For me, I think one of the questions is if these younger, more progressive now congressmen and women elect are going to be able to change the way that business is done in D.C. Or if, you know, they're going to be entering an institution that then shapes them and sort of forces them to play by a set of old rules.

Obviously, that's the time old question.

But what part of what we've done at Leaders We Deserve, too, is we've challenged a lot of people who have taken corporate PAC money as incumbents to try to clear out a lot of the people that are part of the problem in our party.

And the reason why, you know, a lot of young people for a long time have not really felt properly represented necessarily by either party because they feel like it doesn't matter who they vote for.

They're still not going to be able to feed themselves this.

was really brought home to me when I was at the University of Central Florida on Monday, the day before the election.

And I was talking to student volunteers for Angie Nixon.

Is that because you basically understand that given the math here, Hakeem Jeffries is definitely going to end up being the leader of the House?

Explain why and what's the outcome? What's the future that progressive elected leaders can make possible?

Frankly, I think the future that we can make possible is we need to remember the fact that it was only a couple of years after there were Hoovervilles all over this country that President FDR came into power and helped to pass the New Deal and build our modern social security system and our social safety net.

a social safety net that for nearly 100 years now has helped to protect families like mine.

So that when my father, who was a US Navy helicopter pilot and later an FBI agent that served his country his entire career, when he got diagnosed with early onset Parkinson's disease, that our country that he served his entire life in some form was there to serve him and his family to make sure that we did not go bankrupt when my dad got that diagnosis.

And there were a lot of issues, obviously, with the New Deal.

There are a lot of people that were left out of it.

We have the opportunity to do a second New Deal in this country that actually addresses how our country got to this point.

Does that create an environment where more progressive candidates are being heard?

Uh, is your race local, or is there any kind of spillover effect from the Ken Paxton scandals and the issues that occur in other Texas campaigns?

campaigns?I mean, make no mistake about it, Ken Paxton is the most corrupt official here in Texas, and it's why we cannot allow that individual to win this Senate race.

But look, my local issues here in District 35 are clear.

Uh, working families are getting hit hard.

Uh, businesses are getting hit hard through the tariffs that we're continuing to see that still affect over 97% of small businesses and working class families.

Uh, these are the same, uh, industries, to include our builders industry, that are telling me they're completely fed up with the ICE raids that is impacting their workforce.

Uh, when they're telling me it's getting harder to build houses these days, it's because of the tariffs that are raising material costs.

There are some situations, uh, for example, Wisconsin, where just the flip of, uh, one or two seats, uh, in the state legislature makes the difference.

When you talk to folks in your generation who actually listen to Hasan Piker, your generation is who built his brand, are people obsessing about DSA, um, from y- your point of view?

No, they're obsessing about their bills.

They're obsessing about the fact that these billionaires are making more money than they ever have, as the workers that make them those billions of dollars cannot afford their insulin, they cannot afford their groceries, they cannot afford to send their kids to school, they cannot afford their rent.

And because of Trump's ridiculous choice to go to a war, uh, with Iran, now because of interest rates being so high, they especially cannot afford h- housing.

So what they're thinking about is not what labels somebody has, they're looking at the solutions that they have.

They wanna see people with receipts.

A- I think increasingly, I know increasingly in our generation, you know, as somebody who registered, first registered to vote in Florida, I remember being asked if I wanted to be a Democrat or a Republican, and I originally said neither, because I thought both, you know, uh, take money from corporations that I see as being diametrically opposed to families like mine, who've worked for decades in public service.

[laughs]

David, what is your big takeaway from today's results across a handful of states from California to Florida?

That the progressive movement is strong.

Uh, we saw what I would consider the largest upset of the election cycle so far last night in Florida, where State Representative Angie Nixon, despite being outspent 16 to one, still managed to pull off a huge upset against her opponent in the Democratic primary, uh, and win that race, and it's because she showed up for her community.

