All the Tea From the DNC Elections With Party Insider Alex Hoffman
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I'm Derek Thompson, the host of The Ringer podcast, Plain English. Look, a lot of news these days is kind of nonsense. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here. I'm just trying to ask the questions that matter from people who know more than I do about everything I'm curious about. And that's most things. Recession fears, AI hyperbole, psychology, productivity, China, war, streaming, movies, sports, you name it.

The world without jargon. The news without bias. Plain English with Derek Thompson. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. On the show, I'm going to give you the inside scoop about what Democrats were really talking about behind the scenes this weekend at their Democratic National Committee winter meeting when they bucked the party establishment and elected a new leader, Ken Martin, to be the chairman. And I'm going to give you a little bit of a story about that.

Basically, they chose Ben over the guy that Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffrey, and big donors like Reid Hoffman wanted. That was Ben Wickler, the Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman. They said they wanted Martin, who's a nice guy from Minnesota, but also a knife fighter. I know, a very weird combo. Well, he will lead a party that is undoubtedly lost. I mean, they have literally lost every election, the White House, the Senate, the House, and

And they are divided over why they seem lost in terms of a message moving forward or at least a strategy. And he said he's going to deliver an autopsy report. That's something that they didn't do in 2016. We'll see if Ken will offer some radical change to a party in desperate need of a facelift or at least the appearance of more transparency and not just a bunch of party poobahs that pick nominees and change calendars.

But so far, Ken has said that he wants to stick with the messaging that the party has already. We'll see if that messaging actually is able to land an effective counterpunch against Donald Trump, because it seems like the resistance is futile. Kamala Harris also made a cameo this weekend by video, and my insider tells me how the delegates really felt about it. Is she the future or the past?

So for all of that and more, I have Alex Hoffman on the show. He is a former Democratic National Committee official. He was there all weekend at their convention. He is now a political strategist and fundraiser, and he is the founder and principal of C Street Strategies. But first, I want to talk about the wrecking ball that Elon Musk is taking to the government. His latest target is USAID, the program that helps nations deal with extreme poverty, starvation, and disease overseas.

I can see how this might be a popular target because people might say, "Hey, I'm struggling to pay my bills. Why are we giving money abroad?"

But when there's a vacuum and people are in desperate need abroad, it's usually filled by despots or by adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran. And it only causes more war, instability, and disease. And of course, it weakens America's power abroad. We won't be seen as a superpower. In the meanwhile, of course, though, for many people, they don't care about that anymore. America first means retreating from the world stage.

In the meantime, a handful of 20-something Doge brats, or Muscovites as they've been called, are running around, poking around the agencies and seeing where they can cut the fat. I guess that's not surprising since that's what Elon Musk has been saying all along, that he wants to cut a trillion dollars in government waste. It just seems to be very random and

they don't seem to have a rhyme or reason quite yet. And it seems like every time they make three steps forward in this mission, they have to take 10 steps back because it's done so rapidly and so haphazardly. Oh, and at the same time, Trump is starting a trade war with China.

He delayed the one with Mexico for a month to send more troops to the border. So he clearly sees these tariffs as a sort of bargaining chip, but it's something he promised to do. It's just happening so rapidly and so haphazardly that it's causing mass confusion, panic, and actual damage. One can't help but wonder if that DCA airline crash could have been avoided and lives could have been saved if Elon Musk didn't fire the FAA administrator a few weeks earlier.

Let's not forget, when Americans chose Biden over Trump in 2020, they did it because they wanted a return to normalcy. You know, having a day like last week when the government was essentially shut down because they had frozen all of those government grants, I mean, that is not normal. When people don't have access to Medicare...

and their VA benefits, that's not normalcy. We'll see how long this lasts before the honeymoon is over. You might see a strong backlash against the Republicans during the midterms if people are unhappy, and certainly in 2028. This might be the thing that drives a wedge between Donald Trump and Elon Musk because Trump does not like bad press, especially not bad press caused by someone else.

And now onward to the show. Alex, thanks so much for joining the show. So you were at the DNC's winter meeting this weekend in National Harbor, Maryland, running the campaign for the finance chairman who won, Chris Korge. What was the vibe like? I mean, I read this story in the New York Times where they spoke to 50 different senior Democrats who basically admitted that the party was lost. And I think that's a really good story.

