The new Democratic fascination with profanity is kind of distracting. There has to be a political consultant behind it. I get why they're doing it but I think it's off target. Almost makes them seem less authentic. Not necessary.
Sam's questions reflect the tone that's bugged me about the Bulwark since the election. It's that hair-on-fire, speculative, always keeping things at an "11" approach. And here we have Senator Schatz acting as the ideal cooler head, and I loved it. It's really encouraging to know that people as smart (and as willing to say "f*ck") as him are in the senate.
Sam your interview style is awesome. I find you push and pull out the logical fallacies with people’s statements. You did this on the immigration and this pod. Well done.
Excellent conversation. Thank you for introducing Senator Schatz; I'd never heard of him before now. He's exactly the kind of level-headed, reasonable person I want to see in politics.
Way to go Sam. Great interview. Great to hear from Sen Schatz. Yep, the messaging and being in the right rooms is the key. Talk to people where they are (at).
Agreed, I liked this interview a lot! My favorite takeaways overall were that realism and optimism are not mutually exclusive, and when everything is urgent, nothing is.
Second one is probably a pretty common experience for anyone with kids or a job lol
Dems are horrible at messaging and Shatz is the perfect example. Always playing defense, bringing a spoon to a knife fight, and not being able to sell a $20 for $5. Dems have had 30 years to manage poor messaging and they still fail! The US has the best economy in the world, and they can't sell it! Dems always play defense and never play offense. They are currently embarrassing and need to have some real messengers than ramblers...
But that is the point…it isn’t messaging. The message is just an excuse because then they don’t have to make the real hard choices that lie in front of them. And they are really really hard.
I don’t know what the answer is but the problem is definitely not messaging. It’s (1) the people that need to hear the message never ever hear it…how do you change that?!?! (2) you probably have to make real hard/difficult choices on the actual platform that really alienate portions of your base. They might be even antithetical to your and my values. (3) they have to find enemies that they attack and vilify constantly. And (4) they cannot support or defend the institution
Good points, but if dems cannot sell democracy, women's rights, civil rights, voting rights, the best economy in the world and the rule of law, then it may not be the dem problem, but a problem of American stupidity of a large segment of the population. maga and trump are selfish fools while dems are compassionate realists, probably to a fault. The loudest voice often carries the day, no mater how foolish, idiotic, or unreal. No simple way to address a lack of education, ignorance of history, or fear of the deep state. A cult believes its leader at all costs. Jim Jones knew that and so does the monstrosity trump... Maybe the fever just has to break on its own before maga and the apathetic begin to recover.
Honestly I don’t know. This election results surprised me on 2 fronts: (1) Trump winning the popular vote. I thought Trump was a 50/50 chance of winning the ec but never thought he could win the popular vote. (2) losing Congress. The republicans ran Congress like a complete and utter shitshow. They were not only disastrous from a legislative perspective but also from a media perspective. They were a complete clown show…and yet they won again.
No one cares about democracy. That has been clear for a while. However, I did think people would care that our economy is the gem of the world and yet we said “fuck it. Give me the idiot.”
I think women’s rights actively hurts dems. I want to be clear I don’t believe this. I don’t want to believe that other people believe this but they do. Men are pissed (I’m a man and I could give a shit) but they are pissed. Women…I got to be honest with you I’m mad a women for what happened to Hillary and Harris. I don’t get it. If Dems/republicans ran a Hispanic, Hispanic’s would come out in droves to vote for the candidate. Somehow women voted more for Biden than they did for Harris/clinton. WTF.
Rule of law. I think people don’t believe this. They think the rich get off and the poor go to jail. They aren’t wrong.
So I think people are stupid. I do t know what to do
No argument there. I was more stunned and disappointed than surprised trump won. A majority of white women voted for the sexual assaulter and thief in waiting. That's mind numbing.. Many people have the attention span of a tic yok video and the historical references of the of no more than 2 months. It has become a society that craves celebrity over substance and clownishness over competence. I am not a sociologist or rocket scientist but facts are no longer facts, and the truth is whatever the cult leader mumbles at the time. How about that Hannibal Lecter guy...
