The Progressive Populists Make Their Case

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There's a sense of greed and exploitation that is abound in our society, manifested by

Trump and not exclusively him.

If anyone's flown on the narrowline recently, if anyone's tried to buy a ticket online

recently, if you try to just get a rental car, any damn thing you want to do in society,

you can't just go through the concentrations of wealth and power have made life difficult

hard to make you feel like you're upon, that you're suffering your economic dignity,

your freedom, just doesn't matter to us.

We've got the money, you've got nothing.

And as there is all around the sense of society, you sense that this sense of greed that exists,

the sense of exploitation that exists starts to affect human relationship.

We do not want that as a society, we want to sense a solidarity that my life is better

when your life is better.

We also want to change a culture that respects people who may not have a college degree.

There's respect and dignity in what you do to improve America that I think is being lost.

I'm John Favreau.

It was a big week for the ongoing debate over the future of the Democratic Party.

Abdul El Sayed's primary win in Michigan will now be the most significant test of the

left's political theory that progressive populist candidates are as electable, if not more

electable, then more moderate, center left candidates.

A few weeks ago on the Pots of America Sunday show, I talked to Matt Eglaceus to get the

center left perspective on what Democrats should do to retake power in 2026 and 2028.

So this week I wanted to talk to Favreau, who I think is one of the smartest political

strategists out there and can articulate the left's theory of the case better than just

about anyone.

For those who don't know him, Favreau was the campaign manager for Bernie's 2020 presidential

campaign and still serves as a senior advisor to the senator today.

He's worked in the offices of Speaker Pelosi, Senator Harry Reid.

And as I mentioned, founded more perfect union, the nonprofit news organization known for

its incredible video coverage of labor issues, corporate greed, and most recently data centers.

And we'll talk about that as well.

I thought Favreau could offer a perspective on how the progressive movement has evolved

in the decades since Bernie's 2016 presidential campaign.

What it'll take for Abdul to win the general election in a purple state like Michigan.

And what role the DSA has played, both positive and negative in the movement's successes.

I also wanted to talk to him about data centers, an issue that more perfect union began

covering in detail over a year ago, long before they became the defining issue of many of

the nation's most contentious democratic primaries.

It was a great conversation and we'll get to it in a moment.

But before we do, please consider becoming a paying subscriber to friends of the pod.

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Plus subscribers get special discount prices on tickets to this year's crooked con where

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and to kick off the 2028 presidential primary.

So head on over to crookedcon.com to get tickets to crooked con and become a friend of the

pod.

All right, here's fashion care.

FAS, welcome to the show.

Hi John, always good to see you.

I talked to Bernie for Pots of America this week, but I thought I'd have you on to get

into the nitty gritty of democratic party strategies since you're one of my favorite people to

do that with.

I also want to do talk about your your wildly successful media venture, more perfect union,

but let's start with what has been a huge week for the left or progressives or populists.

What term do you prefer?

I never know how to how to describe describe the movement.

If I were running for office, which I am not, I would be calling myself a progressive

populist, but I would welcome all the other people have used.

Okay, good.

All right.

So, Bernie endorsed House candidates, Will Lawrence, Dunnevin McKinney won their respective

primaries and of course our friend Abdul El Sayed won the Senate primary, which has led

to no small amount of consternation among more moderate Democrats and establishment types.

The consensus seems to be, yes, Abdul can beat Mike Rogers, but the race is much harder

now.

Why is that wrong?

Because it doesn't account for the changing constituency and the potential of attracting

different voters.

Obviously, let's have 2024 as a backdrop here and you look at the Kamala Harris vote in

this, this lock and vote.

And I think one of the takeaways that hopefully we would all have is that not enough people

voted, people stayed home.

And so one of the first things you've got to do is you look at the campuses, right?

So if you go to Lansing, we all know the state of Michigan was.

So we go to Lansing, we'll go to Ann Arbor, we'll go to Kalamazoo, and we'll say,

in on August 4th, when the primary curve, the campuses were not even in session.

So now we go into November and we assume, you know, doubling, maybe tripling of the voter

turnout, who we'll see.

I don't know what the turnout numbers will be in the final tally, but I'm hoping that

the droves of young people will vote in a major way.

And then of course, you got in addition to that, hopefully, disaffected working class

people all over the state saying, I voted for Maha, I voted for Maga, and man, have

they let me down in a major way.

This guy, he seems like he embodies the best version of what I was trying to accomplish

with some of that.

So I asked Bernie a version of this question, but it duels primary when sort of followed

a pattern of progressive candidates performing really well in places with greater concentrations

of highly educated voters, younger voters, wider voters, and less well in some of the

more working class, blue collar cities and towns, where I think progressive populists would

expect a more economically populous message to resonate.

Why do you think that is?

The first thing is obviously when you're progressive populist or progressive in general, you're

fighting uphill against the culture of society and the understanding of the status quo of politics.

There's a certain kind of Democrat and a certain kind of Republican who tends to win.

And you generally are not funded at the same level.

So a status quo politician will have an inordinate amount of money, maybe sometimes 12 to one,

10 to one, differentials to reach people who are not deeply engaged in politics.

So now you take a low information voter and you pump them, bunches of ads, wrongly suggesting

that Barack Obama has made an endorsement in this race.