But for all different reasons, none of them could agree on why they lost the election, what would be the best step forward and how they should go after Trump. The New York Times used the phrase leaderless, rudderless and divided to describe the party. What was it like this weekend at the meeting?

There was no shortage of alcohol being drunk, that's for sure. And that's probably the easiest way to get through what was happening. No, I mean, look, I think, you know, going into the meeting, there was a lot of apathy. There was a lot of just dejected Democrats wandering in the wilderness.

And, you know, I think a lot of members and people forget, you know, this is like an insider baseball. There's only 440 something members of the DNC. Right. You know, they're the insiders of insiders of how the party works at a state level, but really at the just DNC level. And, you know, I think the last month or so of this chairs race, it started getting people more back into the, you know,

who are our leaders going to be? What's the direction? What's the future going to be? And, you know, they were in just full election insider mode. And I think, you know, once the chairs race finished, then it was, you know, I think the whole election itself took about 12 plus hours, which I know is crazy, but

They literally sat there for 12, almost 13 hours to elect the whole slate of the rest of the officers. And I'd say by the end of that, everybody probably felt like we were in the exact same position that we were in right before that.

Interesting. And why do you think that was? Because there's no new messaging? Yeah, I mean, I think the complaints that exist in the ecosystem are still the same, right? It's that there's still no good messaging. We've got issues with donors. We've got issues with sort of how we sell our brand. We have issues of how we respond to Trump. We have just this donor fatigue, the feeling around just generally that we've just lost and we're reeling from this.

And, you know, now there's this hope that, you know, we've got this new leadership slate. We're going to, you know, start to rebuild like, you know, kind of the phoenix rising from the ashes, if you will. And, you know, I think there's

There's a reason that the chairs race was a one ballot election. Right. People were convinced it was going to be a multiple ballot. You know, people were going to be like old school 1970s, 80s convention floor whipping on the floor, trying to trade votes and trying to, you know, go ballot for ballot. And it was like finding the pope of the party. Right. Yeah. I was saying this is basically a conclave meets a student government election. I think that was the best way to put it.

Got it. Got it. Okay. I definitely want to talk about Ken Martin, who was ultimately elected chairman. And I think for a lot of people that was surprising and also not surprising at the same time. But first I want to talk about Kamala Harris. So President Biden beams into the convention and he gives his talk and doesn't get much of an applause or anything. Kamala Harris, though, she drops in with a video call just like President Biden, but

there's a lot of rousing applause and momentum. Like how was it interpreted? Was that just happened to be a small portion of very excited people about Kamala Harris or is the feeling like universally that she is the leader of the party and the presumptive front runner for 2028? Yeah, I think it was definitely that there was a lot of activists and volunteers who were in the audience and, you know, she was our democratic nominees and everybody, you know, just kind of clapped and was like, yeah, good for her. I,

I would say that they're of the people who are actually in the room, whether, you know, they're the DNC members or the operatives or the folks that the donors that were there, uh,

I don't think there's a single one of them that was saying that Kamala Harris is the leader of the party, nor should she run again. I mean, I don't think I found a single person who thought that was a good idea for us, myself included. I don't think that's a good idea in any way, shape, or form. And also, you know, I think, you know, if this election was any kind of indicator about anything about the party is that we're kind of ready to just move on, go to the next thing, right? I mean, you know, as much as Ken Martin and some of the other officers are on the slate are the quote-unquote next thing, right?

it's still moving on, right? We're still going to the next group of this. It's still, you know, getting ready to eventually launch the version of the primaries that are going to exist. And, you know, look, if she wants to run more power to her, but, you know, I mean, just to remind everyone in 2020, she didn't even make it to Iowa. So just because you were the nominee in 100 days and, you know, did whatever they did, doesn't make you the front runner, doesn't mean you're going to win a primary.

Interesting. So perhaps the write-ups were a little bit more generous for Kamala Harris and just noticed that she got more applause than Biden, who I think a lot of people are probably understanding. Yeah, I mean, I think definitely a lot more generous for Kamala. And I think, you know, this is the consistent let's pile it on Joe anywhere and everywhere that people can kind of moment. And, you know, I mean, look, that's going to be unfortunately probably his legacy to a lot of people. But yeah,

You know, I also think there were plenty of people in that room, DNC members and donors included, who owe a lot to Joe Biden and were, you know, kind of happy to see his kind of quote unquote farewell to the DNC members thing. Got it.

