pretext for your complete and utter surrender? And it's like,

What sort of school of human psychology did you graduate from? Because that's not the way people act. Right, right. Let me conclude with asking you, you wrote a wonderful essay on the liberal patriot, which is basically the three-point plan to the Democrats coming to their senses. Again, I encourage all of my listeners to read it on the liberal patriot, but

the cliff notes version. What are your three points and what would that mean for both the Democratic coalition and what do it mean for its openness to the very groups that are deserving of it?

Well, yeah, okay, the three points are very simple. They're Democrats must move to the center in cultural issues. Democrats must promote an abundance agenda. And Democrats must embrace patriotism and liberal nationalism. So on all three of these fronts, I feel the Democrats are currently lacking. I mean, we've talked about some of the many ways in which they moved away from the center on cultural issues around race, gender, crime, immigration, schools,

whatever. I mean, this is not complicated. We all know what's happened. And we know that if the Democrats move to the center, a lot of these issues get a lot closer to the center of American politics. And a lot of these views of a lot of these working class voters, they've lost. Therefore, they should do it. Second point about an abundance agenda is just really talking about how Democrats

aren't necessarily focused on the ways in which working class voters experience the economy, particularly in the more left behind areas of the country. And they need to think seriously about that. They sort of think they've solved the problem now, despite the fact that working class voters don't believe they have. You know, that inflation, it turns out the inflation spike was a total killer.

It turns out that spending a lot of money on a variety of programs that voters don't really understand, many of which are focused around green issues, which people don't care that much about, is not a good idea. And that if you really wanted to have an abundant, dynamic economy, there's a lot of issues that have to do with many things besides climate that have to do with

actually having a maximally dynamic economy, which then brings up issues of regulation and permitting. It's just too damn hard to build stuff in this country. We want everybody to have a lot of stuff. We want people to be happier. And the attitude of many Democrats is just not abundance-oriented. It's toward, you know, sort of the priorities they have about the type of economy we should have. We should have a green economy. We

We shouldn't worry so much about consumerism. We shouldn't, like, encourage people to have unhealthy lifestyles. This is not the right approach for working class people. It's not the right approach for America as a sort of political and economic entity. I mean...

Economic growth is good for people. People like it. More growth is better. High productivity is better. How do you attain that? This is not easy. You can't, as Noah Smith memorably put it, indulge in checkism, which is basically write a lot of checks, spend a lot of money, and hope it turns out well in the end. I mean, industrial policy...

I'm sympathetic to the idea, but just because Democrats are now more willing to entertain industrial policy than they once were doesn't mean they're doing it in the right way and putting their money in the right places. So I think all of this has to be rethought carefully with an eye, so with a clear understanding that what working class and most voters want is abundance. Their number one priority is not fighting climate change. I mean, you get that through your head,

And, you know, I think that'll be a benefit to the Democrats. And finally, you know, embrace patriotism. This should be a no-brainer. All the great American movements have been built around patriotism of one kind or another. The fact that so many people on the left today in the Democratic Party sort of are very leery of patriotism, if not outright opposed to it, it's really tragic. I mean, you can't unite the country

around great projects, whatever that project might be, without appealing to patriotism and nationalism. It's just not possible.

And instead to emphasize divisive issues, like, you know, dividing and slicing and dicing the electorate and all these intersectional kind of ways, insisting that America is a white supremacist, structurally racist society, which must do penance from now until the end of time. This is not. You know, America is a great country. Yes, it's had awful things in the past. Indeed, almost all countries have. But people want to love their country.

People want to feel good about it. And if you're making them feel bad about their country, you're going down the wrong road, brother. That's all I got to say. Well, it just sounds to me like this is advice that every Democrat should rewatch It's a Wonderful Life.

and see what's at the center of George Bailey. Normal cultural values, economic policies that are strongly aggressive and interventionist to favor the downtrodden, not allocate capital to those who can use it most efficiently. I literally had three people on the right tell me in 2012 when I would say, well, you know, the problem with Mitt Romney is people think that he's Mr. Potter. And they looked at him in all seriousness and said, Mr. Potter is a good businessman.

Really? No, no, no. No, no, literally they told me. Romney Radical. Oh, hilarious. I was moving in that direction, but it's kind of like, well, if this is the company I keep, you know, I kind of think George Bailey is the hero. Okay. And, of course, patriotism. You know, is that who...

Who saves George in the end is actually his friend who's become wealthy probably by selling money to finance World War II and his war hero brother who comes home to throw some things in the hand. So there we go. The hard version is read your book. The mid-range version is read your article. And the go to the hearts is figure out how to be today's George Bailey.

Yeah, yeah. All hail George Bailey. I love that. So, Rui, it's been wonderful chatting with you. You have a lot of outlets. You're very prolific. Where can my listeners find you and find your work? Well, the easiest way is to log on to the Liberal Patriot, our sub stack. I write a column every Thursday. I'm writing one right now. Well, not literally right now, since I'm talking to you, but I'm writing one about actually it's called Why Democrats Will Become Climate Realists.

there is no alternative. So that'll, uh, I may raise a few eyebrows. So yeah, but I'm there every Thursday. So that's the best way to keep track of what I'm thinking about these days and my dives into polling data and other, other issues in and around, uh, the democratic party mostly. Um, and they, you know, you read my columns and you read our book and by God, you'll be up to snuff. You, you'll, you'll wow everybody at all the parties you attend. Yeah. Well, you know, um,

In Washington, you would wow a bunch of people. I'm not sure some of my listeners out in Kansas City might wow people instead of sending them saying, well, gee, I have to refill my glass. But you'll be more informed and a better citizen as a result. There you go. Rui, it's always delightful to chat with you. And thank you for coming back on Beyond the Polls. Thanks for having me, Henry. I'm Victoria Cash, and I want to invite you to a place called Lucky Land.