And Michelle, somebody's mean to Michelle Obama that he's a sexist.

And so that if you are low information consumer, that is probably what you hear in a lot of places

where you are not highly engaged in this race.

And we have generally felt and progressives have experienced this across the board is that

when you're campaigning for office, you're fighting uphill for voter education because you're

starting from a place of meeting to move people off the post from where they ordinarily

would be in their voting history.

So you'd say wherever you voted in the past four or five cycles, now I got to move you

off to a very difficult call it radical, a revolutionary position for them.

And it takes time.

But then the goal and the hope is that you get into office and you take them on down

and you say, Hey, over time, people will move and change because they said, Oh, I didn't

realize you were like this.

That you had an agenda that spoke to working class needs.

I may have heard a different thing.

I mean, we did a video.

You mentioned more perfectly, Bernie Sanders, we went out to West Virginia.

And the first thing we heard from all these people, like, Oh, man, I've only heard about

you from Fox News and you're very different than what I thought.

You're like, right, that's what you're dealing with.

You're alone information consumers and you've never really heard or seen this guy.

And now I'm going to introduce you to him and you hear a very different agenda.

So I think tend to it tends to be one of the biggest barriers for progressive candidates

is you're fighting uphill against a status quo sense of what the voters already know.

And now you need to do persuasion that takes a longer period of time.

So this brings up a question of money.

APEC spent an ungodly amount of money to defeat Abdul.

They've announced they're going to spend even more in the general.

All kinds of other outside special interests will spend a lot of money as well.

Do you think that Abdul winning proves that all that money didn't have the effect that

APEC clearly thought it would or is all that money why the race ended up so close?

They're both true.

I think you'd probably agree with that.

And first of all, you start with, does money matter?

I believe it does.

When you spend what what are we going to call this fight on Tally 70 million plus?

I would think that it has some effect.

And now you ask, well, what effect?

And you're like, well, I think they she overperformed.

And then you say, well, how did she overperformed?

Well, one of the facts is what I was just talking about is you you pummel lower information

voters and maybe even some Republicans and you convince them to get involved in this

process in a certain way when they haven't heard from Abdul directly.

So Abdul has to kind of get out like Bernie in a in a in a primary and say, I got a whole

tons and tons of town halls.

I think he did over 500 of them, but he's got even more right to just try to reach as

many of those people that are getting pummeled with TVS.

The other part of this is you all know is lit.

So you say, okay, well, if it's a male ballot election and everybody's there to see

these male ballot and here, what do you think a lot of these people are going to receive

in the mail next to that male ballot, right?

They're chasing and they're hearing things that are terrible about Abdul and often with

literally no counter.

I mean, Abdul is much more limited.

If you look at how much money he spent, what how aggressive their male program was probably

very low.

So when you looked at the male ballot in this cycle and you looked at the numbers, crushed

it and you say, well, that was in part, not entirely in part driven by the fact of that

money does have an effect that if this is the one person they've heard things about

and they're only negative on the other and then it's male and then it's digital and TV

and reaching people who he never necessarily chance to talk to has an effect and he over

is able to overcome it by holding as many titles, reaching as many people, generating

enthusiasm around an agenda that I think most people were very interested, not only in

Michigan, but as you know, across the country.

So one question now is the message for the general.

So over in Maine, when when Platner was still in the race, I remember he was getting criticized

for sort of trying to define Susan Collins as corrupt and going after the establishment

in both parties as opposed to just making the case for a Democratic Senate that's a check

on Trump.

Abdul in the primaries had a similar message about the Democratic establishment.

He's also been trying to define Mike Rogers as corrupt, though I noticed today when the

jobs numbers came out, recording this on Friday, he posted a video where he talked about,

we don't want Mike Rogers to be a rubber stamp for Donald Trump.

But what do you think is the more effective message that is it just orange man bad?

Don't give him a rubber stamp congress or how do you sort of mix that in with the anti-establishment

corruption message that you hear from a lot of progressive populace in primaries?

Right, it wouldn't be honest and a version of integrity of progressive populace canister.

They weren't also talking about the agenda that helped them win.

And so you do have to talk about Medicare for all and a vision of healthcare expansion

in the context of this general election.

It's core to one of the reasons why you both want a primary and the case for what you

think could appeal to people disaffected by Trump and upset certainly rightly so with why

are we cutting Medicaid?

What can we do something different about healthcare in this country?

So you have to go make the case and obviously he fights with the same obstacles that he did

in the primary that you have to kind of fight uphill because the mega world and Rogers

will have unlimited amounts of money to pour into calling and trying to find him as something

he is not.

And one of the strongest arguments around the country and in the case for a blue wave

is somebody's got to be a check on this guy.

We should not be in this war in Iran.

You don't think Mike Rogers is definitely going to end this war in Iran.

How are you going to end it?

Well, you're going to first have to change the composition of Congress.

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One thing I wanted to ask, Bernie was very clear in our conversation that he is not into

abolishing prisons, police or borders.

Never has been.

The DSA is in a different place.

There are a bunch of DSA candidates or progressive candidates who have at one point called for

defunding the police or abolishing prisons or borders or abolishing ice, which is more

popular than it used to be, but still not broadly popular.

Some candidates running have walked back.

Some of these policies, some have been more convincing than others.