She had worked for years in the state legislature, and people are moving on from just candidates that talk about how they're against Donald Trump.

They're looking for candidates that are talking about what their vision is for a post-Donald Trump America.

Do you think that Nixon actually has a snowball's chance in Florida in November?

You know, I'm always cautiously optimistic about my home state.

The biggest growing political party in the state of Florida is actually not the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, it's no party affiliation at all, and it's because voters are really sick and tired of that state.

But the part that I would like you to expand on that you were just referring to a bit is the significance of the ultra-rich donors or whatever else is connected to that that you think flows into the policies.

Yeah, I mean, I have a great example of this, actually.

You know, we had a donor last year that gave us several hundred thousand dollars simply with the mission of going and winning young people, even though most of the vast majority of our funding comes from people that are giving us, you know, 20 bucks or whatever it is.

That donor gave us that money with the intent to go and win back young people and find candidates that young people support.

So we went out and found we helped to support Mayor Mamdani in his primary campaign and spent three hundred thousand dollars supporting him.

And he got three times the voter turnout of 18 to 24 year olds.

And despite that, you know, that donor called me up afterwards and said, I can't give you this money anymore because I don't agree with your candidates, even though he got three times the voter turnout of 18 to 24 year olds of Kamala Harris.

What policy positions are essential to a leaders we deserve Democrat?

But the part that I would like you to expand on, um, that you were just referring to a bit, is the significance of the ultra-rich donors or whatever else is connected to that that you think flows into the policies.

policies.Yeah, I mean, let, I have a great example of this, actually.

You know, we had a donor last year that gave us several hundred thousand dollars, uh, simply with the mission of going and winning young people, even though most of the, the vast majority of our funding comes from people that are giving us, you know, 20 bucks or whatever it is.

Um, that donor gave us that money with the intent to go and win back young people and find candidates that young people support.

So we went out and found...

We helped to support, uh, Mayor Mamdani in his primary campaign and spent $300,000 supporting him, and he got three times the voter turnout of 18 to 24-year-olds.

And despite that, you know, that donor called me up afterwards and said, "I can't give you this money anymore 'cause I don't agree with your candidates," even though he got three times the voter turnout of 18 to 24-year-olds of Kamala Harris.

So why shouldn't someone think that age is just a demographic organizing and fundraising tool, and not really a signifier of who's gonna do the right thing in office?

My main

thoughts on Siri AI is if this had come out in 2024, this would be amazing.

But in the AI landscape that we're now in of command line interfaces and your codecs and your cloud code, Siri AI does a very good job of being a basic chatbot.

But if you're wanting more agentic stuff to be happening on your device, building Python scripts or anything, then it's not going to be amazing at that.

And it's worth noting that it is in beta now.

I think it's going to be in beta when it comes out in September.

So it's going to be interesting to see how Apple... make changes to the model over time, whether they tie it to their annual software updates or whether they just push them out as and when remains to be seen.

Apple's priority is that the kind of basic stuff is covered first before they kind of look into maybe allowing this chatbot to be a little bit more techie for those that will want to use it for these sorts of purposes, do you think?

But on your side, how are you viewing this through y- your leaders we deserve?

I mean, we need to take...

We need to make sure that we use this as the opportunity that it is to prove that our country should not be, just putting this i- in a purely non-partisan, you know, historical perspective.

The idea that we are going to invade a country and bomb them into liberation that ha- whose entire history for the past 500 years has been defined by foreign actors trying to overthrow their government, and somehow act like it's gonna work this time, is suicidal politically.

It's suicidal in our foreign policy, and it massively discredits us.

Because right now, Trump has put our country into a position where either we're going to accept the ter- the in- the, the insane terms that are being offered, or he's gonna have to continue going forward and create a mass humani- humanitarian crisis, where they're going to have to basically turn out the lights in Iran and cause 90, create 90 million refugees that are gonna go into Turkey, that are gonna go into other countries, and create a whole other crisis.

He has put himself in this position because he let the Israelis drag him into this war.