Yes, the sideshow has already started and repubs backed out of a budget deal because musk screams nonsense while eating hallucinogens. I can't do a damn thing about stupid. But I am ready for it since I do not have any maga cult illusions that trump is my savior. Those who do suffer most will be maga, and frank;y, Scarlet, they deserve it. A little metaphorical slap in the face might be the only answer. I am done trying to make sense of it.
I got to be jones though: I’m not sure what is worse (1) Trump does incompetent and evil shit and the people like it or (2) Trump does incompetent and evil shit and they don’t notice. I kind of think number (2). (1) we could respond too but (2) wtf do you do then?
One thing you mentioned is a certainty, he will do incompetent and evil shit. The reaction is the unknown. But if the cost of eggs spike, he is in for a world of hurt from his nut job base...
Yes, totally agree. I love President Biden, but he should have stepped down as he promised. RBG should have stepped down. Gerry Connolly should step down. Even Nancy Pelosi. We need the AOCs, and other younger folks or we will continue to lose. It is like thank you for your service now go home! Please our country needs these old folks to step aside. It is past time.
Nancy Pelosi, along with her colleague Steny Hoyer, did step down. They passed the baton of House leadership to a younger generation without waiting for visible decline to set in. I was never a fan of Pelosi before, but my opinion of her has risen a lot in the past four years. It's too bad other aging leaders have not followed her example.
We keep saying it because Biden did promise it, if only obliquely. Insiders from the Biden camp who defend Biden do not say he always planned to run for a second term. They say he changed his mind. When a politician leads voters to believe he has given them an assurance and then "changes his mind", voters will never forgive him for it. The most obvious case is Bush's "no new taxes" pledge. And Bush's change of mind was much better reasoned than Biden's.
“Obliquely” is doing a lot of work here. Can you show me where he said he would only run for one term please? Can you provide evidence of this claim please? Otherwise why don’t we report what he said not what you thought.
I disagree with your whole approach to your article. I don’t think you understand the seriousness of what’s going on and what’s going to happen once pumpkin head takes control of our country. They have already shown how dangerous this next administration can be with Trump‘s recommendations for his cabinet
the the fact that you are supposed be a representative of the people shows why you’re in the minority in all three branches of government - there needs to be somewhere that people can go to see fact checks on all of the lies that Trump is going to promote through his propaganda machine on faux news- I still believe the reason the Democrats lost this past election was not because of the ideas or campaign that Kamala Harris ran - she ran a fantastic campaign in a very difficult situation - but the reason she lost was because she was a black woman - as a final thought, using the language that you did as a elected official just shows a disrespect for maintaining a professionalism in expressing your opinions - we are in more trouble than I thought if there are more people like you
What's missing in most of analyses of the defeat (such as this one) is the magnitude of the negative campaigning mode used by Republicans against Democrats. Faced with such a barrage, Democrats have tried two strategies that did not work.
The first is to go high when they go low. That only works when Republicans are not willing to go all out against you. They were afraid to do that against a man, however black he was, but felt no compunction doing this all out against a woman (whether white or black).
The second is to respond quickly and forcefully against all attacks. This certainly worked in the states where the Democrats invested heavily (the so-called swing states) but even there it proved insufficient to turn the tsunami of negative campaigning.
A third strategy would be to go as low as the Republicans, but I wonder how low most people are willing to go without being such a pathological person (a person with no sense of shame or guilt) as Donald Trump is.
The big danger, here, if Democrats don't find a different way to do things, is to discourage anybody from becoming a public official.
The ridiculous aspect of the argument that Biden resigning earlier would have opened up the way to a more viable Dem candidate is precisely the hubris that makes one think than an earlier resignation (and selection) would not also have given more time to the Republicans to wage an efficient shit show against the new figure.
Going for Harris at the last minute sort of minimized the degree to which the efficiency of the Republican way of doing politics since at least Willie Horton. Trump way of campaigning is no different from that of Lee Atwater, it is just Lee Atwater on steroids. The problem is at this game of only throwing shit in the fan, you have to be quite a pig to want to be in politics.