Do you worry overall that the leftist positions on crime and immigration will undercut support

for candidates with economically populist policies that are much more popular and much more

your focus?

Obviously, first off, I want this contest to be around economic populism.

There's plenty of issues on that front to wage fights over.

I don't want to disregard, and I'm not urging anyone to disregard social justice issues,

on that score, there's two things that they want is, does it candidate?

What do you honestly believe?

Let's start there.

Too often we hear pundits, centrist pollsters, people say, hey, here's what you have to go say.

Before we get there, can I just ask you, what do you honestly believe?

And then say it.

Let's run these as a democratic experiment.

Let's be honest with the voters.

Let's tell them what are your views on ice, what are your views on public safety.

As you do that, two things here.

One is you need to allow for persuasion to occur.

So in my view, you want to hear from constituents as much as you're talking to the constituents.

Open it up as a dialogue.

Here's my views on ice.

What do you think?

What are, how would you deal with these issues?

Make it clear that you aren't coming from a place of hellbent.

No one can tell me otherwise.

Allow for persuasion to take place.

It's a two-way street.

You talk.

They, and you listen.

So we've had this debate, you know, John, for a while now in groups, the role of groups.

And in my view, groups should engage in advocacy.

That's their job.

DSA is in Project 2025, or you name anybody in a third-way, get out there, advocate for

your positions, APAC, correct?

Go for it.

A candidate needs to stay on their own two feet.

So I hope it would not be persuaded or dis-weighted by the vantage point of a group.

I want to know what you believe.

And I think voters want to know what you believe.

And I think for a lot of people who are supported by DSA, it's also important that they also acknowledge

that there's places the way you disagree with DSA.

These places are, you know, you have to be of your own independent mind.

You look at Zora Mandani.

He's kind of, he's been pretty clear on public safety issues.

He is of his own mind and his own views, and not everybody in his coalition is always

going to agree with that.

And that means you become an independent voice for your constituents.

Do you think it's okay and helpful for candidates to just say, yeah, I talked about defunding

the police back in 2020, and since then, I've talked to the people that I want to represent,

and I've talked to police officers, and I've talked to other groups, and I've changed my

mind.

And yeah, there's some services that I think that police shouldn't have to do, and that's

a burden on them, and I certainly want to do everything we can to prevent police violence.

But yeah.

I don't think we should defund the police.

Yes, and I hope all that is true.

I wanted to come from the police to conviction, like sincerity.

I hope that that's also, you know, in some cases, the way that they have moved, if they

have been moved that way, you say, hey, you know, this is the way I feel about police.

I still have some grand concerns about them.

You know, I think of someone like Daria Lise and New York.

I think one of the things often missed about her in her campaign and the why she was

resident there in that particular area is her geography.

A lot of working class canals are coming from a place.

They represent attitudes of a place, and that's when they're really good because now you

think of the Columbia University, that's all around her.

What does Columbia experience?

Oh, we got ice running onto campuses.

We got free speech restrictions.

Well, you're telling we're lily jailing people for points of view on Palestinian causes.

Like what is this craziness?

And so therefore, you would assume that the attitudes of that constituency are far more

concerned about the role of police concerned about the role of ice.

And then that candidate may reflect that.

It may also, it'll probably also true.

And I'm sure you agree, John, that what happens there is also not necessarily the experience

of people in Ohio, the experience of people in Nebraska, the people experience in Michigan.

They all have varying experiences.

The better a working class candidate performs, the more willing they are to hear and represent

the viewpoints of people and all on public safety in particular, I would hope that a lot

of the candidates we support are willing to go and have honest discussions with whom people

with whom they disagree and allow themselves to be persuaded if they've ever been saying

things that have been critical of police officers.

My own personal views, a lot of these people who sign up both in ice and CDP and police,

they are unionized folks.

They tended to sign up for these for mission and cause they believe in protecting this

nation.

They believe in doing positive things, not all of them are terrible.

In fact, the vast majority of them are good, decent, hardworking people who are trying

to improve this nation.

And you should not be categorically describing them with broad brush in oppositional terms.

Let's, I want to talk about the broader democratic party.

What is your theory as to why voters are so fed up with the democratic establishment?

Well, there's a lot going on there.

So I don't want to be too long-winded about it, but a little bit about to be brief.

So we'll go through the fact that COVID happened.

And during COVID, I think we saw essential work and people get disrespected for work.

And then it's greater wealth and income and equality rise and anger at the elite.

And if you looked at the attitudes of now and you'd say, describe hopefully America

as an angry, popular nation, right, that they've seen this and felt it viscerally.

The things that Bernie Sanders was talking about for years and years before this, they

felt it viscerally during COVID.

And then you get, now, if Trump comes along and Trump too versus Trump one, one of the

major differences of Trump too is that Kishtering of the oligarchs.

He says, this whole presidency is of by and for them.

And I love Elon Musk.

I love Tim Cook.

I love anybody who's a billionaire and I want to be one myself.

And so those attitudes are the things that are governing.

And then you look at a democratic party and say, do you really feel in this moment as we're

dealing with the concentrations of the wealth and power?

Please the democratic party, the place that you go when you say I am angry about the concentrations

of wealth and power.

For some people it is for not enough people.

And I think that we have to more definitionally present ourselves as that working class willing

to fight for the underdogs, willing to take on concentrations of wealth and power party.

