It's the Corruption, Stupid

Right after the election, I talked about how the results reminded me of 2004. George W. Bush won re-election that year — and unlike four years earlier, the popular vote, too. Democrats were truly, undeniably in the wilderness. But two years later, they found their way out. Democrats won the House for the first time in 12 years. And two years after that, with the election of Barack Obama, they completed their trifecta. Does that comeback story have any lessons for Democrats today? Rahm Emanuel is the person to ask. He helped orchestrate that 2006 Democratic victory as the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He was Obama’s first chief of staff. And before that, Emanuel was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton. Emanuel has been a central player in most of the biggest Democratic victories of the past few decades. And people like David Axelrod and Steve Israel have been floating his name to lead the Democratic National Committee to help guide Democrats out of the wilderness once more. But Emanuel is also a controversial figure in the party. And the eras of Democratic politics he represents have complicated legacies and aren’t remembered with unanimous warmth. In this conversation, Emanuel argues that Democrats have fallen out of touch with what Americans actually want. We discuss why Democrats lost this November, what lessons they’ve forgotten from the Obama and Clinton years and how he would plot a Democratic comeback today. Book Recommendations: Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Ezra Klein?

  From New York Times Opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show.

• 0:31Ezra Klein?

  So our last episode was with Faz Shakir, Bernie Sanders' former campaign manager. And it was about the question of whether Bernieism was a way forward for the Democratic Party. But I said at the beginning, I was going to make that a pairing, that we were going to have two very different perspectives on what Democrats should do next. So here is the other, and it is, as I promised, very different. Rahm Emanuel is America's ambassador to Japan. Before that, he was mayor of Chicago. But it's what he did before that that interests me. Emanuel was Barack Obama's chief of staff in the first two years of Obama's first term. This was when Obama passed the stimulus bill, the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd-Frank financial reforms.

• 1:15Barack Obama?

  It's fair to say that we could not have accomplished what we've accomplished without Rahm's leadership.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.

• 1:29Ezra Klein?

  And before that, Emanuel led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006. This was the midterm election following George W. Bush's reelection in 2004. And Emanuel masterminded the campaign that won the House back for Democrats for the first time in 12 years.

• 1:48Speaker 03

  Americans voted for a change in the last election, and today, we got it. The new 110th Congress convened with the Democrats in charge of both houses for the first time in 12 years. And for the first time ever, a woman is Speaker of the House.

• 2:02Speaker 04

  From every corner of the country, the American people have sent a resounding and unmistakable message of change and new direction for America.

• 2:21Ezra Klein?

  And before that, Emanuel is one of Bill Clinton's top advisers and top fundraisers.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  There's an old saying that if you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. The American people were hungry for leadership, and I'm proud that in providing that leadership, President Clinton broke a few eggs.

• 2:37Ezra Klein?

  Here's what you cannot take away from him. He has been at the center of most of the biggest Democratic victories, both electoral and legislative, since the 90s. The people who love him in the party, and there are many, they say, what this guy knows is how to win. And having lost in 2024, Democrats want to win. And so Emanuel's name is popping up a lot. David Axelrod, Obama's former chief strategist, said that Emanuel should be the next DNC chair. Steve Israel, a former top House Democrat, he said the same. Emanuel and his allies are clearly pushing him back into the frame. There's a campaign going on right now. But there is a lot of detractors, too. Emanuel is a very controversial figure

• 3:22Ezra Klein?

  in the party. There are large factions that see the Clinton and Obama eras as good for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, but not that good for Democrats down ballot. And Emanuel is not from the wing of the party that believes the American public is waiting for democratic socialism. He's from the wing of the party that believes Democrats are often out of touch, that they listen to what gets said in the faculty lounge, and dismiss what gets said on the street corner. That the most important thing Democrats have to do in any election, particularly congressional election, is demonstrate through the candidates they run, the things they say, and the things they choose not to say, that they're listening

• 4:03Ezra Klein?

  to the people they claim to represent. I've said before that I think the analog to be thinking about after 2024 is 2004, the last time a Republican president who won his first term by losing the popular vote, got reelected in much more convincing fashion. And Rahm Emanuel was the guy, after that 2004 drubbing, who led the Democratic comeback in 2006. So I wanted to have him on the show. What did he learn in that campaign? And what does he think Democrats should do now? As always, my email, [email protected].

• 4:53Ezra Klein?

  Rahm Emanuel, welcome to the show.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 4:56Ezra Klein?

  So let's just start here. Why do you think the Democrats lost in 2024?

• 5:01Speaker 02

  I mean, look, at a certain level, when 70% of the country thinks the economy is bad, and by equal measure, 70% think the country's headed in the wrong direction, that is a structural equation for an anti-incumbent election. Then there's, I think, a second part, which takes understanding, and that is, the top of the ticket performs worse than the congressional wing, which is not the norm. And then there's kind of this moment in time, and you can look at other places where, you and I are sitting here, when a right-winger just went to the top in the Romanian election. People call it populism.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  I actually call it an anti-establishment. And then I dial my clock all the way back, Ezra. Look, I think there's two seminal moments that explain the last 20-plus years in American politics. One, the Iraq War, where the American people were deceived into a war of choice. We lost thousands of young men and women. Thousands of young men and women are maimed for life. And we spent a trillion dollars in a failed endeavor, in a war of choice, and were lied to. And nobody, and I mean nobody, ever held accountable. Six years later, the financial industry, housing crash, near depression, people lose

• 6:28Speaker 02

  not their lives like in the Iraq War, but they lose their livelihood, their homes. So you have people losing lives, livelihood, and the elite and the top of the society totally unaccountable, and never act like they did anything wrong. People out of the foreign policy establishment, they're on boards, institutions, universities, bankers yelling for their bonuses, and the American people are fed up. And then you fast-forward through COVID. And I think that what happens is the Democrats go in the prior years, President Obama, the 06 election, et cetera, from anti-establishment to the establishment and the elite with the whole, the way we dealt with COVID, the way we dealt with science and talked to people.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  And I think that is a deeper current. It's unique to the United States, the first two examples, not totally the financial. And to me, that explains a lot of what I call the anti-Brussels, anti-Washington DC.

• 7:24Ezra Klein?

  You say no one was ever held accountable, but that's passive voice. You all never held anyone accountable. The administration that comes after, after the Iraq war and the financial crisis is the Obama administration. You're the first chief of staff. Who is going to do it if not you?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  That's what I was going to tell you. There's a famous, in about March, after the stimulus, a very fair question, because we were having this debate after we passed children's health insurance, Lily Ledbetter legislation in the stimulus bill, and a number of other things on national service and protecting kids on tobacco. We have this big Saturday debate. President Obama had three major initiatives: cap and trade, healthcare reform, and financial reform. And this is generic at 10,000 feet. Everybody, there's nuances. We have a massive debate. The domestic side of it said that you got to start on healthcare right now. It has to be first because every day you lose on healthcare

• 8:25Speaker 02

  to do it, you're not going to get there. Not wrong about the legislative politics. The economic team worried that if you push financial reform first, the banks won't lend and it will hold the economy back. I was arguing for Old Testament justice. It's been written about, about just taking a banker in the middle of the public square and literally beaten the hell out of them through financial reform. Because they, this system, the society, needed not only the catharsis, but we needed not only legislative reforms, but I think the whole system needed somebody to be held accountable. And my argument about financial reform was the bankers would be on the other side fighting you, I mean, the financial industry. In healthcare, to get it done...