Yeah, yeah

[laughs]

And literally zero people, by Donald Trump's account, zero people in the Epstein files, despite being an entire Republican-controlled government, have been held accountable in any way, shape, or form.

Then you add on to that the fact that Donald Trump is one of the worst presidents that we have had in modern American history in terms of the blatant insider trading that he's done, where he's made a billion dollars in the past year, Jen, over a billion dollars from his insider trading and TrumpCoin and World Liberty Financial and all of that, and you combine that with the fact that the cost of living is getting so bad that you have conservative influencers that sound like they have hired Democratic messaging consultants from 2024 saying, "Eat ramen.

The economy isn't that bad.

Just shut up and work harder," and we are in for a massive wave this year, but this time we need, we really need to make it count.

And, uh, what I'm excited about is that we were never gonna get to this place- Despite what the establishment thought, despite what the centerists thought, without having a really vicious primary season to credibly show people, especially younger people, but people of all ages, that our party has actually changed since 2024.

And while there are Democrats that we all, uh, at least the, with your listeners, m- uh, don't like, there is a segment of Democrats that we do believe in that are not being bought and paid for and getting tens of millions of dollars from AIPAC as they give Republicans tens of millions of dollars as well, that are not taking massive checks from the corporations that are making all of our lives harder.

And so what is your take on this Third Way situation, um, and how diabolical that is? What I just read for you, it's really, really, really sinister.

How, how do you think that's going, David?

Good.

Good.

Uh, the fact of the matter is I think that there's a lesson for Democrats to learn specifically from what happened out in...

Oh, my God.

Uh, specifically from what happened out in Michigan, where they came back together despite a very vicious primary and they unified.

Because ultimately, that is what matters here.

Like, [laughs] which, which does kinda drive home the point, right?

Do you think that that is the takeaway Democratic leadership has had from what's been going on in these primaries?

No, uh, because I think that a lot of the time they're more committed to keeping the status quo than actually changing and offering, offering something new to voters.

We can't re- we can't forget the fact that the reason why we're here right now is because the establishment that loves to talk a big game about what is and is not electable lost twice to Donald Trump.

They've lost all credibility, and the people are looking for new leaders that can help lead our country out of this moment.

People, Justin J. Pearson, where he's been...

People talk all the time now about data centers.

He has been leading the fight against Elon Musk's, uh, Colossus.

What would you say to the moderates in your party who feel that way?

Frame for me, as you see it, what's happening to the Democratic Party, and then I will jump from there.

Yeah, I think we're witnessing the culmination of a couple things.

I think that there is, uh, a lot of younger people and people of all ages that increasingly feel like they have been let down by the political system and the establishment of either political party, and they're looking for a serious shakeup to the status quo.

And I think that's what we saw last night in Michigan, and I think it's what we've seen in New York.

It's what we're seeing across the country.

And I think what's happening is that there's a division that isn't so much left versus right nearly as much anymore as, as it, as it is top versus down, um, where people are sick and tired of having, for example, especially in, in Michigan, data centers built in their backyards where their city council members are being forced, you know, having to sign these NDAs where they can't even talk about the actual projects that they're working on.

And then having these massive data centers built in their backyard that if you're driving at 70 miles an hour past them, take over a minute to actually get past, 'cause they're that big.

Yeah

Capitalism is even less popular among young people.

If politicians want to know how to get elected, it is not complicated.

Do your job and represent the people, not the special interests buying out our elections.

What I think a lot about is the fact that if we do not start making our political system work for people that feel like they are living in a broken promise, where they've done as a generation everything we've been told on average, right? We've gone to college at some of the highest rates of anybody of any generation in American history.

Contrary to popular belief, we've actually voted at the highest rates of any generational cohort at our age in American history consistently.

But he too brings up AIPAC.

Let me tell you a story.

When I first started working in D.C., when I went from working on the outside of politics in the advocacy world to then working on the inside, one of the first things that I was told when I got here was, do not talk about AIPAC.