It is not university felt.

And then it hurts our case when then we see millions and millions and millions of dollars

and super PACs spending going into these races to influence the outcomes.

It does not feel democratic nor is it democratic.

So I want, if we were in charge of our democratic party, you and me, John, we hopefully be working

together to say, hey, get the damn super PACs out of the primary process.

I mean, you opened up the spandorist box and of course now APAC can do it and anybody

else can do it.

Now, guess what?

They do Republicans do it and it's been money in democratic primaries.

Let's shut it down.

You know, hear a lot of people are you know, upset about hung and there's a Republican

spending in it.

Because you've allowed this to occur in our primaries.

You've opened the door.

So we should be the one setting the benchmarks of saying, no, we're getting this corporate

influence out of our party.

I don't know if you've, if you saw Matt Iglesias's piece in the times this week, but he

leveled to critique at Bernie that I've heard from a number of more moderate center-left

Democrats, which is this big reason people are mad at the democratic establishment is because

the party lost a Trump in 2024.

Big reason we lost is because the democratic establishment told us that a man who most

Americans didn't think was up to the job was actually the only person who could be Trump.

But even after Biden's, you know, awful debate when some more moderate Democrats were

urging him to drop out, Bernie, AOC, other progressives were still making the case that

Biden should stay in the race because he was the strongest candidate to be Trump.

When you look back at that, do you think that complicates the story the left is telling

voters now about the democratic establishment?

Well, you know, I like Matt work for me for a period of time.

I'm a fan.

I read some of the stuff he writes and I don't always agree with him to this point that

we're just discussing, you know, we're allowed to disagree with each other.

I agree with Matt Iglesias.

I think it was in Vox.

And I want to say with, if you go back in January, maybe I would call January 2020, we're

at a great peace in Vox about the case for Bernie Sanders.

And I'd like to go back and channel that.

Not to say Matt's a lot of changes on views and welcome him doing so and anybody else

doing so.

But I like this views of January 2020 more than I do now.

I think it for my vantage point, the progressive case for change for really kind of drastic

economic justice change is one of the strongest things we've got going for reforming the

entire Democratic Party.

When I look at the status quo of where many who don't agree with Bernie, where they want

to be, it is not as if I'm hearing a great alternative option of an agenda that they

want to run on.

It's a version of what I've heard James Carville say candidly and openly, which is to play

dead.

Just say, hey, you do nothing.

You say nothing and you be for nothing.

And I don't think that that's a good path forward for a political party.

The point of winning elections is to govern.

And when you govern, you govern on behalf of doing things.

You should try to build a mandate for doing those things and talk about them candidly

and openly so that people know when you're voting for a party, these are the things we

can expect of them.

So it's been disappointing to me that here we are in, I don't know, we're in the election

year, we're in August of election year.

And it's not as if you and I are talking about, hey, the five things that the House Democratic

Agenda under Hakeem Jeffries are the five things that the Senate Democratic Agenda

of Chuck Schumer are X, Y and Z.

It should be the case.

We should be talking about a taxation of the rich.

We should talk about a, a, some kind of healthcare expansion for sure.

And we should be talking about, you know, improving the economic conditions and reducing costs

for working families in concrete in specific ways.

That's what we should be learning from Zaron and so many others.

And it feels too often to me like the progressive populist when I look at AOC and I look at

Zaron and look at all these, that we're the only ones wanting to do that.

You look at the centers we're often, they're, they're, they're almost pointing out of saying,

well, how date, why are you proposing ideas?

We should just like just run on nothing.

And I know we're, we often left with the ones you talk about Biden.

What are we being faulted for?

Because you were advocating for an agenda and bill back better.

You were advocating for certain stimulus checks in American rescue plan.

You had a vision of what Biden should campaign for and in, in, in the next election.

You liked Lena Khan.

You liked Royal Hitchhoper and the CFPB.

You liked, you know, the pro labor movement that was going on.

We shouldn't before those things.

You know, it, it feel like that too often the tension here of like an agenda.

We want things to campaign upon.

That is the point of a political party, not merely to win elections, but to win elections

to do things.

The tension, I always wrestle with is the tension between having an agenda that is ambitious

enough to meet the moment.

They can appeal to voters where they can say, okay, I can see that that would make a real

difference in my life.

And making sure that that agenda has a realistic chance of passing if Democrats return to

power for the reason that A, it would make a difference in people's lives.

But B, if it doesn't, then you're dealing with a low trust situation anyway where people

don't have trust in government.

And if they were promised something and then it doesn't come to pass, then that makes

it even harder for us to go to voters next time and say, oh, vote for us again.

We're still going to do this thing.

So like, how do you think about?

You got a great, like, I'm just turned back over to you real quick.

I hope you would feel like this if I asked you, John, when you say realistic expectations

of what can change, I would hope in the last two years watching Donald Trump, watching

how Biden governed, I would hope your own senses of what is realistic are moving underneath

your feet.

Right?

That a next president of the United States is thinking, oh, shoot, I have way more executive

authority to think about what we can and should be doing, should be constrained by lawyers.

Legislatively, we see, you know, a lot happening with 50 votes to move the nation.

We should be thinking aggressively in that score.

I, my point would just be that too often when I hear what's realistic, we're, we're

burning backwards.

And we're saying, well, precedent tells us that 10 years ago, this is how you passed this

legislation.

