[laughs]

... really needed a trigger warning for me.

I remember being up all night watching that in real time, and I'm, I'm sure Angelo probably feels somewhat the same there.

Um, but as for Florida, I mean, the fact that we're even talking about Florida right now tells you a lot about where we are this election cycle.

Um, you know, the last couple cycles, it almost feels like both Democrats and Republicans wrote off the state.

But when Donald Trump's numbers are now at 33%, it gives us an opportunity not just to win the sort of 10 seats that are always sort of in the mix, the couple states with Senate races that are always in the mix.

It allows us to look even deeper into states like Florida, into states like Texas that generally don't really get a deep look from Democrats.

Liz, what is the response to that that is needed from Democrats?

But I wanna ask you just what you think Democrats party activists, party workers should take away from Francesca Hong kind of rising in this race? The general election is a whole other question, but I wanna ask you about how we got here.

Yeah.

Um, so let's put aside her tweets and past statements [laughs] about Thanksgiving and defunding the police.

Um, she's actually shown herself to have some really good political instincts that allowed her to tap into what Wisconsin voters care about, and the issue that she tapped into very smartly was data centers.

Wisconsin really is one of the ground zeros, uh, across the country for the data center debate.

All across the state, communities are up in arms about what they see as an intrusion of data centers, uh, you know, on their water and air and quality of life and land, and this is not a partisan issue.

Um, it is an issue where 76% of people f- in Wisconsin feel like the deck is a little bit t- too stacked, uh, toward the data centers, um, including 67% of Republicans.

Yeah

How do Democrats speak directly and specifically and credibly to 80% of Americans right now, Liz?

Yeah, so s- I think some of the examples I provided before, being concrete, talking about how this is affecting your local community.

Um, but I also think that there's something to what, you know, you and Alex are talking about, this sort of lack of empathy that is coming from Trump here.

Um, and you know, you can sort of argue with inflation stats.

You can't argue with the price of gas, right? 'Cause people see it every day, every week, when they go to fill up their tank.

Um, but Democrats do have an opportunity to go to people, you know, people who are either Republicans or maybe independents, Democrats who voted for Trump last time, and say, "Look, I understand that you voted for Donald Trump last ti- last time.

I understand we might not agree on every issue.

They're going along with Donald Trump's obsession with the very distant past.

What's the lesson from that?

I think what it tells us is a, less maybe about the ideology and more about the mood of where Democrats are.

You know, after the 2024 election, Democrats are pretty angry at the establishment.

They're pretty angry about what happened with Joe Biden, and they're really angry that we lost to Donald Trump a second time, and they want something different.

And that was what Abdul El-Sayed was offering in this race.

And as much as we can talk about it as a victory for El-Sayed, I think we need to look at it as a massive loss for the establishment that, as you said, went in with over $65 million in spending on Haley Stevens' behalf, tried to winnow the field for her, and picked her out because she had the traditional political biography.

Had been in Congress for a long time, could raise a lot of corporate cash, had all the right insider connections.

How much of his victory reflects Democratic views on the war in Gaza and US support for Israel?

And everybody knows that.

Yeah, and it, the, the story also gets to another piece of this, right? It's not just about the bottom line, it's about all the other exhausting things that you have to do, um, to find affordable groceries.

You find three different apps, go to four different stores, plan out different meals.

And if you're a busy parent, that's emotional energy, time you don't have.

And you add that on top of the stress of, you know, feeling like you cannot afford the essentials, and that is, you know, something that is going to cause a lot of, uh, e- economic pain in someone's life.

And I want to just to c- call out, uh, one quote in one of the s- uh, I think it was in an AP story from former Michigan Democratic Party chair that I, I really think goes to, uh, sort of the heart of the conundrum facing Donald Trump in this election and Republican candidates is he said essentially, "Well, gas prices are up, but that's just something we have to deal with to, because Donald Trump's taking on Iran, and of course we have to take on Iran." And it's like, what, what the heck are you talking about? Donald Trump ran on two things: I'm gonna lower your costs and I'm gonna stop dumb wars.

And now what the Republicans are trying to say is he's raising your costs because he started a dumb war.

This Wall Street Journal reporting walks up to the, the cliff over which is, uh, Donald Trump wanting medical information to support the lie that vaccines cause autism.