• 9:11Speaker 02

  And there's a memo to this effect is you're going to need the healthcare industry, the lessons out of the Clinton administration on your side of the table. The interest groups had to be brought over or neutralized. And that was a big debate. President Obama, you weigh kind of using the clock for healthcare or the fear about the economy and you have to weigh these equities and never 100%. And you're right. And not a banker and not a foreign policy establishment person. And that kind of populism we talk about, I refer to as anti-establishment and anti-elite. And then the Democrats in 06, 08 win and because none of the type of candidates, the

• 9:53Speaker 02

  quality candidates, but also because we were against what the establishment had done. I think we don't realize how COVID flipped the script and we become the establishment. We've become the elite and there's a series of other things that are additive to it. And you're not wrong to raise that question. And I think there's a political price to pay that literally, you know, when we were doing financial reform after healthcare, bankers are yelling about their bonuses. They deserve bonus. Washington shouldn't tell them. And we're bailing the industry out to the tune of $800 billion. And in those days, that was a big number. So you're not wrong on that level.

• 10:30Ezra Klein?

  Can you really channel anti-elite or anti-establishment sentiment through the people of the establishment? And look, I'm talking to you. You're a former White House Chief of Staff. You're the ambassador to Japan. You've worked in finance. You've worked for presidents. You have led the D-triple-C. There can be a tendency to say that there's an anti-establishment mood and Democrats need to pick that up. But does that mean a personnel changeover, right? Like your brother is a major health advisor and was a significant voice, Eke Manu, during the pandemic. Your other brother runs WME, right?

• 11:11Ezra Klein?

  Like when we talk about an anti-establishment mood, is it something that then requires a new generation of figures to channel that?

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Well, that's kind of a self-interested question from here. So yes and no in the short answer. I mean, you look at Donald Trump and he's captured. I would not call the president-elect by any imagination as of what is has to be an authentic voice of populism, yet he has sold himself as that person. And he does it not just on economic, but he says, I will be your instrument of your revenge. And he's not, it just has to be authentic. He's not exactly character A that you would point to. And I can give you the characters or individuals, rather than characters, in Europe, et cetera, that also don't quote unquote, fit that mold that you're talking about, and yet still have a voice that people attach to.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  That may tell you the depth of their anger, that they'll look past a lot of contradictions to get there. Fair question, but then I go back to what, when I was DCCC Chair, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair in 2006. I can't tell you how many times I got told by members of the caucus, the people you're recruiting at that time, these were veterans of the Iraq, Afghanistan War, members of the intelligence community, national security apparatus, sheriffs, football players, different people, small business owners. And they said, well, these aren't real Democrats. I said, well, they actually reflect, as every election does, but the election has a story and narrative behind it. They reflect this moment in time, and they are real Democrats.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  They may not be come out of your mold, but they reflect the reality of their congressional district, which I think tells that story. So part of the biography has to be authentic, but it's not a hundred percent an explanation for electoral or policy success. It's a core piece, no doubt.

• 13:08Ezra Klein?

  And I think the feeling has to be authentic. And we're talking for two reasons. But one reason is, one night, a few weeks ago, I'm sitting in my, my chair, reading, and I get a call from a number I don't recognize, and I pick it up and it's you. And with a lot of fury, you start telling me. That you just feel Democrats have have lost away. But but one thing you said that you can say what you want to say from the conversation. But one thing you said that has been in my mind is that there were lessons in the Bill Clinton era, lessons in the Barack Obama era.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:43Ezra Klein?

  That you feel the Democratic Party has tossed aside, that there's, on the one hand, I think you're right, an anti-establishment mood that the Democrats in the Biden and the Harris era did not channel and could not even speak to. But on the other hand, one of the things you have been saying publicly, and I think privately, is that there has also been a throwing overboard of what you see as both institutional and political wisdom, that I think you understand yourself as a vessel for for helping the Democratic Party put back in in front. So tell me what that wisdom is.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Well, for let me get one thing off. This is like therapy. So let me get one thing off.

• 14:21Ezra Klein?

  That's podcasts.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you take Blue Cross Blue Shield off?

• 14:25Ezra Klein?

  No therapist does. That's the problem.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Democrats, I mean, think about it, the harshest criticism of President Clinton and President Obama's tenure come from Democrats. Fact, Bill Clinton, first Democrat to get reelected since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That's a fact. Second, from 1968 to 1988, 20-year run, outside of Jimmy Carter, the Republicans run the presidency, and they run on law and order under Richard Nixon, welfare queens under Ronald Reagan, and Willie Horton under George Herbert Walker Bush. Bill Clinton, from Arkansas, comes along and sells the riddle of these holes, what we would call cultures, but crime, drugs, immigration, and welfare.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Now, we can go through the policies, argue certain things, but he not only gets reelected, which is one measure of success, but he also sets in a period of time, I think it's six out of the last seven presidential elections, Democrats win the majority of votes. I'm not saying he's totally responsible for it, but it sets a pattern. And rather than learn the lesson of how we solved a 20-year problem for the party that had weighed on Michael Takakis, weighed on every other candidate prior to that, we totally shun his presidency aside. The people that study it are the Republicans. They learn from it.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  Now, the same thing President Obama, through both talking about his community service in working with steelworkers in communities, how he then addressed the saving both Chrysler and GM and the auto industry, and not just the industry and the jobs, but the communities that relied on that single plant in, you know, Youngstown, Ohio, or in Rockford, Illinois, or in Saginaw or Flint, Michigan. And he could relate to it. And we say, oh, well, that economic recovery was just so low and small. It wasn't big. It wasn't bold. One Ohio, got reelected, passed major healthcare.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  You don't do 100%. And we look at this, and then you can take this election, and we're not only losing working class whites, we're losing working class blacks and Hispanics, and it is under a tenure of a president who clearly most pro-labor president since either John Kennedy or Harry S Truman. And I've said this to you privately, I've said it publicly, there is more to people than the collection of their wallet and their checkbook. They care about where their kids go to school. They care about whether their spouses or partners or children can drive a car without being carjacked.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  And yelling at people, well, crime is coming down, doesn't work. Let me tell you something, I mean, as a former mayor, nobody walks around going, you know what, I feel 22% safer in 2024 than I did in 2023. Crime's a feeling, a sense of, a place of mind. And rather than telling people you don't see the data, which is how we come off, we should be saying, here's our agenda to ensure that we keep reducing crime, and here's what we're going to do next. We're going to work on carjacking, car theft, which is actually what is going up, not coming down. Now, think about this. Pre-COVID is another example of an issue and where I think our party goes wrong.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  Pre-COVID, Democrats historically run somewhere between a 15 to 22-point advantage on education. From COVID forward, the only two things you hear from Democrats on education is we're going to shut the school down. We're going to close the front door of the school. And after COVID, we're going to blow open the bathroom school door. That's it. Not what you're going to do on math, not what you're going to do on reading, what you're going to do to drive graduation. And now, what is the net result? Not only are our parents pulling kids out of public schools, we're barely breaking even on the issue of education. And a president is running for reelection, saying, "I'm going to shut down the Department of Education," and we don't have a credible voice or a credible box to stand on.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  We took a singular issue that we were the voice on, and Republicans were 20 points behind us on, on average, and we've lost it all. And we don't even look at, why is it? We were very strong pro-labor as a party. Joe Biden gets credit for that. We lost working-class votes. And these are parents. They live in a community. They send their kids to school. They send their kids to a park facility, a library. They're driving in their community. We don't actually, in the name of fighting for working, but we don't actually hear them. We don't listen to them. We know, we tell them how to eat their peas.