It requires 60 votes.

And we can't get that until double, blah, blah, blah.

I think the world is changing.

And I think it's demanding that we change our sense of what is quite realistic.

And so what you see in the tensions of the Democratic Party right now is, I think, a progressive

populist movement that's saying, we better be bolder.

And we got to change the notions of what we think is possible.

And Bernie, I think to agree, if you look at his own trajectory, stimulus checks, right,

the only reason it happened was because you just fought on the set of floor at that period

of time and say, no, we're not going to go for you.

Just whatever your rescue plan is here.

Mr. Trump, we're going to go for stimulus checks.

And that changed the course of what was possible and got us to Democratic senators in Georgia

who can't pay down those stimulus checks.

And you go forward and you say, okay, well, you know, what is not possible is we can't

shut the Senate down over healthcare.

Johnny, we were all engaged in this.

No, we're going to shut it down over healthcare.

And it changed the politics of the moment and said, yeah, that's possible.

We can and should do these things.

So my point would just be that we get too constrained in our sense of what is realistic

and what is possible by people who in some sense, in my view, do not have our best interest

of expanding the scope of what's possible for working class people.

There is a corporate class that feels like this system works just fine.

Don't play around.

Tinkering is good.

And I think for the vast majority of people who find government to be dysfunctional, they're

demanding, no, you got to think bigger than that.

Well, let me ask you this way then, which is let's pretend that we can dream that we

have a Democratic president in 2028 and a Democratic Congress.

And we have a majority in the Senate that now includes Mary Pultola and Josh Turrick or

some combination of those senators and an abdool and Troy Jackson and Maine.

And I think in that scenario, we probably have the votes finally to get rid of the filibuster.

What is on your agenda?

Like what do youth, what would you suggest that a Democratic trifecta does after the

four years of Trump destroying everything and everything that they're going to walk into?

To really, again, meet the moment, pass something that's going to make a difference in people's

lives and sort of start restoring people's trust that a bigger, more better governing agenda

is actually possible.

And I would love to know, you still got President Trump.

So in the first two years of this Democratic agenda, I go back to when Harry to Nancy Pelosi

had the House and the Senate while President Bush was still president.

And in those two years, really formed the basis of what became a lot of things that President

Obama then governed upon and the future campaigns were waged on.

It started with a train of Democrats saying, hey, we just got the House and the Senate,

we're going to demand certain things and that becomes, that's when we first heard the

words affordable, healthcare, right?

And it became later had an affordable healthcare act.

So my point would just be think bigger.

I don't want just investigations of Donald Trump's subpoenas and got it.

That'll happen.

I understand it's valuable.

That's a reflexive and defensive posture.

We got to just go after the harms that he's already done.

Yes.

And what do you want to do for working class people?

And on that score, I would like to force some votes that pass the House and the Senate

and sit in front of Donald Trump.

So let's start with that.

Let's think of that psychology.

It makes it hard for President Trump to veto.

Well, I got to think you raise the minimum wage.

Go ahead.

Tell the president of the United States you want a veto this minimum wage bill.

You're 725 an hour.

That's what you're happy with.

Let's see how his coalition performs over a period of time when you say, I'm going to

go give the American public a raise right now.

That's what they need.

Then you say, okay, well, healthcare expansions.

We got to put things on and not just merely restoring Medicaid cuts.

I don't think that's sufficient.

I mean, we'd have to believe and understand that people thought the healthcare system

was broken before President Trump decided to cut Medicaid.

So we've got to think affirmatively of ways to want to expand healthcare.

And I think there's ways to do that.

Obviously, we've got to do as a team.

We've got to get the votes in the House and the Senate to get it done.

Got to expand healthcare.

And then so in addition to all those things, I'd like to see some things that we put in

front of them on cap and credit card interest rates, taking on private equity and its role

in housing.

These are things he's role of AI is a huge one saying people shouldn't be fired by robot

bosses, making sure we're constraining the role of AI all the garks and how they can

displace labor in this country.

All of these things would be in my view, fantastically popular for a Democratic brand to pass

out of the House and the Senate put in front of Donald Trump.

I think with fractures coalition and therefore also build a more lasting and durable majority

for Democrats as we head into 2028 and beyond.

I agree with all that.

I was sort of asking if then we win in 2028 and we have the tri-backed.

Oh, sorry.

Like, what is the first thing?

What is the priority for a Democratic president here?

Sorry, yeah.

Okay, so we're going president.

Yeah, we're going bold with the tri-backed as far as I miss that part.

Well, yeah, we got it.

No, no, no, no, no.

It's good to know the next two years I'm interested in as well, but like, yeah, I'm just

wondering, because I think these things come down to, and you know this, because you've

worked on the Hill.

It comes down to prioritization, right?

Yes, definitely.

You can't do everything.

Yes.

Yes.

But if we have, and you have like two years before you get to the midterms and it's like,

how many times have we gone through this where even when Democratic presidents passed something

big, Affordable Care Act as an example, not as big as we'd like, but it's something, you

know, people didn't feel the effects of that until years later and there was a huge backlash

and then we lost power.

So like, what do you do when those first two years?

I would love to just see a reform government.

And I don't want to constrain whoever is the president of the United States from thinking

this way.