OK, Liz, let's start with the Fox News poll, because Brit Hume, I watched him on TV last night, say, quote, There's not much good news for Republicans in these polls.

There isn't.

But I would note that the Emerson poll is a bit of an outlier from what we've seen in other polls, where Democrats really only have advantages on issues like health care costs.

Republicans still had advantages on issues like immigration, for instance.

So I want to tell everyone to just calm down about the polls, not do all that.

My biggest concern right now, though, is that we have articulated very well A good anti— We being Democrats.

Democrats.

that,

As you talk to Democratic candidates, what are the discussions behind the scenes on how to navigate this issue, which has become a, a litmus test in the Democratic primary system?

Yeah, it has become a Democratic litmus test, I think, on the sort of elite level.

But when you look at voters, I think, uh, the, the Democrats who sort of broke, and even the pro-Israel Democrats, or traditionally pro-Israel, um, Democrats who broke and said, you know, "No more offensive, uh, weapon funding for Israel," are really reflecting what they're hearing from voters.

The consensus among Democratic voters has shifted wildly in recent years, largely due to what they see as the overreach from the Netanyahu government.

And Benjamin Netanyahu has irreparably poisoned the US-Israel relationship.

I'm not saying it can't be f- put together back again, but I do think that that is a problem.

And there, and I think that's what you see, is that a lot of Democrats are saying, "We were okay with Israel responding after October 7th.

Wow.

Do you think that is overcranked, Liz? What do you make of that setup?

Um, I, I think it is a little overcranked.

Um, I really see it as the mayor flexing his political capital.

But he had a stunning win in the Democratic primary for mayor.

Full disclosure, I ranked him there, and I voted for him proudly in the general election.

And he's maintained his popularity, which is not an easy thing to do in New York City.

And, and a really impressive thing about, um, Mayor Mamdani is that he has defied all of the caricatures that people had of him, and defied all expectations that people had, that he would somehow be anti-police, let the city go to hell, and has shown that he is a really good manager.

Yeah, go ahead.

Okay, loved Claire.

And if you remember that year, that was when all of these GOP corruption scandals came to a head, with the lobbyists and pay-to-play stuff, with Mark Foley and the cover-up with him, you know, doing all this inappropriate stuff with u- underage pages, and it was a mixture of, like, s- bad sex stuff, a mixture of, uh, pay-to-play stuff, a mixture of self-enrichment.

And, um, we, Democrats effectively used that to say that there was a irredeemable culture of corruption in the Republican Party, we needed to drain the swamp, clean house.

And we had candidates who could prosecute the case effectively, like someone like Claire McCaskill, state auditor who'd rooted out waste.

Jim Webb in Virginia, like, this just amazing, you know, war hero.

I think we're really ripe for a moment like that now.

The corruption is so much worse, so much more brazen.

Texas is different in the city, though.

It was just bizarrely implemented.

Yeah, and I think this says a lot about Schumer, his inability to lead at this moment in time.

One, a really important thing that I think people like you and I understand is that when we don't have the White House, the Senate leader becomes one of the de facto leaders of the Democratic Party.

So you got the Senate leader, the House leader, DNC chair, and, you know, I've got some issues with that crew in general.

But Chuck Schumer has shown that he is not effective at communicating about what he's doing, what the caucus is doing, and I think that if he had been clearer about what the strategy was, what the likely end goals were, why we were having this fight, you would see less of a revolt among the base right now.

But two, it's also part of a pattern with Schumer.

And like call me crazy, call me quaint, but I think that leaders need to actually sometimes show leadership, and twice in the last week we've seen this with Chuck Schumer.

Mm-hmm.

What do you tell them to say if that's not gonna work in their district? Which for a lot of people in the middle of the country certainly won't work.

Well, as you mentioned, this is a well-worn playbook, right? And-20 years ago, it was Nancy Pelosi.

They've done it with AOC, Ilhan Omar, all the members of the squad, Bernie Sanders.

So, I h- you know, great.

They've got one more boogeyman.

And, uh, I just don't get all of the agita from some centrist Democrats about it, because if you are an effective politician and you are able to win in a tough district, you should br- have no problem saying, "I disagree with Zoram Mamdani." And look, there are two races that I think could potentially maybe g- be affected by that.