All right. Let's talk about the guy who actually won, Ken Morgan. So he was the first person to announce his candidacy, right? For, or was it Martin O'Malley who announced first? I can't remember. I think, I want to say Ken announced first. I think Ken put out a video first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was Ken who announced first. And he came in with like a ton of delegates already locked up, right? He had a huge number.

Yeah, a lot of a lot of state party chairs. And remember, he said so Ken was the ASDC chair for a while. And so he has relationships with a lot of ASDC and state party members. So right, right, right. And so he pretty much I would say kind of swept. But, you know, there's kind of this.

feeling about him that he is a knife fighter and that's what the party needs. I know when you and I had spoken in the past, you mentioned that you thought Rahm Emanuel would be the right type of guy for this job because he's gutless essentially and could really, you know, move the party forward in a way where it

take no prisoners, especially when dealing with Trump and the Republican Party. Do you think Ken Martin is really that guy? I was reading in Politico, John Bonciano, who's worked with him before at the state Democratic committee said, quote, Ken is a Minnesota nice, has a pleasant, earnest ability to engage with people publicly. And it is also a private ruthlessness and a coldness that only comes when you've lived in 10 degree below weather half your life. Ken

Ken will cut you if he has to, but that ruthlessness is what we need to achieve electoral success. Now, would you say that's an accurate description of Ken and what the party needs right now? Well, I mean, first of all, so you mentioned the Rahm Emanuel piece before that. I mean, yes, I was actively trying to get Rahm to run. And I think, I don't know if this is a PG podcast or not, but as you know, I'm a true New Yorker on the inside. So there's no filter. Uh,

you know, my line was that Rahm Emanuel is a motherfucker and we need a motherfucker to beat these motherfuckers. Right. And like, I legitimately was like, we need someone who's willing to, instead of this, they go low, we go high bullshit. It's like,

they go low, we go razor blade under the tongue low and, you know, try to win elections. And, you know, I mean, look, I've known Ken for a while and, you know, I was at the DNC when he was there. And, you know, I think Ken, you know, is a very nice guy. And, you know, I think to a lot of people, certainly I think to folks who didn't vote for him, I think they viewed him either as the nice guy or they didn't vote for him because of the other thing he said, which is that, you know, maybe they felt like they've been stabbed before. You know, personally, I think, you know, Ken is a...

kind of midpoint, right? I think he, to, you know, the, the average activist and person he's going to talk to when he does TV and media hits, you know, he does come off as like a good, nice guy, but also, and just someone who's like values are the values of the democratic party. Uh, but yeah, like, I don't think he's going to be afraid to do the hard stuff that needs to get done, which is, you know, cutting a lot of dead weight that exists in that building and in the party. Uh,

you know, making some serious, serious changes that need to happen to the party. And, you know, I think, yeah, there are going to be some people who are going to be really upset. They felt like maybe he or the party stabbed them or threw them out or did whatever. But I mean, we have to get to this point where how often are we going to keep losing elections and keep having the same people who

are part of those things and not blame them. And then when someone finally says, hey, your time's up, goodbye, get out, like, you're going to say, oh, he's just an evil guy who's like stabs people in the back. Like, no, no, it's just like you lost, right? Like, goodbye. Yeah, it's time to go. Right. And, you know, it's a new administration. I mean, just like

a new administration of the White House or anywhere else. Like it's his prerogative to come in and say, I want a new team that's going to do new things with new ideas and new messaging. And, you know, I hope he does. I really do. Because, I mean, at this point, couldn't get much worse, right? Like I don't, I can't imagine that he could do a worse job

job than anybody else. And I can't imagine that we could possibly be in a worse situation if he were to do any of those things, if we were. But, you know, I mean, then again, it's Democrats. We always seem to find a way. So, you know, maybe I'm wrong, but I hope not. So Ken was the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party. Yes. Yeah. It's the one party that allows for

It's still the Democratic Party, so it doesn't make him any more left-woken or whatever Fox News is going to try to point and say that he is. No, it's just what Minnesota calls the Democratic Party. Totally fine. But yes, he ran the state party at Minnesota for a very long time and has run the last, I think, I want to say two cycles, or the last four years, eight years, I want to say, has been the ASDC chair, which is the Association of Democratic Chairs, which is basically...

the person that runs all of the state parties for the Democrats, which, you know, for the insider baseball in which people are going to think it sounds really weird and wonder why he was saying this during his campaigning. There are technically 57 state parties because it's the states and the territories and Democrats abroad. So he's been in charge of all of those state parties.