I think this is a weakness inherent to female candidates - voters don't like it when they "go low". Traditionally, going low is the VP candidate's job, but Tim Walz is just not a go-low kind of guy, as shown clearly in the VP debate. Maybe that is a lesson for the future: When you put a woman at the top of the ticket, you need a running mate who is not afraid to be as nasty as it takes to destroy the opponent, even if he destroys his own political future in the process.
"That only works when Republicans are not willing to go all out against you. They were afraid to do that against a man, however black he was"
You remembered things very differently than I did. Remember when Obama was a Muslim Marxist from Kenya? He won in 2008 because any Dem would have won in that environment, and won in 2012 because Romney sounded like an out-of-touch plutocrat at a time when the economy still wasn't the best. The attacks just fell flat because the working-class voters that decide every election thought that Obama was more relatable. The fact of the matter is, Trump is just better at relating. Despite his wealth, he learned how to talk like his working-class voters. Candidate quality and environment both matter. And this might sound preposterous, but Trump's candidate quality isn't bad at all, and he was running in a favorable environment for him.
I have no idea what the right strategy should or could be going forward.
This election was about (1) inflation, (2) incumbency, and (3) immigration. I’m pretty sure there was no one that we could have run (who were “real” candidates) could have won this election.
What I’m most concerned about though is I’m not clear how the Dems win power going forward (not 2028 or in presidential) but actual power by getting the senate. In 2030 we will do another census where ny and California will loose 7 electoral college votes to Florida and Texas. The “blue wall” is expected to lose a single electoral vote for each state. It looks in 10 years to be pretty ugly for Dems and I have no idea how they actually break through with these voters.
Terrifically good conversation. Thanks so much for having him on. I didn't know much about him before but I'm very impressed.
The new Democratic fascination with profanity is kind of distracting. There has to be a political consultant behind it. I get why they're doing it but I think it's off target. Almost makes them seem less authentic. Not necessary.
Sam's questions reflect the tone that's bugged me about the Bulwark since the election. It's that hair-on-fire, speculative, always keeping things at an "11" approach. And here we have Senator Schatz acting as the ideal cooler head, and I loved it. It's really encouraging to know that people as smart (and as willing to say "f*ck") as him are in the senate.
Of course, credit Sam and team for having Senator Schatz on in the first place. Love the Bulwark.
Sam your interview style is awesome. I find you push and pull out the logical fallacies with people’s statements. You did this on the immigration and this pod. Well done.
This was great. Makes me hopeful that Democrats can re group in a meaningful way and come back stronger.
Thanks for this introduction to Senator Schatz! Somehow, I'd missed him! Plain spoken and to the point! My eye will be on him!
Well, that was a refreshing and insightful conversation. Thanks Senator!
Great interview. Senator Schatz was not on my radar before, but now he will be. Would love to hear from him again as time and events unfold
Excellent conversation. Thank you for introducing Senator Schatz; I'd never heard of him before now. He's exactly the kind of level-headed, reasonable person I want to see in politics.
More of this kind of interview, please!
Way to go Sam. Great interview. Great to hear from Sen Schatz. Yep, the messaging and being in the right rooms is the key. Talk to people where they are (at).
Sen Schatz was terrific - very thoughtful and level-headed. Reassuring. We are NOT cooked!
Agreed, I liked this interview a lot! My favorite takeaways overall were that realism and optimism are not mutually exclusive, and when everything is urgent, nothing is.
Second one is probably a pretty common experience for anyone with kids or a job lol
It was encouraging to hear from Brian Schatz, I feel bit of hope about moving forward.
Dems are horrible at messaging and Shatz is the perfect example. Always playing defense, bringing a spoon to a knife fight, and not being able to sell a $20 for $5. Dems have had 30 years to manage poor messaging and they still fail! The US has the best economy in the world, and they can't sell it! Dems always play defense and never play offense. They are currently embarrassing and need to have some real messengers than ramblers...
But that is the point…it isn’t messaging. The message is just an excuse because then they don’t have to make the real hard choices that lie in front of them. And they are really really hard.