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Regular listeners of this podcast know that I feature an ad of the week, most editions, and I will usually look at different ads that either are positive contrast ads or attack ads.

This is a bio ad, one of the staples, but it does some unusual and interesting things and takes a different tone than most of these sort of introductory ads do. This one is from somebody who you have probably already heard of, but for reasons I'll explain later, many of her voters may not. This is the introductory ad by Lauren Boberg. Let's take a listen.

Hey mom, you wanna go shoot some hips? Sorry Roman, I can't right now. I'm deciding what to say in my new campaign commercial. That's easy mom. Why don't you just tell them about how you carry your gun and always fight for freedom? Well, I think they already know that. Did you tell them that you voted to cut spending and increase American energy production? That's pretty good. I know. You should probably also tell them that you passed bills to create Colorado jobs and to secure the border. Great points Roman. What's next? I'm Lauren Boebert and I approve this message.

Well, I think the first thing that stands out about this is its lightheartedness. Typically in these ads, what you'll do is have somebody talk direct to camera and they'll say who they are, there'll be pictures of their past, and they'll hit on one or two key themes that are important. If it's a Republican, you will always hear the introductory ad talk about the

the crisis on the border and fixing immigration and helping the war. And if they're from the military and their background, you'll hear about that. If they're a business person, you'll hear about that. They're pretty cut and dry and they're good as far as they go. They're doing the right thing.

for them in that race. So why am I picking on this, which kind of takes a different tack? First of all, Lauren Boebert has been a congresswoman now for a couple of years. She has made a national name for herself, both because of some personal missteps and also primarily because she's been one of the most outspoken MAGA enthusiasts on the floor. That if many of you know who Lauren Boebert is, you probably know

put her in the same category as Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, some other high-profile MAGA kind of bomb throwers in the pockets. So what this ad does is play against type.

People who are liking the bomb thrower are going to like Lauren Boebert and probably know her anyway. But she needs to reintroduce herself to Republican voters. And that's because she's switching congressional districts. Yes, Lauren Boebert, who ran a

Grill, a restaurant sandwich place called Shooter's Grill in the western part of the state barely won re-election last time and decided not to run in the seat she currently represents but is running in an equally Republican, in fact in some ways more Republican district on the other side of the state.

Now, of course, being a national figure, she gets into the race with substantial name identification, probably more than a lot of her Republican competitors. But she also has baggage that comes with it, and the baggage is

the possibility of lover or hater and what you don't want to do in that case is Double down and hope that a third of the electorate will love you and that the other two-thirds is not going to coalesce behind one of your Opposition. So what this ad does is introduce her to her new voters in a way that again plays against time She's calm. She's

looking relaxed. She's at a kitchen table. It's in a kitchen, and it's her son, her son Roman, who comes up, and they're having a mother-daughter talk. I bet many people didn't know that Lauren Boebert is a mother to a number of children, certainly one old enough to pull off the role of this, and others who are younger of it, but it introduces her as a mother.

And then the child, not the candidate, takes the position of saying the conservative things. So again, you are in the position where the person who's usually the dogmatic, you must do, is in the position of the learner. Again, playing against type.

What are the things that Roman talks about that she agrees with? It's all conservative issues and local issues. Colorado jobs, energy production. There's a substantial oil industry out in this part of Colorado, not necessarily her old part of Colorado. And of course, staples like cutting spending.

and controlling, securing the border. And he leads by talking about fighting for guns. And she says, well, I think they already know that. Now, that, again, is a very nice way of nodding to the people you already know about. The person who got famous by saying to Beto O'Rourke, who said that he wanted to ban automatic weapons, and, you know, you're not going to be able to take away our guns. The person who, in her first campaign against an incumbent Republican,

actually showed up in campaign pictures wearing a pistol in her holster. And the reason her restaurant's called Shooter's Grill is that all the servers packed heat in the restaurant. So, again, if you're hardcore like that, you know her. And she kind of nods to that in the beginning, not running away from it, but it's kind of like, what else am I? What else do you need to know about me?

Perfect way to introduce yourself to a new district. Then you've got the little touches that the ad starts with her name and Congress as full screen before the audio starts as a second or two, which is lower and Boebert Congress.

And then it ends that way when at the end what he does when she turns to him and asks what next, he holds up a basketball. And when she's talking about Lauren Boebert, I approve this message in the background, you see her shooting hoops.

with her son on a basketball court. She's a normal person. That's what the ad is trying to convey. I'm a normal conservative. I'm passionate. I'm principled. But I'm like you. I'm a mom. I care about local things. And one of the littlest touches that I really like is right in the right-hand corner, about the five to seven second mark. It doesn't have her name. It doesn't have anything else. It's got Windsor, Colorado, a location.

Why would you put up a location? She's moving district. I haven't looked it up, but I presume Windsor, Colorado is in her district. It's meant to say, this is my home now. I'm not in interlop. I'm coming to you. And then the last thing that I really like about this is the shirt that her son is wearing. While they're having this nice interchange, about half the camera time is on him. When he's speaking, the camera is on him and his shirt says freedom.

His shirt sends a message. So this multi-layered reintroduction of a candidate known for A that's not running away from A but is adding and burnishing her image with B. All of these little things that are there for people to pick off. This is a really excellent ad, one that I didn't expect. Again, play against type. She played against my expectations of how she would run her race.

And that's why it's this week's Out of the Week. That's it for this week. Join me next week as I am joined by Republican political analyst Patrick Ruffini to tell us why the GOP is turning into a multi-ethnic, working-class party and what the party needs to do to continue the trend. Until then, let's reach for the stars together as we journey beyond the polls. Okay, round two. Name something that's not boring. Laundry?

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