And the big reason why he won, he had those relationships. He knew those DNC members, right? It just made it a lot easier for him to come in and win.

Yeah, he did a lot of backdoor politicking to begin with, even before he even announced. That's why he had so many delegates locked up. He's got an incredible life story, too. His mother had him at 15 and they lived in and out of shelters. And he said, like, that's where he got his grit and why he's a bit abrasive. And perhaps that's why there have been a lot of stories in the past few days talking about, you know, how many people are kind of felt that they were rubbed the wrong way by him. I do think it's interesting that the Democratic establishment did not support him.

support him. In fact, you know, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, they all endorse Ben Wickler, who is the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Basically, the delegates just said, F you, we're not going with who you want. Why do you think they chose Ken over what the establishment wanted?

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I mean, first of all, I will say since, you know, I was around in 2017, helping out in some of the races in 2017, too. And, you know, I think, you know, there's this track record of folks betting on a certain horse getting into the DNC elections for a variety of reasons and people just being completely wrong because they don't understand the difference between outside democratic ecosystem noise and voting.

440-something DNC members, right? And, like, the inside baseball politics that gets played with that. I think, look, you know, the reason Ken, I think, won is he had those relationships. I think the reason Ben ran...

is because he, yes, he was also a state party chair. You're right from a very important battleground. Sure. I will argue that, you know, he lost his battleground state, but you know, he ran because of that. You know, he, he's been viewed by a lot of people as a really good fundraiser. And, you know, I would say he is, however, the big caveat to that is Ben's

strength in fundraising was that, you know, every time there's a presidential or midterm, a bunch of celebrities will get together and do a bunch of Zoom fundraisers or in-person fundraisers for him, for the state, because they know Wisconsin's really important. So the cast of the West Wing or Whose Line Is It Anyway? or

you know, someone like that will do, you know, a big fundraiser. And so, you know, to the outside looking in, it looks like, oh, he's got all these celebrity people backing him so he can raise a ton of money. And, you know, if I'm Chuck Schumer, I'm all these other people, I'm like, oh, I want the party to be in good financial shape. And I want these celebrities to be on our side, even though that didn't really work for us last go around. Right. And the truth of the matter is I don't

think those celebrities show up for you just because you're sitting in the big chair on day one. I think they show up when the midterms and the presidential happen. And so I don't know what he was going to do between the start of his term and when that was actually happening. It would be really hard for him to do that. Right. And, you know, I think if I'm Ben personally, I would have had him run for ASDC, right? Like take the job that Ken just had. And then we would have been better off having both of them

But I mean, look, instead, Jane Klebb, who was the Nebraska Democratic Party cheer, has been around for a really long time. She just won by acclamation yesterday. But I'm just saying, like, I mean, between the two of them, it's kind of crazy to me that they both ran against each other, thought that that was going to be like, you know, such a big difference in messaging. I think a lot of people thought that Ben was more of the like leftish version. I don't know how true that is.

But, you know, look, I think the leadership viewed Ben as just like, you know, the better speaker, the better fundraiser, the one that the celebrities liked more. Yeah, I mean, Reid Hoffman from LinkedIn was a huge Democratic donor. He wanted Ben Winkler. I mean, do you think that Ken's going to have a hard time raising money from donors who weren't behind him? Right now, they seem to be super fatigued and isn't the whole part of being DNC chair. It's about raising money, right? Like, that's probably... I mean, first of all...

the job of the DNC chair, when we don't have the White House, you're fundraising 80% of the time, right? Like, it's no joke. I mean, you just need to, right? And there's no- How bad are the finances right now, by the way? Well, so I would say, surprisingly, like, we're actually in a lot better shape than we were in 2017, right? And-

A lot of that has to do with the way the joint fundraising agreement was done, the finance-structured leadership. Look, there's a big reason that I think Chris Gorge won his re-election for finance chair. I mean, he raised the most money in history. He was bringing a guy named Chris Lowe, who originally was running against him. They decided to run basically almost like a ticket where –

Chris Korge would run, and then Chris Lowe would be eventually named co-finance chair. They ran against some random guy who had no idea what he was doing. He was just talking about digital fundraising. To me, I think the one benefit that Ken Martin has coming into this is he has a really, really strong finance volunteer leadership structure. He'll have Chris Korge, he'll have Chris Lowe, and he'll have hopefully an army of deputy national finance chairs to get in there and really help fundraise and do the work.