• 19:28Ezra Klein?

  It's hard for me to hear you say that, and I think these are also lessons from your mayorship, which is not really where I want to focus on in this conversation. But a lot of the angriest criticism of you was around shutting down schools and what those schools meant to communities. Did that change your sense of what it means when a school's not functioning, what a school means in a place?

• 19:49Speaker 02

  No, I mean, there's no, look, it was an angry part. I mean, I talk about it, and we did things like drive our graduation rate up. But that was the hardest, one of the hardest decisions I made as a mayor. You had schools that were built for 800 with 200 or less kids. And it was incredibly hard because it was not just a school, it was an anchor in a community. Not only couldn't you afford it, but the kids, the schools were three, four, five, six, seven years in a row failing. And the school meant something emotionally, physically, and I get it, very tough. But I, you know, I think what's tougher, letting a kid, because it was politically hard, stay in a failing school. In the end of the day,

• 20:34Speaker 02

  eight years later, while other mayors have opposed what I did, they haven't opened up the schools.

• 20:41Ezra Klein?

  One of the measures of success you mentioned with both Clinton and Obama, and I think correctly, is reelection.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Let me say one thing. I don't mean to interrupt you, sir. I made that decision in my first term and got reelected. I'm not saying it was easy, but there is a measure there in the, both on the academic side and the political side.

• 20:58Ezra Klein?

  Well, that actually sets up what I'm gonna ask, which is, one of the measures you've mentioned here is reelection, right, for Clinton, for Obama. And one critique you hear of both of them is that, yes, they got reelected, but under them, the Democratic Party down ballot got annihilated. So Clinton, under Clinton, Democrats lose the House for the first time in 40 years, under Barack Obama, huge wipeouts in 2010, very, very rough election in 2014. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has made a version of this argument against you, that, yes, what they were able to do was successfully manage their own political capital, but they were not able to build a strong and healthy Democratic Party. And

• 21:40Ezra Klein?

  one of the reasons the Democratic Party subsequently turned on their brands of politics, more so on Clinton than Obama, in my view, obviously Joe Biden was Obama's vice president, is that the party felt that what they did worked for them, but not for the future of the Democratic Party.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  There's a legitimacy to her observation and a conclusion. I don't think it explains everything, and I don't think it's 100% accurate, but it's a valid critique. One...

• 22:11Speaker 02

  You already start under Ronald Reagan seeing what are we called Reagan Democrats, that movement. And the South, which had been a bastion for Democrats that we remembered, was shifting earlier than President Clinton. But it was a wipeout and it doesn't explain everything. I had disagreements with Bill Clinton. He thinks it was the assault weapon ban. I don't think it was passing the assault weapon ban that caused the loss. President Clinton and I, having been responsible for seeing that legislation through, had a 20-year run in debate on whether the assault weapon ban was responsible for 94. And he does get reelected and Democrats do make gains.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  And by the way, in 1998, he breaks a 100-year kind of norm, which is in the sixth year of presidency, if presidency just gets blown out, actually the Democrats pick up House seats. So her critique is not wrong, but it's not 100% accurate to what happened. It's more kind of devastating what happens from Democrats and when President Obama is done. I think we had the lowest House and legislative seats in about 100 years. I do think we... American politics is fundamentally different. This is my view, other people can argue. After the war and the financial meltdown. And it's never getting above...

• 23:38Speaker 02

  You can't get a president today above 60%. You can't get, you know, right track, wrong track has been politicized. Economic sense, right track to right track in the sense of the direction of the country. Economic sentiment about whether the economy is healthy or not healthy has been politicized. And the legitimacy and delegitimacy of Washington is in a place that's different than it was pre-2000. Now, to the effect on the party, a lot of efforts under President Obama are to build outside the party, not inside the party, infrastructure. And that has its own consequences as well. And so it's a critique.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  And as I've already said, it's somewhat accurate, but somewhat inaccurate. Because I do think as you start from Bill Clinton's election forward, did create on a national level, a favorable environment for Democrats, because he finally took what we call this bag of issues, this cultural set of issues, and took them off the Democratic back and allowed us to get heard on a whole host of economic issues that we hadn't been heard on before.

• 25:20Ezra Klein?

  This then gets to the other reason I wanted to have you on the show, which is, after 12 years, the person who wins the House back is you. You're the chair of the DCCC in the 2006 election, which is a huge, huge Democratic wave victory. And I've been thinking a lot about 2004, which is maybe where I want to start. Because 2004, to me, felt the most for Democrats like 2024 of anything, at least in my memory. George W. Bush, it was known by then that the Iraq war was sold on lies. It was known by then that the Iraq war was proving to be a disaster. There's a sense that who Bush was hadn't been fully understood in 2000. He was an accidental president. There were butterfly ballots in Florida. He had lost a popular vote.

• 26:04Ezra Klein?

  And then in 04, when it is known, when the consequences of his policies are seemingly more clear, at least to liberals. He wins in a much more decisive fashion. And day after, there's a huge backlash against and inside the Democratic Party that feels very similar to today. Democrats have lost touch with the heartland is one of the arguments. They have been too liberal on gay marriage. There were these gay marriage ballot initiatives that were partially blamed for their loss. There's a sense that Democrats need to moderate. They need to move to the center. They need to regain a connection to an America that they no longer know or understand. And there is not just a confusion, but a sense of alienation. That's at least how I would describe it.

• 26:48Ezra Klein?

