Rick Wilson's The Enemies List
Jul 16, 2025 · 17 min · 9 segments
Voters don’t vote on policy — they vote on emotion. Republicans run on pure id, the constant, persistent craving for lizard-brain emotions that keep them engaged and enraged enough to act. And…
Rick WilsonHost
But we've seen this movie before with Trump 1.0 followed by a stable but uninspiring Democratic administration.
When voters choose Democrats, this is a counterweight to Republicans, but relatively few in America honestly get excited by Democrats so they just get voted back out of power quickly because they've got no breadth in their voter loyalty.
Do you think Democrats can overcome this perpetual failure to resonate with an American electorate that votes on emotion and not principle?" All votes are about emotion.
If you disagree with his sub, sub-tier politics, and I do... 'Cause there will be no deputy mayor for seizing the means of production.
My Democratic friends are gonna be mad at me, as they sometimes are, when I tell you a lot of the things you want to talk about, voters hate you for it.
They hate policy and they feel like when you're talking about policy that they're being lectured to, that they're being looked down on.
"Oh, if you'd only read page 794 of my climate change plan, Appendix 2, you would understand, stupid, why we don't think you should have a truck-driving job anymore if your truck isn't electric." There is a contempt.
There is a contempt that has displayed itself for working class voters in this country, and if you call someone a villain often enough and you say somebody's a bad guy often enough and you say somebody's wrong or evil often enough, they will start to believe you.
But we've seen this movie before with Trump 1.0 followed by a stable but uninspiring Democratic administration.
When voters choose Democrats, this is a counterweight to Republicans, but relatively few in America honestly get excited by Democrats so they just get voted back out of power quickly because they've got no breadth in their voter loyalty.
Do you think Democrats can overcome this perpetual failure to resonate with an American electorate that votes on emotion and not principle?" All votes are about emotion.
If you disagree with his sub, sub-tier politics, and I do... 'Cause there will be no deputy mayor for seizing the means of production.
My Democratic friends are gonna be mad at me, as they sometimes are, when I tell you a lot of the things you want to talk about, voters hate you for it.
They hate policy and they feel like when you're talking about policy that they're being lectured to, that they're being looked down on.
"Oh, if you'd only read page 794 of my climate change plan, Appendix 2, you would understand, stupid, why we don't think you should have a truck-driving job anymore if your truck isn't electric." There is a contempt.
There is a contempt that has displayed itself for working class voters in this country, and if you call someone a villain often enough and you say somebody's a bad guy often enough and you say somebody's wrong or evil often enough, they will start to believe you.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.