But, you know, I think Ken is not under any, you know, false pretense that this is going to be hard work and that there is donor fatigue out there. Right. Donors are angry. Right. They're upset at how things went. They don't understand how we raised, you know, two billion dollars. And basically it feels like we flushed it all down the drain. They don't understand why we sent seven hundred thousand dollars on a call her daddy's.

and, you know, somehow, and a shit ton of money on fans for her travel, but we don't know why we didn't spend more money in certain swing states, right? Like, that's where their heads are at. Now, I mean, I think the Democratic Party needs to get back to this old way of thinking about donors, right? It used to be that

We used to treat donors like we're the concierge service and what can we do for you? And now and then I think in the last couple of cycles, we started treating donors like we're the only game in town. You know, you're going to show up for us anyway. And don't ask questions because we just need your money and we just see you as a dollar sign. And that's just like the wrong way to look at it. Right. Like we should be looking at donors, especially. And by the way, this is at like the lowest one dollar level all the way up to the million dollar level. Like they're shareholders in a Fortune 500 company.

Right. Like these are people who are giving their money, saying, I believe in this group because they, you know, I believe in their values here. Fortune 500 company go build this thing. And I think what they're sick of is that every four years we build a Fortune 500 company, knock it all down to the ground and just act like, oh, we should just like restart this all over again.

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Available for a limited time at participating restaurants. Tax not included. Price may vary. Not valid with any other offer, discount, or combo. Ken Martin's message is really not different than the message that you have right now. Because obviously another portion of their job is to create party messaging or at least help with assisting in it going on TV, you know, doing the Sunday shows. Although the last DNC chair, Jamie Harrison, wasn't really around that much. But he thinks the messaging is heading in the right direction, doesn't need to be changed. That's not very radical. Do you think that he's got the right approach?

You know, I think Ken comes from the state party perspective, which is that, you know, each state's message is probably a little different, right? Like what matters to voters in Minnesota probably isn't the same thing to voters in Wisconsin. Now, look, that said, are there universal truths that we should have been more on the ball on? Yeah. Like, you know, the price of gas and the price of groceries and that probably being a much more important issue than like, you know, democracy and January 6th and, you know, saving the country from Trump.

probably should have stayed away from those things, right? Like, I think there's enough people who I think resoundingly are like, okay, yeah, that was just the bad decision. But I think there's also a lot of people that say there's a little different thing that needs to happen here. Yeah, I mean, it is interesting that Ken, unlike some of the other candidates, said that the DNC needs an autopsy report on the election. Yeah, and listen, I mean, I was around...

when we lost last time. And, you know, that was like a dirty word saying autopsy. And, you know... Yeah, they didn't do one in 2016, did they? Well, I mean, they tried to call it something different. And they, you know, they wanted to like, you know, make it sound like we weren't like what the Republicans were post Mitt Romney. And like there was all this like buzzword stuff. And like...

Honestly, we just have to call it what it is, right? We lost. We lost badly, right? Like the two lines I couldn't stand at this DNC meeting. One was people trying to say that Trump didn't have a mandate because it was so close. It's like, no, no, he won. Like, we just need to admit, yes, he has a mandate. Like, yes, we got absolutely destroyed.