But I thought you'd come into the presidency saying the democracy's been broken by the pre-seeding

guy and government was dysfunctional even before him.

And the first thing we're going to do is make this government work.

If you look at Zoraan, there's lessons to learn from him and I think they apply nationwide.

They aren't just New York City.

But you come in like a ball of fire with, you know, one, nothing is too small, nothing

is too big.

Really, but you're coupled with all of those things together and think every day is a day

of action.

That's one thing to learn from President Trump is that it is a day wasted if you aren't

rolling out some new, you know, regulatory power authority to do something to change something.

You're forming government and you're willing to say certain things are broken here.

We're going to reform entire agencies.

I mean, if you look right now on AI, which is one of the mega things that people are

thinking about, government has not even positioned to deal with AI.

What is their government agency that deals with AI?

Because there's like a human being, David Sacks for a while, right?

Corrupted, you know, dealing with AI.

There's no, there's nothing dealing with AI.

And it's got to be one of the biggest issues that we're going to be dealing with.

So first off is a, how do you reform government?

How's the commerce department now address AI?

It's not how we're letting it grow out of here.

Now we're bringing in some honest working class ethos to say the whole place is going

to change.

But down USAID, we can reform entire commerce department to make it work for actual laborers

in American commerce and actual promoting a small businesses.

So the first thing I would do is just have a really ambitious and bold reform agenda

that says right out of the box, you are going to see this government perform and do things

that you did not see in the last 30 and 40 years.

And if you can have that, the possibilities there are endless, right?

How does HHS how do we negotiate drugs?

Everything just changes as a result of that.

And the possibilities are actually greater because of Sally, the destructiveness of Trump.

It's a two-edged sword.

He kind of raises the government down, but he also tells you there's things you can do

in different and bolder ways if you so choose with the public support.

That's fundamental here that you're acting on their behalf and saying the government,

the people are demanding the government change.

And we're going to meet them because we as a democratic party believe the government

has to function, has to work.

And we wanted to work for working people.

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Confidence looks good on you.

You mentioned AI.

I wanted to ask you about data centers since more perfect union has probably done more than

any outlet to turn data centers into a political issue.

You followed AOC to a deep red data center town.

You've done electricity bill reporting.

What do you think this issue has broken through when so many corporate power stories

haven't broken through to this extent?

It's where the rubber meets the road up there with regular working class people

are feeling a deep sense of lack of any democracy.

They did not vote for any of this.

In fact, they were told and foisted upon by AI all the guards that we're going to take

your land or take your water, take your air.

And we're going to do as we will with it.

You do not get a say.

So it's a microcosm in a major way of where what is going on with their entire political

and economic systems, all the frustrations you would have felt across the board in any industry.

Or now being materialized by you, this meta jumping into Louisiana and saying,

hey, this is all our land and water.

You guys can go to hell.

And so as a result, what I've been most heartened by is that people are standing up to it.

I don't think most of the AI industry believed or saw that they could go into generally red areas,

not entirely red, but generally red rural areas.

And that people would just take it laying down was I think their assumption.

They were wrong.

And thankfully, there's been a whole bunch of people who've said, no, no, no.

We are going to demand a voice in this.

So the first thing is the data center more term because it says the beginning of this

negotiation dear AI company is zero.

So you get nothing.

How about that?

That's the beginning of the negotiation.

So we'll reset the terms.

Now you want to talk to us and say you want to develop.

Let's hear what you got.

And as a result, you know, in the last few months, you've seen even some community say,

you will give our teachers $50,000 bonuses.

Right?

That has happened now because communities are standing up and saying,

we're going to get a better deal.

And again, this is going back to the progressive populist thing.

It's not just progressive populist, but obviously sort of populist who've been very engaged on this.

But progressive populist say, you know, that kind of radical notion of saying moratorium,

moratorium stop.

This is how you negotiate with wealth and power.

In that AOC conception, Bernie conception, there are that too many co-sponsors of it right now.

But it, I think it's what's needed in a democratic party say, we're going to be bold with power.

We're going to tell AI companies you get nothing.

And then we're going to set out some terms that say, you do it.

If you want this so bad, you do it in ways that help working class people.

And so many working class people to your point on this real quick is that there's been no,

nothing put on the table prior when they were trying to develop these data centers for years and years.

Nothing put on the table to tell them your life will be better as a result of this.

They were literally just told you'll get GROC.

How about that?

Like what?

Are you kidding me?

I don't want GROC.

No, it doesn't, it doesn't improve my life.

That's not what I'm after.

And so I think it is going to be our job to be a grassroots working class party that says,

here's the specific ways that teachers, hospitals will be built here.

Right.

Workers will have specific jobs.

We're going to improve a lot of, by the way, you know, federal jobs.

You have to have a new president of the United States who says,

part of my job is to think about where we do public investment to create good well-paying jobs

because we cannot rely on the private market, especially at the private market,

is it saying, you know, we're going to displace 20% of all labor in America.

One of the things that struck me about this issue is, first of all, it's such a,

like it's become a bipartisan issue, not maybe not maybe among politicians, but, you know,

like you said, there's, there's red areas where people are very upset about data centers.

I think AI is an issue. You can see from voters across the political spectrum,

it feels like there's a loss of control that they have no voice in what's happening to, like,

like things are happening to us and we don't have agency here.

Right.