  But I, let me ask you how you understood the 2004 election when it happened.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  2004 felt more like a gut punch really to the solar plex because you, everything else you could kind of explain away. 2002, the Republicans win in a midterm, first election post nine 11. You could explain that. 2000, you can say the Supreme Court, the national, US Supreme Court cheated the Florida Supreme Court from doing their responsibility and made a decision, quote unquote, only for this one case. To me, that was illegitimate. But by 2004, winning an election outright, no more trying to explain away the problem. And in 2004, you can sit there and play out how John Kerry ran, the idea that you could

• 27:37Speaker 02

  take a guy like President Bush, who skirted on his own responsibilities with the National Guard, and yet John Kerry serves in Vietnam, serves his country, puts on the uniform, et cetera, part of his whole, not just biography, but his political legitimacy. And it turns out to be seen as weak on national security. And you can argue President Bush, you know, illegitimately attacked his character and his service. I think when you look back on the campaign, then Senator Kerry totally mismanaged his campaign, talking about like on Iraq, I was for it before I was against it, just major things that become character references and character points to him.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  So the way I look at 2004 is my conversation with Nancy Pelosi when she calls to ask me literally the first week afterwards to run the DCCC for 06 election. And I think that oh four, there was no more hiding and making excuses to ourselves what we had lost. You couldn't use the 20, 2,500 ballots in Florida, not legitimate, etc. We had lost three elections in a row, and there was a fundamental problem, both on the quality of the people we were putting forward and the message we were putting forward.

• 28:53Ezra Klein?

  Well, was it, when you say we were it, right?

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Democrats.

• 28:56Ezra Klein?

  This is one of the questions I think is interesting about oh four, and maybe it's an overly optimistic one for Democrats to look at, because Republicans then, Karl Rove said quite a lot in this direction, believed they were building a realignment. They believed they were building a permanent majority of some kind. They thought that 2004 foretold a reshaping of American politics. And two years later, and then four years later, it doesn't look anything like that. And the fear that Democrats have lost touch and need to become, I don't exactly want to say Republican light, but I do want to say Republican light, is also not their path back to victory.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  No, that's not, I mean.

• 29:39Ezra Klein?

  I'm not saying you're saying that. I'm saying that was a very common piece of punditry at that moment.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  I think, let me say this. There are issues in which you want to sand down the difference so that there isn't a difference. And the reason you want to is to move them to your favorable terrain. But there's a reason I went out and recruited candidates on the national security front. You know, if you're going to flip a Republican district, you're going to take all these cultural issues because the biography told a story. They had a legitimacy based on their experience, and their story, their biography, their life's work, made that swing voter culturally comfortable. That created a space for then the rest of

• 30:26Speaker 02

  the story to get it told. We both had an agenda that differed with President Bush, and I would just, for the record, last time the minimum wage got raised was right after oh six election. There was a actual strategic plan, both on the policy side and on the candidate recruitment side, and it was a hand in glove. And yes, I got, I mean, you can go back, I think you and I started to get to know each other. I was getting pummeled, I wasn't recruiting real Democrats, football players, sheriffs, you know, people that worked in the Air Force, the armed forces of this country fought overseas. There were other people, small business owners. All types of people we were recruiting. Why?

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Because there was a connectivity between the voters in that district that was, and you gotta go back. Those districts were created to be literally a firewall against Democrats. They were created, they were gerrymandered, so you couldn't pick the lock. We picked the lock with candidates in districts that you were not supposed to be able to do it. Now, it is the sixth year of President, very unpopular war, and we prosecuted the war. And the war was built on a building blocks of deception. And it was a propitiation in the sixth year of President Bush's presidency, and then

• 31:47Speaker 02

  we shouldn't overforget this, in 04, they did think Karl Rove and others, that they were building a lasting coalition, realigning politics, and they overshot the runway on Social Security. He never mentions it. And then comes the first thing he's gonna do is, I have a mandate for Social Security. Well, bring it on. Let's go. Because it drew the contrast where you wanted the terrain to be on your side, and we minimized the terrain on their side. That's how you develop a strategy. And not only did we win 30 seats in 06, we went back and won more seats in 08, in the presidential year, and followed a similar playbook. And in 2018, it was replicated again in the first midterm of President Trump's first term.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  That candidate recruitment, the issues you focus on how you kind of where you move to shift the campaign storyline to the most favorable terrain. It's not different than what President Clinton did by addressing the set of cultural issues. It's not different than what President Obama did in prosecuting both against Romney and then against John McCain in the earlier 08. There are certain issues you differentiate and you have clear contrast and there's certain issues in which you don't. That's how you run a campaign.

• 33:09Ezra Klein?

  If you were thinking about that for right now, right? And we haven't seen the Trump administration, the second Trump administration begin. We haven't seen it take shape. We don't know if there will be an analog to social.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Okay, I got this question because I've been thinking, yes.

• 33:24Ezra Klein?

  But yes, what, as you sit up at night.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  As Henry Kissinger used to say, "Does anybody have questions for my answers?" Yes, I have. Here is what frustrates me. Look, Donald Trump, I do agree that President Trump, I keep doing that, he's President like Trump, is a threat to democracy. We have those voters on hello. If they think that the issue of threat to democracy, threat to the rule of law, if they're not a yes by now, they're never going to be a yes. We had them on hello. President Trump is going to turn the Oval Office into eBay.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  He is going to sell it to every special interest and you're going to be left paying that tab. And the Democratic Party is the thin blue line between the pharmaceutical industry getting everything they want or you paying everything you have. The Democratic Party is a thin blue line that will protect your kids from TikTok and the Oval Office will become eBay. And whoever pays the highest price will get what they want and you'll be left paying through the nose.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  We should have turned what people think this is what polling and focus groups are about. They do have a view of President Trump, both his character and his strengths, his weaknesses. We never prosecuted the case of how his, not just character, but how he's going to run the Oval Office, and he did it. He used to say, oh, they give me lots of money, I'm going to give them, you know, like the oil and gas industry. They give me a, you know, a billion dollars, I'm going to give them all the cuts and regulations.

• 35:08Ezra Klein?