It wasn't for any specific reason. There was a laundry list of reasons of why we lost. And because there were so many reasons, like, yeah, we should have an autopsy. Yeah, we should figure out what we did wrong. And like,

That's a good thing, right? You don't think companies, when they make a bad business move or sports teams, when their team collapses, don't look at what they did and say, all right, how do we fix our mistakes and figure out how to not do this again? I mean, everyone should want that, right? Every operative donor, just, you know, average activists should say, yeah, Democratic Party should take a really hard look at what the hell went wrong last time.

look at all the laundry list of problems that we completely fucked up on and say, yeah, let's fix this so that maybe we can start winning elections again. And if that also means in that autopsy report, it also says that a bunch of people who have been in the democratic ecosystem need to just go kick rocks and not be part of this anymore. Great. Yeah. Whatever it's going to take for us to start winning like that line that Trump used to say about, oh, we're going to do so much winning and get sick and tired of winning. I just want a little bit, just like a tiny bit of winning, right? Like

I'm not asking for a ton. I just want a little bit right now. Oh, Alex. Yeah. I mean, did anything come out of this meeting that everyone can agree upon? Like any messaging or anything? You mean the messaging? No. I mean, because I think like in the end, like everybody kind of fought these big elections, patted themselves on the back that we're finally through this. We have a good slate. And that was it. I mean, look, you know, they elected besides Ken, you know, they elected three vice chairs, uh,

You know, a secretary, a treasurer and a finance chair. Right. So, I mean, this is our new, quote unquote, party leadership. This is going to be who's presenting to the world on MSNBC and CNN and on in the Twitter blue sky ecosystem. Right. Scary. Yeah, right. Exactly. Right. And so it's like, you know, there's no there's no one who knows what's going to come next from here. I think everybody's just like, all right, we elected these people. Let's see what happens.

Yeah. You know, his biggest battle probably coming up is the calendar, right? Choosing what the first primary state will be. Obviously, they knocked off New Hampshire for Biden and started in South Carolina, which was not very popular in New Hampshire and pissed off a lot of people and created the impression that there was a fix inside of the party and that the party leaders just

decide who's the nominee. And if they can't directly do it, then they do things like that. They change the calendar around to suit the person that they want to be elected, that the grand party poobahs decide everything, right? Do you get the feeling that Ken Martin understands this, that that's part of the reason why the Democratic Party has such a damaged image that the party, not just the grassroots, but everyone kind of sees it as this organization where it's run by a bunch of elites and

They make all the wrong choices. Yeah, I mean, look, I'll say there's probably nobody better to fight that narrative that we're these coastal elites than a guy from the Midwest who grew up living in shelters at one point with a single mom, right? Like, I mean, there's probably nobody better to say something like the opposite of that. That said, like, look, you know, yes, I think you're right. One of the biggest challenges is

is going to be the primary schedule, the eventual debate schedule, and the eventual joint fundraising agreements between these campaigns and the DNC and what those victory fund agreements look like. I think, again, the messaging around the primaries and where they're going to be I think is just one of...

many issues that are part of the messaging problem with the party. And like, look, you know, on paper, South Carolina made a lot of sense, right? Like, you know, much more diverse than New Hampshire and Iowa, you know, obviously Jim Clyburn and, you know, his connection with Jamie had a lot to do with that change. And yes, the New Hampshire delegation was very, very upset about it. And I believe still is.

if you ask most DNC members, I think they view that as kind of a settled issue now and that, you know, it is what it is. This is the new calendar. It's the new thing. I have to imagine they're going to keep that the same, that it's going to be South Carolina again, first, um,

you know, how the rules and procedures and how that shakes out, that's going to get figured out in probably the next year or two. The other big thing is going to be the convention, right? Figuring out where the next convention city should be. A lot of people were like, look, maybe we should just have it back in Chicago again, have JB write another blank check. I've heard a lot of people talk about Vegas. I've heard a lot of people talk about Atlanta, right? You know, I think...

There are some people who are like, maybe go, let's go back to Philadelphia again. He's going to have a lot of tough decisions to make. And, you know, because there is no White House kind of thumb on the scale telling you what to do right now, he's going to have a lot more freedom to make some of these tough decisions. And, you know, I mean, some of the decisions I'd love to see him make, you know, I don't see why we as a party can't treat conventions like this.

the Super Bowl or like the Olympics where we pick the next three or four locations in advance. Right. It's better for the party. It takes it out of the hands of the White House or the nominee. Right. It's something that we can just work on. Like there are so many things that he can do right now that if he has the DNC membership with him voting with him, which he will, there can be a lot of serious change that happens. But yeah, you're right. A lot of tough decisions coming his way.