And it makes me think about sort of the story the Democrats are going to tell about the country in

2028, which is not, you know, we've just gone through, we've just, we've ended the Trump era,

but what's next, what's next for the country? And you said something during a panel we were on

together last year's CricutCon that really stuck with me about a vision that speaks to the

cultural decay in our society right now. And I was wondering if you could expand on that,

maybe talk about how your thinking may have evolved since then on the story that you would

like to hear from Democratic presidential candidates in 2028.

Yeah. And it's especially if we're talking about working with last people who are not attuned

and listening to every political debate. And we know that, you know, for all of his faults,

Donald Trump is somebody who doesn't suffer for lack of attention and he reaches a lot of people

and people have sensed and felt a certain thing. So you're coming after Trump. And what is it

that they've sensed and felt about him? I do tend to think that there's a sense of greed and

exploitation that is abound in our society, manifested by Trump and not exclusively him,

by if anyone's flown on an airline recently, if anyone's tried to buy a ticket online recently,

if you try, you know, to just get a rental car. I mean, any, any damn thing you want to do in

society through the concentrations of wealth and power have made life difficult hard and to make

you feel like you're upon that you're suffering your economic dignity, your freedom.

Just doesn't matter to us. We've got the money. You've got nothing. And as there is all around

this in society, you sense that this sense agreed that exists, the sense of exploitation that exists

starts to affect human relationship. So then you say, well, why do we have so much loneliness

in society? Why are we have a challenge with kids in their declining cognitive skills in the age of

AI in which you might have deeper relationships with chatbots? What is going on?

Drive you to a better and deeper sense of the human calling. This is not the way we want to go,

where we are always in fear of one another, always stepping on one another. This is what I was talking

about with respect to the cultural decay that for those who can do well in the top five percent or

one percent, it's all good for them and they want to step on anybody else. We do not want that as

a society. Well, sense of solidarity that my life is better when your life is better. And as a

result, I'm going to not only think about policies that improve that. So we can all they can talk

about policies that do that and have a good healthy debate. But we also want to change a culture

that respects people who may not have a college degree, God forbid, well, you know, college degree,

oh, you know, you repair cars for a living. You drive Amazon trucks for a living year, Uber driver,

there's respect and dignity in what you do to improve America that I think is being lost.

And so part of it, you see it was on again, I mean, my example for so much because he said,

uniquely good at this. But there's a you can sense in the respect and the in heggity. I'm going to host,

you know, some of these gatherings of a soccer game for you all to come together and watch this

for no other reason other than I want your life to be happy. I want you to improve. I want you to

be with one another and see that with my power as a government official, I care that you might have

a better enjoyable life. And that is thinking beyond just policy, right? Now you're thinking

arts culture, music, all of the soft power that a president has to change culture because we are

living in the wake of a president who's really degraded culture all around us with his own greed.

And we can repair it. Somebody who has that vision of saying it's not just policies, it's just

we are a better, wonderful nation when we all respect and see the value of each other.

A more perfect union if you who among the potential 2028ers has impressed you so far.

Well, I don't think I was declared John. But the way you see it, you know, you get a lot of

soft declarations. So we got soft declarations, but I'm waiting to see the field form because

if we see you and I start talking about these names and I'm like, I know you and I don't even know

that there's like five or six or seven or eight people who we weren't never thinking of who are

hopefully planning to run or are planned or so. Is anyone in the party right now speaking

in speaking about the country in the future in a way that you find particularly impressive

or inspiring or just different than the usual, you know, talking points we get from politicians.

Well, how many times in this conversation have I referenced the name?

Zora Abwamedani, you know, if yes, obviously I have a lot of respect for just the way he cares

about public life and public authorities and public responsibility and you know, he's doing it in a

way that is completely true to the values that in which he campaigns a progressive populist, he's

still upholding it and expanding the coalition as he goes and getting earning more and more

and more trust respect, you're correct me from wrong, from all the kinds of people. I think if I go

to New York City, you look at people who maybe voted for Mayor Adams or Mayor Cuomo or, you know,

other people, you know, they're moving in a direction of respect, just appreciation that, you know,

this guy believes that there's a lot to learn from him and certainly, you know, there's others,

obviously I'm a huge fan of AOC, Bernie obviously and like a whole progressive movement.

I think you're going to have a healthy competition of that. Rokana, I think,

wants to run. There's a lot of people I think are going to introduce progressive ideas and debates

and it should be a good and healthy one based off of, you know, what people think like if you have

it, think of an AI debate that is so desperately needed, where's it going to come from? Well, I bet

you, Rokana's going to have some kind of compelling and interesting things to say about it and will spark,

you know, a movement around it. I'm more anxious and interested to see, you know, who runs and then I

think, I don't know if you how you feel about this job, I also tend to think that somebody who's not a

politician, somebody who's kind of outside the system, this environment really, more than one

that I can think of in my adult history is really conducive to that of people wanting somebody who's just,

you know, by the way, on this point real quick, like the, the can as we've endorsed, you know,

with Bernie and I, like looking across the board, we've had more can as a win in primaries who

didn't ever ran for anything in their life before. And it's been pretty amazing. That tells you

something like, Anneli Amahia is now a congresswoman, Adam Hommali, you're like Sam Forstag, a

smoke jumper in Montana, you look at Bob Brooks, you look at Bob, my run for state lunch before,

but Brian Pointexter and Ohio, there's so many of these people who just never run and they're just like,

and they're getting rewarded. I think you look at the way voters are like, oh, great, you're coming

in fresh and you not wedded to a system. I'm hungry for that. So I tend to think that also carries

over into a presidential. Speaking of impressed, I've been blown away by the success you guys are having

at more perfect union. I think you've racked up, you know, 3 million plus you two subscribers,

you got an Emmy. Talk to me about what you guys have gotten right. Two Emmys. I'm sorry, I was down

on Emmy. Talk to me about what you guys have gotten right and what your ultimate goal is.