  He has a very funny line on this with Elon Musk, where he says, I don't like electric vehicles, but now Elon Musk supports me, so I gotta.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was against TikTok before he was for it, and your kids are going to be controlled by the Chinese. We never prosecuted what the Oval Office is going to look like under Donald Trump, and how much you're going to pay for it. We prosecute, like, give you an example, take what I think President Biden did successfully, which is get the ability to negotiate pharmaceutical prices down and negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry, and you got lower prices on insulin. We wanted to talk about the benefit, we did. No, the first president took the pharmaceutical industry and beat the living crap out of them. And if we're not there, the thin blue line, you're going to go back to paying right through the nose. And President Trump, as you just by example, oil and gas industry, EVs with Elon Musk,

• 35:57Speaker 02

  TikTok, it was a target-rich environment, and we left it. We ran around around democracy and the rule of law, which I agree with, but guess what? We had those voters. It was the other ones we needed. We talked about what made us feel so good about ourselves, like we're all, this is the other thing, I mean, now I'm, I really do hope you take blue cross, blue shield, because I got to get this off. It's like, think about this, as a party, not just that we didn't prosecute the case that was fully present and actually fits with what people are worried about, about Donald Trump. We talked about what we cared about, not what they wanted to hear.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  But also think about how we talk about any issue as a party. This is what drives me crazy. But take this, the caring economy. I have never met anybody who's described themselves in the caring economy. I've met social workers, I've met daycare workers, I met nurses, RNs. I've never met anybody who says I'm in the caring economy, but we talked about it. You know, when you attack people, and I say this, my uncle was a police officer, et cetera. Defund the police, and they said, well, it doesn't mean that. Well, then, don't use the English language. If it doesn't mean what you said it was, don't use the English language. Okay? Start speaking as Japanese, French, but don't say what you just said and then tell me it doesn't mean that.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  Latinx and people that it's supposed to be appealed to, it doesn't represent them. We talk about people of color. Anybody who's been a mayor in a big, in a city knows that doesn't exist. We use language to feel good about ourselves, not to communicate. We all think we're applying to be adjunct professors at a small liberal arts college. We come off exactly like who we are. It's insane. And the case against Donald Trump. Now, again, I want to be honest, I've been in Tokyo for three years. It, pretty clear, it wasn't democracy and the rule of law. After the last eight years he's been in the public life, that was apparent.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  And everything that was, all the gold that you could have gotten out of that, you had. It was the other piece of the story that actually mattered to people's pocketbooks. And he will, and you can see by the cabinet that President-elect Trump is putting together. He will turn the Oval Office, not only to the special interests who President Biden fought, whether it was on oil and gas, whether it was pharmaceutical prices, took on every one of those special interests who had had control of Washington. He broke their hold. And Donald Trump is going to let him back in. And not only back in, you're going to pay for it every day. And we never prosecuted the other piece of it.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  The American dream is unaffordable. The American dream is inaccessible and it's unacceptable to us. The idea that people can walk around with multiple homes and a family can't get a home, can't afford a retirement, can't afford their kids' education is unacceptable. Well, there's a whole case to be made.

• 39:10Ezra Klein?

  Isn't that a hard case to make when it's worst in the places where Democrats govern?

• 39:14Speaker 02

  No, not at all, because this, you're thinking about it because not, I don't want to criticize you on your show.

• 39:21Ezra Klein?

  I'm a fair target on my show, man.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  No, no, because it's more, because you're thinking of linear. This is about where your heart is. This is about where, where your sentiment is, is, I mean, I want to go back to Bill Clinton, but as he said, in the snows of New Hampshire, when his draft letters out, "The hits on me are nothing compared to the hits on your kids are going to take if we don't turn this country around." Now, I didn't say to you one policy right there. It's a sentiment about where your heart and soul is.

• 39:55Speaker 05

  Somebody's got to stand up and fight for real change. Look, this is a contact sport. I knew all this would happen, or I knew something like this would happen. This is not about me. I can handle this. What's the worst can happen to me? I go home to my family, my friends, my life, my job. This is not a big deal. For me, it is a very big deal for the political process, and that's where I want to leave it. You know, I want to see this election fought out on what we're going to do to change the future of the people of this country. And most of the people do too, and they are being robbed of the chance to do it. That's the point I want to make.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  I mean, I have my own criticism of what, what are tough things and how Democrats things make things more difficult than they need to be to get things done. As a former mayor, trying to get a train station opened up and how many multiple environmental studies you have to do at the city level, the state level, the federal level, there is a need for reform. And we got to be honest about it, but that fact, it is more what I'm talking about, whether it's owning a home, saving for your kids' education, saving for your retirement, being able to afford a healthcare expense without going into Chapter 11. That is a sentiment, not only a sentiment, but also where your heart and soul is. People are, yes, you are right, linear Ezra. What are the policies to do that? But they really just want to know, do you get it?

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Do you know where they are? I used to, I mean, there was a whole thing we started about what I called Congress on your corner. I used to meet people at grocery stores, not town halls, but just where they lived their lives, where they're shopping. And if they wanted to come over and talk about Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits, immigration issues, schools, some of my best policies that I introduced came from those times where I met people at a grocery store, Congress on your corner. So when you say, oh, well, that's the worst in cities. Eh, I don't agree with that. It's just kind of broad brush. That said, there's enough problems that we could be the party that reforms government, makes it more responsive to people.

• 42:28Ezra Klein?

  I want to pick up on that idea of reform and corruption.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:32Ezra Klein?

  I was thinking this week and talking to people in politics who actually run in and win elections. And this kept coming up, that in 1994, one of the absolute best issues for Republicans in retaking Congress for the first time in 40 years was reform. They ran on term limits, on balanced budget, right? They ran against Democrats as corrupt and out of touch. People really, I think, forget how much Barack Obama's 2008 campaign was a reformist campaign.

• 43:03Barack Obama?

  I'll make our government open and transparent so that anyone can ensure that our business is the people's business. Justice Louis Brandeis once said, sunlight is the greatest disinfectant. And as president, I'm going to make it impossible for congressmen or lobbyists to slip pork barrel projects or corporate welfare into laws when no one's looking. Because when I'm president, meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public, no more secrecy. That's a commitment I make to you as president.

• 43:39Ezra Klein?

  He ran against special interests, against cable news, against political consultants. He was somebody who ran as disgusted with the way Washington worked. In 2016, Donald Trump ran as a political reformer, a wrecking ball to drain the swamp.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  2006, we ran against the house that Tom DeLay built.

• 43:57Speaker 06

  Because this all comes back to the American people. They have to have confidence that Congress is here to work in the people's interest, not the special interest. They have to know, and I honestly believe, that you cannot advance the people's agenda unless you drain the swamp that is Washington, DC.

• 44:15Ezra Klein?

  And then, in this election, one of the things that happened was Democrats became very much synonymous with the institutions. Joe Biden is both the president and has been in Washington for many decades. Kamala Harris is the vice president of that administration. And one thing that just did not exist in the Democratic campaign was any kind of reformist impulse. There was Donald Trump, who hates the way Washington works.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  100%.

• 44:43Ezra Klein?

  And the Democrats, who were there to defend Washington from Donald Trump.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Look, reform and as well as corruption aren't the same thing, and yes, they also are heads and tails of the same coin. This is also why, in Europe, you're getting people running races against Brussels. We don't fully, as I can say this as a mayor of a big, former mayor of a big city, exactly. Government is way too big and cumbersome. And it is too hard to do basic things. And we end up defending the rules rather than the results. We need to be the party that has, is for the results. And if the government is a problem, or the rules and regulations that we have the right

• 45:27Speaker 02

  purpose but are becoming their own problem, we're defending something that is indefensible. Look, a classic example.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  If climate change, which I agree, is an existential crisis, you don't leave it just to FERC. It's either an existential crisis or FERC is the greatest thing that ever existed.