I would say Laura Gillen in, um, on Long Island and Tom Suozzi on Long Island.

What do you think, Liz?

Yeah.

Relatively popular.

Take away the scandals, anything, th- that's still completely remarkable and it shows that there's a lot of grassroots support for this guy.

Now, will this stuff matter? I don't know.

We seem to live increasingly in this post-scandal era of politics.

We definitely see that on the Republican side.

Donald Trump, getting elected in 2016, and in 2024, with all the added baggage, right? January 6th, felony convictions, all of that sort of shows that Republicans have sort of moved past scandal.

Mm-hmm.

Oh.

Um, that was my job, and it was really to make Mitt Romney's life hell every day, to track his every utterance, but make sure that a negative message got out there about him.

And, you know, we were running in 2012, and it was a tough economic environment.

The Obama Administration and the country was clawing its way out of the recession, and so we had so many different directions we could've gone in against Mitt Romney, but we chose to keep it almost singularly focused on economics and discrediting him as an economic messenger, talking about his work in private equity, buying up companies, laying off workers, destroying communities, rather than going down all the other rabbit holes about social issues or even his faith which some people wanted us to do.

And I think that that experience, right, both of us doing both the positive and negative track is important for right now, but also that relentless focus on the economy and speaking to the issue that is most animating with people is something that a lot of Democrats could learn from right now.

They can strengthen everybody.

Exactly.

And you end up being a better general election candidate when you have a primary.

Does the Democratic Party have too, like, did it become too beholden to activists? And if so, why? Like, why did it develop that culture?

Yeah, you know, y- you really saw that in 2020 is there was just, like, a huge pressure from every activist group to, you've got to speak about, you know, pregnancy in non-gendered terms.

Um, you have got to, uh, you know, put your pronouns in your bio.

And, you know, I, I'm not one of those people.

I don't care if p- I'm not mad if people put their pronouns in their bio.

But, like, maybe if we're asking people to put their pronouns in the bio, we should probably explain why and, like, m- what the reason for it is, and I think we skipped that step.

Uh, i- with immigration groups, took a very maximalist, um, approach, same with climate groups.

When will we know? What's the first test gonna be?

(laughs)

... and grace.

We need to show compassion to, y- oftentimes the kids who are caught in the middle of a firestorm that they never asked to be a part of, all while they're struggling with, you know, difficult questions about their identity, but we also need to show some grace...... to people who have questions about these, these issues, who maybe aren't quite where we are on these issues.

And there are some Democrats and there are some activists who, when someone says, "I have questions about trans girls playing in girl's sports," just say, "Well, you're a bigot.

There's no room for you in the party." When there are Democrats in our party, like Seth Moulton, I think, who said something like that.

I don't know that I would have said it the way Seth Moulton did.

There are a lot of Democrats who said to him, "You're a bigot.

It's a good book.

Sure.

And if I...

When I, when I prep them for something like that, what I'll say is, "Don't be defensive.

Um, get in and out of the answer quickly.

Um, and just be casual about it.

You know, there's nothing to see here, like, move on." And, um, you know, if you conve- can convey that it's not a big de- deal to you, then it will convey to...

If it, if you can convey that, then it'll convey to people that they shouldn't care that much about it.

Your fellow Democratic strategists and consultants say to that... say to you when you would make that case?

And why is that important?

Why is that important? Because people think Democrats, um, can't have fun anymore.

People think Democrats are the language police.

They think we're a bunch of schoolmarms.

They think that, um, we just can't even converse like normal people, and they don't want people who are just gonna look down on them every day and tell them they're not using the right words about certain things, or what they think or say makes them a, you know, a homophobe, or a misogynist, or any of those things.

And I think Pete's approach is a better one, which is to understand that there are people who have different opinions from you, and you could try just to yell and scream at them and insult them all day long, or you could just try to bring them slowly over to your side by appealing to them on areas where you disagree and saying that, "Just because we disagree on this one issue, it doesn't make you a bad person." And I think that is an approach that more Democrats need to have, um, on issues where there is maybe a gap between what we believe and stand for and where the American public is today.

Democrats, right? Yeah.

Yeah, because the Democrats were so mad at him.