Well, I mean, first of all, back at you, I mean, you're not, you're not,

it's just sneezing at anything there. You've built a substantial media empire of your own right,

and I'm glad to be in an ecosystem with you in which, you know, a thousand flowers blooming.

I think all of us, and I speak for you here, but we want scale. I mean, well, one of the things

we were responding to is the sense that, you know, if you look at the right and the mag environment,

they were reaching tens and tens and tens of millions of people in on a left of center,

we were just not doing enough job, a good of a job of reaching people at scale. So we came along with

a certain vision of how do you reach people at scale? And it was to tell economic justice story telling

through the lens of buy and for working class people, get into issues of corporate greed and

corporate concentration, discuss them with the level of depth. Don't talk to people as if they're

dumb, talk to people as if they're intelligent. They really care and want to know more about the

economy. And it tends to be that that has been rewarded, you know, in millions and millions of

views and one of the more exciting things that I'm witnessing in the growth and more perfect union

is every day we're getting more and more people who watch Tucker Carlson or who watch Joe Rogan

or even people watch Mr. Beast, you know, I'm looking at the back end of our YouTube algorithms there

and looking at what our viewers are watching. And that has been a sea change over the past year or so

is that more and more people coming to us, not from necessarily the stripes that you would have

assumed. They're just, you know, Bernie supporters, AOC supporters, regressives, a left-of-center

people, more and more and more of the growth is around people who are who are coming to us off of,

you know, dissatisfaction with Mag or just independence. And I'm hoping it for poor tens,

the possibilities of a different lasting bigger coalition in America, a remade coalition.

One of the things that fascinates me is so often it is the identity-inflicted issues and the

cultural issues that tend to get the most attention, that tend to go viral when people have those

debates and politicians talk about those issues and a lot of the economic issues that we know

resonate most with people. We see it in the polling. We hear it from actual voters. It's harder to

get attention for them. It feels like you guys have flipped that dynamic and I saw that you talked

to the post about this and said that actually videos you guys have done on abortion or immigration

don't do as well as these videos that you have about economic justice. And I'm wondering

what you make of that and why you think that the videos you did on economic issues have done

so much so well. Well, with the great team that we have more perfect union, we've owned that

we're going to do depth, depth. I mean, we raised the bar and tried to write scripts that you may

think you know something about let's say United Health's power over the marketplace. I would

argue to you that if and when you watch a more perfect union video about United Health's

vertical and horizontal consolidation and PBMs and how they engage in healthcare pricing and then

the potential solutions of people who are fighting United Health, you're going to learn something.

Even if you thought you knew a lot, you're going to learn something more. And that I think is

really critical because when you're thinking about economic issues to your point of social justice,

a lot of those tend to be I want to say easier to understand. So they a lot of people gravitate to

them. It's kind of like, you know, here's your trends view on this kid that kid got it, you know,

but on economic justice issues, there it's a level of complication. There's a reason why there's

so much money spent on K Street lobbyists, accounts and lawyers. It requires a depth of understanding.

And one of the things I think most working class people know and understand is there's a rigged

lock box against them against their level of knowledge. One of the ways that they feel screwed is

the fact that somebody's got knowledge somewhere and they're making tons of money off it and I ain't it

I ain't in that club. And so then you have to kind of get into a place if you're advocating for

working class people, you're unlocking that level of knowledge and you're raising the bar on the

amount of information we're trying to provide because you're breaking into the bubble of the elites

and you're saying, here's how the business model works. And you're showing that you really truly

do give a damn on their behalf by quite frankly, criticizing and observing how those companies do

their business to make billions and billions of dollars and ideally coupling that with people who

are fighting to change that, whether you're an academic or you're a tenants union or a labor union

or a legislator or a person running for senate, whatever the case might be, here's a person connected

to what a specific idea of how you could change this dysfunction in society. That simple remedy,

it almost feels like a monopoly for us in the marketplace and it's doing quite well and I would

urge more people to compete with us to tell very, you know, in-depth stories of the economy because

people are hungry for it knowing and believing that most of the information they consume about the

economy comes from a place of wealth on CNBC, Wall Street Journal, places where, you know, they're

told about things but they their own experience of a John Deere tractor rider knows I am getting

screwed here. Somebody unpacked this for me. Well, I would urge everyone listening and watching to go

go to more perfect unions YouTube channel and like and subscribe and check out the videos, they're

fantastic. And fast, thank you so much as always for for joining and chatting with me. I could talk

to you for hours but I know you're a busy guy and I appreciate the time. It's always great to see

you and knock on wood. Let's all get the house in the senate here in a few months. Absolutely. Take

care, buddy. Offline with John Favreau is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin

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