• 45:46Ezra Klein?

  FERC being the group that does transmission

• 45:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:48Ezra Klein?

  line regulations and permitting.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  I'm just, thank you for explaining what I said. You have a seven

• 45:54Ezra Klein?

  Democrats seem a lot of touch to me, Ron. Too many acronyms.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  I have a rule here as ambassador. One acronym per paragraph. Okay, that's it, no more. I, look, I agree climate change is an existential crisis. But you can't tell me it's an existential crisis. And the way FERC operates to agree to get a transmission line in, which is, has a seven year backlog, is perfect. Never to be touched. We're going to defend FERC. I understand the role it plays. Are you telling me there's nothing we can do that guarantees it a end result in two years so we can actually do what we said we were going to do? Get transmission lines that can handle solar, wind and other renewables? It's crazy. And I'm, the face of it is crazy. It's an existential crisis that will wait seven years for a result.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  To build a transmission line from one end of one city to another. My grandfather said, the great political philosopher Hermes Molovitz, what are you, mishugana? This is crazy. I did an L stop near McCormick Place, a train stop in Chicago. We had to do an environmental study. After we were done, the state did an environmental study, another 18 months. After both of us were done, we sent it up to Washington. They did another environmental study. Really? And you're telling me there's nothing we can do? It took three years to put a train station on an empty lot. It's crazy.

• 47:15Ezra Klein?

  One reason this is a hard case for Democrats to make is there's nothing they did. And specifically here, this has been a frustration for me because I focus much too much probably on environmental permitting and citing. Look, the Biden administration, the administration you're, you're part of as ambassador, their signal accomplishment is the Inflation Reduction Act, which is primarily built around decarbonization investments and alongside that, the infrastructure bill.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  And the healthcare.

• 47:39Ezra Klein?

  I, I think that's an important thing that was in there, but I'm going to say the climate investments were the big piece of that.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  I got it.

• 47:44Ezra Klein?

  And they did not ever put forward, even though they know and they have said publicly that a huge problem is getting this stuff built quickly. They did not ever put forward their own significant permitting reform plan, bill, anything. They supported the Joe Manchin plan that, that eventually emerged, which was a mixed bag, to say the least. But because it would split their own coalition, because permitting reform is a difficult issue for Democrats, because a lot of the environmental groups don't like it, they never came out and said, this is what we think we should do to truly speed this up.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  The party should have done what I don't, and I'm not here to try to relive Bill Clinton, the Al Gore, it worked. The Al Gore commissioned that reform government. It did actually cut bureaucrats in Washington, rules and regulations, and it funded adding 100,000 community police officers throughout the country, which actually is, starting in 94, if you take 10 years after 94 versus 10 years before 94, you can look at the difference between crime rates. It worked on a reforming government. It also worked on funding public safety and other initiatives that Democrats cared about. We should be against government rules. Now, let me, side note, this is not the core of your question. People always say

• 49:00Speaker 02

  democracy is broken. It's not. It's very successful at the state and local level where people have trust in their government and feel it touches their lives and they have a connection to it. It's broken in Brussels and in Washington, the farther government gets away, where only rules and regulations are what we care about and processes. We never, ever talk about the results. We defend a status quo that is broken. We're insane doing it politically, and it's not actually accurate about what it's trying to accomplish. And then there's a side piece. I laughed when I was snickering here, you can't tell. When President Obama becomes a senator, I'm a congressman with Illinois and Chicago,

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Marty Mean, my colleague in the House, and Senator Obama, Russ Feingold, John McCain, we worked on a lobbying and ethics reform legislation, and it passed it. And unfairly, I can't, I think it was Chris Hayes was the Republican in the House who worked with us on it. It was bipartisan, etc. Yeah. Fighting and it was coming on the heels. We fought against all the corruption that, you know, you talk about public corruption, but a lot of people also saw the war and the way it was prosecuted at that time as corruption. It wasn't this distinct piece of government rules, regulations, money, lobbyists, access, etc. They also thought

• 50:29Speaker 02

  the way Washington worked, how we got ourselves deceptively into a war was corruption. And so we worked on that together and it was what President Obama ran on because we had worked on it when he was a senator and I was a congressman. It was the legislation we introduced and passed. And again, whether it's the integrity of public service or whether it's also the knowing that the system and the rules and regulations are not producing the results we want, we as part of the establishment have adopted the voice of defending the establishment when it's failing. It's like, makes no sense policy wise and it's absolutely a dead failure politically.

• 51:12Ezra Klein?

  Why do you think Democrats have done that?

• 51:14Speaker 02

  And you're asking me Democrats and it's like a lot of us, but.

• 51:18Ezra Klein?

  Why do you think that has happened?

• 51:20Speaker 02

  No, I know it's, you know, I think it's happened because we're comfortable in being the establishment. We're comfortable with what we have built and defended. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt talked about constantly reforming, constantly changing. If it doesn't succeed, throw it out, try something else. I want to tell a little anecdote to illustrate a point. In the balanced budget negotiations in 1997, when we get to kids' healthcare, President Clinton had pediatric care, eye and dental care paid through.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Medicaid expansion to take kids whose parents were made more money than Medicaid, but get them healthcare. The Republicans had only pediatric care, no eye and dental, but it had to be a new program outside of Medicaid because they hated Medicaid. Final blah, blah, blah, blah. We need Bruce Reed, James Burley, myself, we negotiate. It would be the president's healthcare plan, pediatric care, eye and dental, but it would not be in Medicaid. And a number of Democrats voted against it because we weren't screaming about Medicaid. I said, you know, I gotta say this as a son of a pediatrician, and I know a lot of people think I'm something, a son of something else, but people never talked about how they got paid. They cared about whether the kids had eye and dental care. That's what the priorities are.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  And we were a defender of how it was going to be funded rather than what the result was. The result of kids' healthcare plan was to get kids' healthcare, not to fight about which government program paid it or whether there is any one. I get the point. It's very important if you work at the Brookings Institute in Aspen. It is not important if you're a working mother and you're single and you're trying to figure out how to get your children healthcare and make sure they have sunglasses so they can read the blackboard. That's what matters. And we were, we lost people because it wasn't Medicaid expansion. And again, it's legitimate. It's just not more important than the end result, which was healthcare for children.

• 53:16Ezra Klein?

  I think the critique is that-

• 53:20Speaker 02

  I think this show is very good for my emotional health.

• 53:22Ezra Klein?

  I'm happy to hear that. We try to provide many levels of service here at the Ezra Klein Show.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  I don't think you actually get full benefit of what you're doing. So, yeah.

• 53:33Ezra Klein?