Well, it's because

it's fear mongering.

That's all it is.

It's constant fear mongering that if you give them if you give them an inch, they're going to take a mile and they're just going to keep going.

So that's why, you know, even if they even even a majority of gun owners like my father, I grew up, you know, shooting guns with my dad, who was an FBI special agent in the FBI.

And, you know, have got you know we my dad remains a gun owner and we've had guns in the house my entire life i don't i don't understand it either michael at all and i i wish that some republicans especially you know those 10 or so republican senators that we need would come around on that and realize that even if it's just a small thing of course i'm always going to want more to stop as many of these as possible but you know even if it's just that you're totally right i think I think there should be a 10 day waiting period or even a three day, any waiting period at this point would be, would be really helpful in that regard.

And I, you know, I think it's interesting that to think about as well, like not only like the GOP NRA connection, which is of course very strong, but also their connections that they have to Russian intelligence that we, that we know that we've seen repeatedly with their meetings that we've had, that they've had and the relationship with the Trump organization that is very, you know, gone on for quite, quite some time.

Felt that was happening in your life with that tweet.

[laughs]

Pretty much.

Um, anyways, I think what happened is that Ken Martin ran, uh, for DNC chair, because for people that...

I think there's a lot of people that don't understand how that process works either.

There's 450 DNC members that are from different state parties, state party chairs, et cetera, that vote on who the DNC chair is, and, uh, when Ken was running for that position, one of the main things he ran on was releasing an autopsy that would hopefully address some of the reasons why people are increasingly not interested in supporting these institutional groups like the DNC, uh, to offer any form of accountability.

So at the DNC, in our first meeting, a major part of what we were talking about was, what is going to go into this autopsy? And I remember bringing up in this meeting and saying, "I know a lot of..." And this was with all the officers, including Ken, where I said, "I know a lot of you guys probably don't want to talk about this, but if you're gonna talk about why we lost young voters, you have to talk about Gaza.

You have to talk about inflation." And I remember on the Gaza part in particular, to my surprise, the officers were like, "Yeah, no, no, no, no, we absolutely do wanna talk about that.

Right

[laughs]

That time is against.

The question is, what are we gonna do to replace them? And what we need to do in order to do that is not just work at the congressional level, we need to start laying the groundwork for a generational revolution within the Democratic Party at the state legislative level, fielding candidates around the country so that they can prove themselves at the state legislature level, like Sauron did, so that they have experience in governing.

Then they can run for higher office with higher name ID, so it's easier for them to overcome attacks inevitably from APAC or from other special interests, and prove that we are competent at governing, that we don't just have the right values, we actually get shit done in the first place, and that's what we're doing at Leaders We Deserve.

And, like, the other...

The last time I was on your show, Jen, I, you know, I talked a lot about the work that we're doing, especially at the state legislative level and congressional level, and in that time since, we now are at 21 of our 26 election nights that we've had so far this election, we have won.

And some of those are obviously going into ge- competitive general elections to break Republican super majorities and break Republican majorities because unlike the moderates and the establishment of our party, I don't believe that offering people the same thing again and asking them to behave differently is going to work for a third time here.

And these people wanna lecture us about Republican interference.

Yeah.

Say, "If you guys really wanna say that money in our politics is so bad, put your vote where your mouth is and vote on it," and they'll vote against it, and we ca- we have to reestablish ourselves as the party of anti-corruption and be unquestionable in that.

And that's why what we, at Leaders We Deserve, we do it.

We support young candidates who reject the influence of corporate PAC money because while there are Democrats out there that take that money, I want young people to see that there is at least a cohort of a new generation that properly represents them, and not the same corporations and special interests that fund assholes like Scott Jennings that brought us here in the first place, right? I want them to see that, and I, we get, you know, I get criticized a lot for the work that we do to challenge older incumbents that we feel like are failing to meet the moment.