I don’t know what the answer is but the problem is definitely not messaging. It’s (1) the people that need to hear the message never ever hear it…how do you change that?!?! (2) you probably have to make real hard/difficult choices on the actual platform that really alienate portions of your base. They might be even antithetical to your and my values. (3) they have to find enemies that they attack and vilify constantly. And (4) they cannot support or defend the institution
Good points, but if dems cannot sell democracy, women's rights, civil rights, voting rights, the best economy in the world and the rule of law, then it may not be the dem problem, but a problem of American stupidity of a large segment of the population. maga and trump are selfish fools while dems are compassionate realists, probably to a fault. The loudest voice often carries the day, no mater how foolish, idiotic, or unreal. No simple way to address a lack of education, ignorance of history, or fear of the deep state. A cult believes its leader at all costs. Jim Jones knew that and so does the monstrosity trump... Maybe the fever just has to break on its own before maga and the apathetic begin to recover.
Honestly I don’t know. This election results surprised me on 2 fronts: (1) Trump winning the popular vote. I thought Trump was a 50/50 chance of winning the ec but never thought he could win the popular vote. (2) losing Congress. The republicans ran Congress like a complete and utter shitshow. They were not only disastrous from a legislative perspective but also from a media perspective. They were a complete clown show…and yet they won again.
No one cares about democracy. That has been clear for a while. However, I did think people would care that our economy is the gem of the world and yet we said “fuck it. Give me the idiot.”
I think women’s rights actively hurts dems. I want to be clear I don’t believe this. I don’t want to believe that other people believe this but they do. Men are pissed (I’m a man and I could give a shit) but they are pissed. Women…I got to be honest with you I’m mad a women for what happened to Hillary and Harris. I don’t get it. If Dems/republicans ran a Hispanic, Hispanic’s would come out in droves to vote for the candidate. Somehow women voted more for Biden than they did for Harris/clinton. WTF.
Rule of law. I think people don’t believe this. They think the rich get off and the poor go to jail. They aren’t wrong.
So I think people are stupid. I do t know what to do
No argument there. I was more stunned and disappointed than surprised trump won. A majority of white women voted for the sexual assaulter and thief in waiting. That's mind numbing.. Many people have the attention span of a tic yok video and the historical references of the of no more than 2 months. It has become a society that craves celebrity over substance and clownishness over competence. I am not a sociologist or rocket scientist but facts are no longer facts, and the truth is whatever the cult leader mumbles at the time. How about that Hannibal Lecter guy...
Yes, the sideshow has already started and repubs backed out of a budget deal because musk screams nonsense while eating hallucinogens. I can't do a damn thing about stupid. But I am ready for it since I do not have any maga cult illusions that trump is my savior. Those who do suffer most will be maga, and frank;y, Scarlet, they deserve it. A little metaphorical slap in the face might be the only answer. I am done trying to make sense of it.
Yep. Let them touch that hot stove.
I got to be jones though: I’m not sure what is worse (1) Trump does incompetent and evil shit and the people like it or (2) Trump does incompetent and evil shit and they don’t notice. I kind of think number (2). (1) we could respond too but (2) wtf do you do then?
One thing you mentioned is a certainty, he will do incompetent and evil shit. The reaction is the unknown. But if the cost of eggs spike, he is in for a world of hurt from his nut job base...
Yes, totally agree. I love President Biden, but he should have stepped down as he promised. RBG should have stepped down. Gerry Connolly should step down. Even Nancy Pelosi. We need the AOCs, and other younger folks or we will continue to lose. It is like thank you for your service now go home! Please our country needs these old folks to step aside. It is past time.
Nancy Pelosi, along with her colleague Steny Hoyer, did step down. They passed the baton of House leadership to a younger generation without waiting for visible decline to set in. I was never a fan of Pelosi before, but my opinion of her has risen a lot in the past four years. It's too bad other aging leaders have not followed her example.
The problem is he never promised this. I don’t know why people keep saying this.
Sure in retrospect he shouldn’t have ran but we don’t need to skirt the truth that he would only run for one term
We keep saying it because Biden did promise it, if only obliquely. Insiders from the Biden camp who defend Biden do not say he always planned to run for a second term. They say he changed his mind. When a politician leads voters to believe he has given them an assurance and then "changes his mind", voters will never forgive him for it. The most obvious case is Bush's "no new taxes" pledge. And Bush's change of mind was much better reasoned than Biden's.
