Oh, yeah

... progressive populist Democrat.

Nine of the 18 seats, I think, in the Great Plains used to be Democrats.

Now there's zero.

The Democratic Party has given up on most of the red areas of the country.

So the argument is, well, they can be reformed, and I work with a lot of smart people, good people, good labor people who say, "You know, we can get them.

If they just listen more carefully, we could show them that working class candidates could succeed, and a more populist, aggressive, anti-corporate platform would succeed.

Right.

Bush, Bush the lesser.

Yeah, Bush the lesser.

The labor leadership said, no more.

We don't want to hear anything about the Labor Party.

Forget it.

Third parties are out.

And that was it.

Because I've

But it's a truth.

Well, it's a truth.

And then I had this flash, which fed into this new book, Why We Need a Party of Our Own, which was, hey, substitute liberal establishment, put in Democratic Party.

And I realized we had done some surveys and some workshops I'd done with the steel workers, and they said the same thing.

They felt that the Democratic Party had betrayed them, that they hadn't lived up to their values.

And then we did this survey that led to the book that said, that's what most people thought, that the Democratic Party, the liberal establishment, was betraying its values, were out of touch with working people, and really didn't care about protecting their jobs.

And that's true.

Where do you fall?

But it's a truth.

Well, it's a truth.

And then I had this flash, which fed into this new book, Why We Need a Party of Our Own, which was, hey, substitute liberal establishment, put in Democratic Party.

And I realized we had done some surveys and some workshops I'd done with the steel workers, and they said the same thing.

They felt that the Democratic Party had betrayed them, that they hadn't lived up to their values.

And then we did this survey that led to the book that said that's what most people thought, that the Democratic Party, the liberal establishment, was betraying its values, were out of touch with working people, and really didn't care about protecting their jobs.

And that's true.

Where do you fall?

Who is Les Leopold and who do you serve?

Well, it's an interesting story.

I began my career as an intern with a labor leader in Washington, DC.

His name was Tony Mazzocchi.

He passed away in 2002.

But he was the guy that... pretty much invented OSHA and was a very visionary guy.

And he asked me to design an economics course for working people.

And on the flip side of that, the Republicans were more about putting money into ICE and, um, kind of cutting out government subsidies of any sort so they were they were at at heads those two things kind of bump heads you know you have the rs and people that are in businesses and people that are like we don't need anyone looking into our funding into our our way of living