  The critique I hear is that the reason Democratic Party does not want to change more or does not focus more on changing the way things work is that many of the people in it benefit from it. And they benefit from it in ways that are legitimate and straightforward, right? They work for programs that they want those programs to be funded. They use powers like the ability to sue under the environmental litigation. They often use it for good reasons, but then they don't want it foreclosed on them, even if it's having bad effects elsewhere. And there's a view that there's corruption in the Democratic Party, too. There's views that Nancy Pelosi did not want the, to change the rules on insider trading of individual stocks among members of Congress.

• 54:15Ezra Klein?

  But there is a sense that Democrats are in this system, making money, having good jobs, being inside their revolving door, and that there, you can't trust them to change a system they benefit from, all the way from, you know, the staffers moving from place to place, up to people like Rahm Emanuel and Nancy Pelosi who have done, you know, pretty well in politics.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Well, look, I think the real, the problem is you're conflating both reforming ethics and reforming the government the way it works. So I would just say to you, Ezra, that while they fit together, there are separate issues. The fact is, the Democrats have always been the party, not always, we have ups and downs on this, but fighting corruption. I can say that in my tenure as mayor, three different ethics, ethics packages, and I can continue to do that. And we have to be a party that is never satisfied, never the defenders of the status quo, always wanting to change something and make other people's lives better.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  And that's been our voice, going back to whether it's Kennedy, Roosevelt, Truman, whatever, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, pick your president. The fact is, being satisfied with the way things are is not where people are.

• 55:35Ezra Klein?

  But, but I think the, the argument here is that people in the Democratic Party benefit from the way things are. And they raise money from the way things are. And that's a tough thing about this system. You need money to run these elections. I was reading a bunch of old pieces, New Yorker profiles of you, pieces about the 06 campaign, about the just difficulty of raising money in that campaign, the decisions you all were making for this $100,000 or that $500,000. And the argument that has been made again and again, is that it just, in order to win in the system, you almost have to become a party that is a defender of the system. And that that's something in the end, that in his own strange way, Trump with his own

• 56:16Ezra Klein?

  money, Elon Musk with his own money, were able to exploit because people thought they were outside the system and as such, not corrupted by it.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  True and not true. That's why you prosecute a case that the Oval Office is going to become eBay. And sell out, you know? That's why you prosecute that case. Because, you know, if you're telling me that we're the only people, individuals that quote unquote, making money on the system, which I don't accept it, critique, then you make it about the other side, which actually, if you go look at the polling and the focus groups, was more believable.

• 56:51Ezra Klein?

  One thing I wonder if Democrats are underestimating the danger of is the Vivek Ramaswamy Elon Musk Department of Government Efficiency. And you've got Musk, who has an incredibly loud megaphone through X, which he owns and controls. And, you know, it's sitting outside the government. It's not exactly what power it will have. They're putting people like Marjorie Taylor Greene in charge of important dimensions of this, which suggests to me they may not approach this in the most strategic and careful way. But nevertheless, you have something that can have incredible levels of media attention and publicity around it, where Republicans are, in a very high-profile way, going at at least what they call government inefficiency.

• 57:36Ezra Klein?

  What have you thought, watching that thing stand up? And how do you think Democrats should respond to it?

• 57:42Speaker 02

  I would say, welcome it. And I would say, 100% ready to meet with you. Let's go and have a full agenda that puts them on their back foot. And they have to make a choice between what they say they're for and what their actual interests are. The part of a political strategy is you put people in, you know, as Yogi Bear used to say, when you get to the fork in the road, take it. And so that's what would be my approach. Not fight it. People want to reform something, change something, I'm 100% for it. Let's go. Couldn't be more excited, ready to meet today. And then I would put it down on the table. And I'd have a full agenda, 10 items, that is proactive, not waiting, not in the receiving say, don't say, show me stuff. Here's what we want to get done.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  And then go right at the soft underbelly of the other side.

• 58:30Ezra Klein?

  The flip side of that commission is that all of a sudden you have Ramaswami, who is on this show and has made the point that in his view Medicare and Medicaid are mistakes, you have Musk, who is tweeting out Ron Paul clips. It reminds me a little bit of Bush and social security privatization, where you have Trump, a candidate who did not run on massive spending cuts to government, who has now appointed people who have, who get attention on them in a way other people, you know, who are in his actual government will not, who seem very excited about cutting ideally trillions of dollars in government spending. The new person Trump is appointing Treasury Secretary has also talked about the need for very significant spending cuts.

• 59:14Ezra Klein?

  That Trump, for a long time, operated outside of the long-running Republican desire to slash deep into government operations in ways that were often pretty unpopular. And in his first term, Republicans spent more money and didn't pay for it and cut taxes and didn't pay for it. And now all of a sudden, in his second term, it seems like there is a return, but under a more Trumpist banner, of the hack and slash side of the Republican Party. Is that an opportunity for Democrats?

• 59:46Speaker 02

  Yes. They have inherent contradiction. They have people who want to cut social security, Medicare and Medicaid, and they have a president who doesn't. That's like, go, let's go for it. Let's go have this debate. Ready. And if they want to go after poor kids and nutritional programs, let's have it. They want to go after the subsidies we give single people who are small business owners getting access to healthcare and have premium support? Let's have that. I'm ready. I will tell you this one anecdote, and I'm named by President Obama Chief of Staff.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  So one of the things I'd first do when we get to Washington is I ask Senator McConnell, then the minority leader, for a meeting, and he brings his leadership. Senator McConnell says, I think we should work on social security. And remember, this is 08. The economy is literally going headfirst into a depression. And the idea that the first thing we're going to work on is social security. So I said, well, why don't we do this? There's a lot of ideas kicking around. Why don't you propose some legislation on social security, what your ideas are for reform? And I will tell you, we'll be open to hearing about them. But you're a big leader, you have a big platform. Make your changes. We're going to work right now on getting the economy away from a depression. And he kind of had this wry smile, knowing exactly what I was saying.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  So if others in the Republican Party and President Trump's appointees want to propose cuts to social security, Medicare, Medicaid, put it out there. Be my guest. I got some ideas of how to expand healthcare coverage for people. You have ideas about how you want to cut it? Fine, let's have that debate.

• 1:01:25Ezra Klein?

  You've been floated by David Axelrod, among others, for Democratic National Committee Chair. Is that a job you want?

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  I think I want the Democrats to get back being the majority party and fighting for the families and their children. Whether I'm going to finish up my job in the next month here in Tokyo, I have three things I got to get done. Feel very good about the tenure here in the alliance. And when I get back to America and back to my home in Chicago, I'll make my decision of what I'm going to do, the best way I think I can do that.

• 1:01:59Ezra Klein?