We cannot risk losing the House because an eighty-one-year-old could die in a red state and give that opportunity in a safe seat up to a Republican governor to determine when we get the House back or not.

We cannot continue to have a geriatric party while we say democracy is on the line.

If democracy really is on the line, you need to make some tough decisions, and make sure that you are offering the best champions to fight back effectively against what the hell Trump is doing and what is going to long outlive him.

Yeah, of course

What do you think he was offering that attracted so many young men?

To be honest with you, I don't think it's that complicated, and it's not just young men, either.

I think it also affected, to a lesser extent, younger women, but it, it still swung more to.

I think the bottom line is this: If you have record inflation that is happening, and your message to voters of any age, but especially younger voters, who have the least assets, right? Young people typically don't have a huge 401[k].

They don't have that many stocks, and they're struggling to pay rent, let alone save for retirement.

When you don't have assets like that that are gonna go up in value as inflation goes up, your life is way more impacted by inflation.

And if you tell that segment of young people, especially people like young men, who we know are getting lower and lower rates of college attainment, are getting paid less, more and more over time because of that, that, "Don't worry," you know, as they tell you that the economy is doing terrible, if you say to them, "Well, you don't understand.

Tell us about what happened, and what do you think is the current situation and the current state of the DNC?

And I believe in the Democratic Party, but this version of it is the most pathetic, uh, limp-dick version of any political party I've ever seen in my life.

It's absolutely unbelievable, and what's crazy is I can tell you, you know, I'm...

I find myself in the interesting position of both working on the outside and shaking up the establishment, you know, supporting challengers like Mai Vang against Doris Matsui, who took a max out check from AIPAC, and so many others, and also being on the inside in DC and having to figure out, how do we actually get better people elected in the first pla- first place and take back the House? And I can tell you on the inside, what they'll say is, "You know what? We have to take this corporate money because Republicans are taking that money." And I say to them, "You know, maybe if you didn't sh- vote for such shitty policies that's in favor of those corporations, you wouldn't have to spend so much goddamn money gaslighting voters into believing that you are for the working class, because you would actually be voting in their favor." And it just doesn't break through to them.

It is insane to me.

Just last March, when we were challenging Valerie Foushee with Nida Allam, an incredible pro-Palestine candidate that was rejecting the influence of AIPAC, she was on a pathway to victory, defeating an AIPAC-backed candidate, Valerie Foushee.

And then at the last second, Hakeem Jeffries, in collaboration with Anthropic super PAC, came in and spent $2 million six days before the election to defeat a grassroots candidate in a safe blue seat, simply to consolidate his own power and protect himself in defense of an incumbent who was heavily backed by AIPAC in her first election.

What the hell are we doing here, right? We came in with tw- within 1,200 votes in that election, and we could have had an amazing new member of Congress, and yet we find ourselves addicted to defending the status quo instead of figuring out, how can we actually win? Because the American people are sick and tired of being gaslit by our party saying, "Oh, we're the party of the working class.

I love him

Yeah

... played in the election, right? A- and the bottom line is this: people ask all the time, you know, "Why are our institutions like lo- like, why are people losing faith in the institutions? Why don't people trust groups like the DNC anymore? Why do people..." And you just talked about it, right? It's because time and time again, they do hypocritical things that are focused inherently on just keeping the power structure the same instead of actually meeting the needs of the people that they are built theoretically to actually serve in the first place.

So what I'll say is that what Democrats need to be doing differently right now is, A, stop just writing your strongly worded letters and acting like that is going to save us, and B, show up in way...

I think a really good example of this is some of the work that, um, Demi Peluchno, our candidate in Illinois, was doing.

Kat was doing similar work in her campaign in Illinois too.

We had a candidate, uh, named Demi Peluchno, who was running for Illinois State House, and during her campaign is wh- it's when ICE started terrorizing a lot of communities around Chicago.

And instead of her just writing a strongly worded letter as a candidate and saying, you know, "Oh, ICE is so terrible," all this stuff, she mobilized her campaign to ensure that she was able to protect her immigrant neighbors.