“Obliquely” is doing a lot of work here. Can you show me where he said he would only run for one term please? Can you provide evidence of this claim please? Otherwise why don’t we report what he said not what you thought.
I disagree with your whole approach to your article. I don’t think you understand the seriousness of what’s going on and what’s going to happen once pumpkin head takes control of our country. They have already shown how dangerous this next administration can be with Trump‘s recommendations for his cabinet
the the fact that you are supposed be a representative of the people shows why you’re in the minority in all three branches of government - there needs to be somewhere that people can go to see fact checks on all of the lies that Trump is going to promote through his propaganda machine on faux news- I still believe the reason the Democrats lost this past election was not because of the ideas or campaign that Kamala Harris ran - she ran a fantastic campaign in a very difficult situation - but the reason she lost was because she was a black woman - as a final thought, using the language that you did as a elected official just shows a disrespect for maintaining a professionalism in expressing your opinions - we are in more trouble than I thought if there are more people like you
What's missing in most of analyses of the defeat (such as this one) is the magnitude of the negative campaigning mode used by Republicans against Democrats. Faced with such a barrage, Democrats have tried two strategies that did not work.
The first is to go high when they go low. That only works when Republicans are not willing to go all out against you. They were afraid to do that against a man, however black he was, but felt no compunction doing this all out against a woman (whether white or black).
The second is to respond quickly and forcefully against all attacks. This certainly worked in the states where the Democrats invested heavily (the so-called swing states) but even there it proved insufficient to turn the tsunami of negative campaigning.
A third strategy would be to go as low as the Republicans, but I wonder how low most people are willing to go without being such a pathological person (a person with no sense of shame or guilt) as Donald Trump is.
The big danger, here, if Democrats don't find a different way to do things, is to discourage anybody from becoming a public official.
The ridiculous aspect of the argument that Biden resigning earlier would have opened up the way to a more viable Dem candidate is precisely the hubris that makes one think than an earlier resignation (and selection) would not also have given more time to the Republicans to wage an efficient shit show against the new figure.
Going for Harris at the last minute sort of minimized the degree to which the efficiency of the Republican way of doing politics since at least Willie Horton. Trump way of campaigning is no different from that of Lee Atwater, it is just Lee Atwater on steroids. The problem is at this game of only throwing shit in the fan, you have to be quite a pig to want to be in politics.
I think this is a weakness inherent to female candidates - voters don't like it when they "go low". Traditionally, going low is the VP candidate's job, but Tim Walz is just not a go-low kind of guy, as shown clearly in the VP debate. Maybe that is a lesson for the future: When you put a woman at the top of the ticket, you need a running mate who is not afraid to be as nasty as it takes to destroy the opponent, even if he destroys his own political future in the process.
"That only works when Republicans are not willing to go all out against you. They were afraid to do that against a man, however black he was"
You remembered things very differently than I did. Remember when Obama was a Muslim Marxist from Kenya? He won in 2008 because any Dem would have won in that environment, and won in 2012 because Romney sounded like an out-of-touch plutocrat at a time when the economy still wasn't the best. The attacks just fell flat because the working-class voters that decide every election thought that Obama was more relatable. The fact of the matter is, Trump is just better at relating. Despite his wealth, he learned how to talk like his working-class voters. Candidate quality and environment both matter. And this might sound preposterous, but Trump's candidate quality isn't bad at all, and he was running in a favorable environment for him.
I have no idea what the right strategy should or could be going forward.
This election was about (1) inflation, (2) incumbency, and (3) immigration. I’m pretty sure there was no one that we could have run (who were “real” candidates) could have won this election.
What I’m most concerned about though is I’m not clear how the Dems win power going forward (not 2028 or in presidential) but actual power by getting the senate. In 2030 we will do another census where ny and California will loose 7 electoral college votes to Florida and Texas. The “blue wall” is expected to lose a single electoral vote for each state. It looks in 10 years to be pretty ugly for Dems and I have no idea how they actually break through with these voters.
Schatz talks like a neophyte who never had to experience such amount of negative campaigning (and therefore thinks he could be immune to that).