Got it. Well, thanks so much for your time, Alex. This was fascinating. We'll see if there's a big shakeup. I don't know. He doesn't really give off disruptor vibes, but maybe I'm wrong. No, he's going to be, I think, that like happy medium. He's either going to be like...

you know, to some people, like you said, the nice guy and other people to like make the changes where he has to. He's not like the disruptor that I think people thought Ben was going to be. I think there were a lot of people that thought Ben was going to come in and like shake things up and just burn the whole thing to the ground and change everything. That's just not what I think was going to happen for either of them. But certainly I think Ken is not that guy. I think

He's like going to make real changes, I think, that need to happen. But look, you know, I mean, he's going to rely on a lot of really key things, a huge leadership team. He's going to rely on a lot of, I think, activists and donors at different levels basically chiming in and saying, this is what we want to see from our party. And I think he's going to be a little bit more receptive to hearing from folks, you know, in the states themselves. I mean, he's a guy that I think traveled to a ton of states the last two elections and just would talk to people.

Right. I mean, let's talk about how that was missing from our party for a few election cycles of we've just stopped talking to people. Be great if we did that again. Pretty basic. Yeah. Yeah. You'd think you'd think these basic things that we'd have that down because. But, you know, again, this is why we lose elections. Right. Fair. Did they talk a lot about eggs? Because I keep hearing about it. Actually, I have a friend who's also a former staffer who now lives on a farm.

And he has chickens. He, you know, makes his mix their own eggs. He actually brought a carton of eggs with him to the DNC meeting. And he tried to go through the mags and the security was like, no, you can't bring those eggs in here. He's like, no, these are just for a friend who knows I live on this farm. I'm going to give him some eggs. He's like, no, you can't do that because they thought he was going to like throw eggs at the stage. And I was like, oh, this is like too perfect. Imagine like, yeah, it's almost too perfect.

As they talk about the price of eggs. Correct. I mean, I feel like essentially what the Democrats are thinking is that they are just going to hammer all of the mistakes that Donald Trump makes, which he's already doing, and be like, look, he can't govern. You want to go back to normalcy, which is essentially why Joe Biden won. Also, he promised he'd lower the price of things. Oh, wait, the price of things has gone up, including the price of eggs. And that's a point that you can look at the price of eggs and you don't have to talk about the stock market. You don't have to talk about anything else and just point to that.

If Democrats haven't learned by now that just pointing at Trump being like, see, he's doing something wrong. Everybody look, he's doing something wrong. Or, oh, look, he's doing it. What he what he said he wouldn't do. Or, hey, is nobody paying attention that he's screwing all these things up? Doesn't work. Right. Like he's Teflon. He really is Teflon. I mean, people want to return to normalcy.

No, no. See, here's the thing. 2020, I view as the biggest anomaly election we've ever had. Right. Like it took a once in a generation global pandemic, people literally dying in the streets, literally for people to say, I guess we'll go with the other guy. I guess we'll go with old reliable. Right. And like the problem with that is like.

I think a bunch of people thought that Joe Biden ran the greatest campaign in history in 2020. We slayed the dragon and see the people were with us. I mean, Donald Trump still got, what, 75 million people to vote for him in 2020. Right. Like that's only the third most ever voted.

in the history of American politics. Like, it took the pandemic for that to happen. And then, sure enough, this election, he wins the popular vote, right? Like, no one's gonna convince me that if there was no pandemic in 2020, that Trump doesn't win that election. Because he does, right? And like, I just, there's no way out.

I think that we, since 2020 and now, have figured out that we can't attack him like he's a normal person or a normal politician or say, oh, look at classified documents or sexual assault cases or any of these other things. It just doesn't work.

The democracy angle didn't work, right? So this idea that we're going to be like, hey, our price of eggs are still too high. We're going to be screaming that for four years when the American people have already moved on to whatever the next thing is. Like, Democrats are really good at...

the fight correctly that we should have fought four years ago. Right. We finally will master the messaging on that messaging. But by that time it's happened, they've already moved on to something else. Right. Yeah. The attention span of the American people. Yeah. Yeah. But again, only only Democrats make those mistakes. You love it. You love to attack the party. OK, thanks so much for coming on. And yeah, always insightful to talk to you. So I hope you'll be back on again. Yeah. Anytime.

That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Troy Farkas and Connor Nevins. If you like this show, please subscribe, rate it, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, check me out on YouTube at Tara Palmieri on iTunes.

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