Yeah, oh, that'd be devastating.

Yep.

Um, I think what we're learning, though, is that, like I said, we have to run people where they can win.

And ultimately, what wins is listening to people.

What Zoran did in his race is what every candidate should learn, which is that when he started running, he didn't go out there and say to voters, "This is what I'm gonna do for you.

I'm so great.

I'm perfect." He went out there and asked them, "What can I do, what can I do for you? How can I help you? What do you wanna see in your mayor?" And I think there's a lesson to be learned for that, no matter how red or blue of a city that somebody is running in, or a ca- a district that they're running in, is listening to those voters and building a winning coalition around those issues.

And not just only relying on polling to say, like, "Well, these are the top five issues right now that likely voters say they care about." What was really remarkable about what Zoran did is he stuck to his values, and he actually expanded the electorate.

Yeah

So what do we think about these changes we're seeing in the young male, specifically, electorate?

I have a metaphor to describe this, and it's not just young men that are like this, I think it's young people in general.

I think it's especially acute for y- acute for young men, that increasingly, uh, you know, as our society progresses, um, are falling behind in our education system.

We know that on average, young men, uh, tend to be basically developmentally about a year and a half behind most younger women.

Um, and so that already set- creates its own set of challenges in the first place.

And naturally, when you build a more equal society and those men start to struggle more, they're gonna feel like, well, it's a...

It's gonna be easier for them to say, "The reason why I'm not doing as well is because I'm," for example, "not going to college as much." It's gonna be easier for somebody like Andrew Tate to come along and say, "The reason you aren't doing so well is because women are, you know, getting more opportunities than you are," instead of explaining, you know...

It's young people, it's people of color, it's people who want to make the nation different and, uh, progressive, and that social justice is very central to the meaning and purpose of the Democratic Party."

To me, it doesn't make any sense.

Well, it's because it's fear-mongering.

That's all it is.

It's constant fear-mongering that if you give them, if you give them an inch, they're gonna take a mile, and they're just gonna keep going.

So that's why.

You know, even if they...

Even, even a majority of gun owners like my father, I grew up shoot- you know, shooting guns with my dad, who was an FB- a special agent in the FBI, and, uh, you know, have gun...

And that's what I sort of...felt that was happening in your life, um, with that tweet.

So, uh, what, what do Democrats need to do to, to win in, in '26? I mean, wh- what, what do you think?

I, I think the first thing that we really need to charge on is a huge anti-corruption effort, and clearly making it clear that we are the party that wants to ban Congressional stock trading, that we are the party that wants campaign finance reform, that we are the party that wants to make it so that, uh, what the President is doing right now with his massive crypto grift, with his granddaughter selling her, her new merchandise and clothing line on the lawn of the White House is not legal, and that we're pushing for transparency in government, that we're pushing for the release of the Epstein files, and that we're pushing to make sure that we're fighting back against corruption as much as possible.

And I think what's happened...... is there's far too many people in our country that look at Democrats and Republicans and they're like, "Yeah, Republicans are crazy and they're corrupt," but Democrats have their own corruption too.

Look at the stock trading, or look at this, you know, the- the places that they take money from, and I think what we need to do is really hold ourselves to a higher standard and say, "Look.

We are the party that doesn't want members of Congress to be able to own and trade stocks, especially on legislation that they have oversight on." And I think with that too, what we gotta show people is not just say, you know, "We wanna lower costs," but talk about specifically what we're doing.

And I'll- I'll give credit where credit is due.

The first time that I feel like we've really shown that in a fight for something specific of how we're fighting to ensure that your costs don't go up is around the shutdown fight right now, where we've repeatedly reiterated over and over and over again that if this current bill, the CR passes, that it's going to have healthcare premiums rise at least 75% or more.

We did lose Young Man by, what, uh, l- l- like 6 or 7% from the previous presidential, I think.