  Whoever is DNC Chair next, what should the DNC be? Political parties are something very different than they were three generations ago, two generations ago. They go back and forth right now. Laura Trump is the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, so that's become a much more personalist party. When you look at the Democratic Party, and you've been a Democratic Party man for many, many years now, and serving in many different dimensions of it, what do you think the party should do? What role should it play in people's lives? What is a political party in the year 2024? And what should it be in the year 2030?

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  Well, you got to deal with the here and now, and then you got to plan for the long term. So one is, within a year, you're going to have a very important election for governor of New Jersey and governor of Virginia, and you're going to have state house elections. Now, you've got to make sure you have the resources for that and the ability to support the candidates who get the nomination and to make the most of what will be one year into President Trump's tenure. And one of the things I think Democrats have to do, if I was at DNC and working with the party chairs, but I'm not that, is we are going to have every position, every county, somebody's going to have a name on the ballot.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  Because if it's a referendum election, you want to have people in poll position. And you've got to have the infrastructure to do that, both the old shoe leather plus digital, not one or the other. But then there's the ideas. We have spent eight years telling everybody what we're against on Donald Trump. We're very anti the Trump. We haven't filled out the profile what we're pro-America. Now, I'm a product, like everybody else is, of my tenure. You could go back to President Clinton's three covenant speeches. He filled out that he was not just against 12 years of Reagan and Bush, but here's what we've got to do, as he would say, to build a bridge to the 21st century, so everybody can get across that bridge.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  So you have to not just build an identity opposing Trump, you have to also build an identity of who you're fighting for, why you're fighting, who you're fighting against, and what you're fighting for the end result to be. And a party can help build that. Now, in past times, when Bill Clinton was head of the DLC, that was the intellectual energy, the Democratic leadership circle, for that kind of intellectual work. So a party has to do both of those, not only win elections, not only help Rukku candidates, not only fund them, not only have the infrastructure, but then have the intellectual healthy debate about where we're going to go as a party and how we're going to do that.

• 1:04:47Ezra Klein?

  You talked about finding candidates in 2006 that defied the stereotypes of Democratic Party and helped pick the locks in Republican districts, candidates who had a different profile on national security or law enforcement. Given what this moment is, given the types of places in which Democrats are struggling, rural districts, working class voters, who are those candidates now? If you were either overseeing or advising a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair, working on candidate recruitment, who are you looking for?

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting, if you look at some of the frontrunners in both the New Jersey governor's race and the Virginia governor's race, I think Gottheimer in Jersey, Brian Murgan in Virginia, both have been independent enough that they've taken on their own party. It's part of their character. It's part of their profile. They're not just a yes person. They have fought, whether it's leadership or interest groups. Well, there's going to be a primary, they got to win it. But it's interesting to me that those are some of the names battling around. I think independence is a streak that I'm going to look for, that if I was sitting here and I could like, give me somebody that ran against

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  the grain, said publicly what people are thinking, but then have the courage, and they did. So their independence is a quality that gives them kind of the anti-establishment, the anti-elite tone. I'm sitting here at 10,000 feet, two years, you know, we're not about three weeks away from the last election. To me, independence, saying things that are politically correct, willing to take on not just X interest group or whatever, but even your own party's interest group or leadership. To me, there's, that's the gold mine I want to go work in.

• 1:06:44Ezra Klein?

  Democrats are watching with a lot of alarm at nominations like Hegseth for Defense, nominations like Tulsi Gabbard for National Intelligence. They are very obviously worried about the Matt Gaetz nomination, that has been since withdrawn and replaced by Pam Bondi. There are things Donald Trump is doing and will do that have more of the flavor of authoritarianism, more of the flavor of installing loyalists in key roles where the government could be weaponized. And on the one hand, I think that is the most dangerous set of things. I see him At least seeming to be interested in. And on the other hand, those may not be the things that most Americans care about

• 1:07:28Ezra Klein?

  or even really believe you on, right? Those are not pocketbook issues. Those are not necessarily corruption that will line his pockets. And so there's going to be, at least sometimes, this choice Democrats need to make between the things that scare them most and the things that if you're watching a focus group or thinking about what will help in a forthcoming election, you really want to make the center of your message over and over and over and over again. How do you think about that, that trade off when you are trying to oppose or block someone who doesn't have authoritarian, at least pretenses?

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  You know, President Trump and his team, it's going to be a target-rich environment of things you're going to oppose, but not everything has to be opposed. And you're going to have to be disciplined about you pick and choose where you're going to have the fight. If you fight everything, part of his strategy is to so overwhelm the system, you're going to drown in it. When it comes to a cabinet, and this may be the old chief of staff of me, if you're on the other side of this, you're going to have to pick where you're going to, you can't do the whole cabinet and you can't do all of them. You can't do just you want to do national security. And so you have to, if your Democrats are organizing this, you're going to have to look at the whole field, what makes Republicans most uncomfortable.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  They're not going to break from the president on all of them. What puts them in the weakest position, not only vis a vis the White House, but what puts them in the weakest position vis a vis the American people? And then that's person and that fight becomes character-defining of the other side and character-defining for your side. So I look at this and I look at Tulsi Gabbard as a place, when you look at all the information and they'll run a process that's going to make the Republicans in the Senate very, very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable. There's a tactical win there and it will expose certain things. And so you have to think of it both tactically and strategically.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  And then which fights do I want to be the more prominent, not just about the people, but about other things? I happen to think that we want to be the party that positions that Donald Trump and the Republicans are now the establishment. They're pulled into a whole set of special interests and you are not going to be, you are not in their line of sight, except for your pocketbook. Look, you're going to have an attempt to politicize the Federal Reserve, you're going to have a massive discussion, a raising of tariffs, and you're going to add, talk about another couple trillion dollars to the national debt and deficit. I think at a certain point, there's a possibility that the credibility of the United States could get hit. Not only is inflation not going to go down, it's going to continue to go up, and I think we can make an argument that you're going to be paying the cost for these individuals

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  and the special interests that they represent. You talked about autocracy and the threat to democracy. We have people on that. It's what they're going to do to your wallet and your children that I want to protect. And there's going to be a set of events when it comes to cost and affordability that is going to be real. And you're setting it up not just for that individual fight, but from here all the way through the midterm up to 2028. And I could be wrong, and maybe somebody else has a different view, that it is about democracy, they can make that argument. I think we just have an election that proved that. I think this is about people's pocketbooks, and I think it's about who the Republicans are fighting for and who we're fighting for, not just the end result, but who we're going to fight for.

• 1:10:59Ezra Klein?

  And then always our final question. What are three books you'd recommend to the audience?

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  Gary Wells's Gettysburg, Daniel Mendelsohn's Lost, and Julian Barnes's The Noise at Time.

• 1:11:16Ezra Klein?

  Rahm Emanuel, thank you very much.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:11:40Ezra Klein?

  This episode of The Usual Clangos, produced by Elias Siswiff. Fact checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Roland Hu, Kristin Lin, and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Switching Board Podcast Studio.