Trump Is Doubling Down on Iran. How Should Democrats Respond?

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With an unjustified, unexplained war spreading in the Middle East, with ice rampaging through

various American cities, with tariffs going up and down and up and down depending on

the day, Donald Trump's polling is continued to edge downward every week.

And yet the approval rating of the Democratic Party is still stuck near its all-time low

according to Gallup and other surveys.

One interpretation of these polls, one obvious interpretation, is that the deep unpopularity

of that letter D at the end of a candidate's name, is a huge albatross, around Democratic

candidates nationwide.

But there's another interpretation that I think is more interesting and perhaps more

true.

The fact that the party has no clearly defined leader, no clearly defined brand to use the

dreaded beward, is an opportunity for you.

For young Democrats to define it for themselves.

Rather than act like a congregation, all singing from the same hymnol, they can experiment,

disagree, adapt their message to the electorate.

Today's guest is Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego.

I think Gallego is interesting because he's hard to pin down.

He's deeply critical of the Trump administration and immigration, obviously.

But he was also deeply critical of the Biden administration on immigration.

While the concept of abundance, ideas from the book that I co-wrote with Ezra Klein, are

often held up in direct opposition to economic populism.

Gallego is a proponent of abundance principles who also isn't afraid to talk about taking

on corporate power and even breaking up companies.

He's someone who could be plausibly accused of being a moderate, but he questions the

very concept of moderation.

Today we talk about the latest in the Iran War before talking a bit about why the Democratic

Party is still so unpopular and why that unpopularity might be a sneaky opportunity.

And we end up in an interesting place that I didn't quite anticipate.

Democrats I think are very good at talking about affordability at the moment.

They're good at talking about redistribution too, how to bring people up to an income

level that is decent and dignified.

And I agree that Americans need to feel, want to feel that they can get through the day.

But I also believe, as Gallego does, that good politics has to offer something a bit

more than problem solving that brings people up to a minimum viable level of comfort.

I think good politics, maybe especially now, has to offer a vision of success in America,

a message of aspiration, not just affordability.

And so we end up talking about how Democrats can pull that off.

How the party that at times might sound like they mostly want to tax success might also

be a party that celebrates it.

I'm Derek Thompson.

This is Punish.

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Senator Ruben Gallego, welcome at the show.

Thanks for having me.

The war against Iran.

I don't know why we're doing this.

Sometimes the White House calls it a war.

Sometimes they insist it's not a war.

Marco Rubio, I think, said we had to do this because Israel was going to attack anyway.

And then he said we had to do this because Iran posed a direct threat to the United States.

Sometimes I feel like Trump calls reporter and says Iran's about to get on the phone,

and beg for peace.

And sometimes he says, get prepared to fight for weeks or months.

I'm confused.

You're a senator.

Based on what you've been told, why are we doing this?

That is a good question that they don't have an answer to and scarier for our troops.

I unfortunately had to experience this deja vu 21 years ago as a Marine in Al-Ambar,

where I, two years into the Iraq war, I was going town and town searching for insurgents,

but there was no clear direction.

What victory looked like?

What the end goal was?

What was going to be the after action report on Iraq?

And right now we don't know what actually brought us into this war.

There's been a lot of testing of messages, which scares me the fact they didn't actually

have a real reason, except for the real situation is probably because we could.

And that they don't know what victory looks like.

They don't know what happens after they destroy every launcher that Iranians have.

What happens if we're able to destroy every boat possible, every vehicle that moves

as owned by the Iranian military?

Yeah, what happens if the al-Yatola's successor is still in power?

Is that a victory?

I don't know.

It may not be a victory.

What was the end goal besides trying to destroy their military capability?

And then that only means that we're just putting off having to come back to it.

This is a very scary situation.

I think that's why the American public is against it.

None of this seems right.

None of this seems good.

And it's also totally off focus of where the American public wants us to be, which is

on domestic issues, because people are really hurting right now.

I want to get to where I think you were headed, which is making the war a domestic issue.

But I want to be clear about what I think you're telling me.

You're saying you haven't seen evidence that an attack was imminent?

Absolutely.

You haven't heard a case for a war and you haven't heard an end goal, articulate it.

Yeah.

All three?

No evidence.

No only an end goal.

No reason I heard, which is also not a reason, a rational reason, or end or a reason

to go around Congress, was that there was an imminent attack that was going to happen

because Israel was going to attack Iran with or without us.

And by that happening, that would mean that we were going to get an attack in retaliation.

For therefore, we had to join in a pre-immun attack on Israel, which is absolute BS.

Why are we subordinating our war-making decisions to any country, mind you?

We are the superpower of the world.

In what world would we allow the UK to decide to go to war with us, or any NATO partner,

or anybody else?

And so that first excuse, or the first reason, which I actually think is probably pretty

close to the truth, felt like a lead way in Maga world.

And that's why you're seeing a big retreat because Maga world does not like the messaging

of we went to war because Israel forced our hands.

One of the things I want to talk to you about is democratic messaging.

And I think a key part of that is focus.

With Trump, there's always an oversupply of things that Democrats can criticize.

But I think good messaging isn't about saying everything about everything.

It's about being deliberate about what you ignore and what you say.

Exactly.

Take the case of Iran.

I feel like you could criticize this on several grounds.

You could criticize this war on constitutional grounds.

The president started a war.

Process, yes.

That's right.

That's Article I.

That's the role of Congress.

You can prosecute it on moral grounds, the Iranian children, the American lives lost.

You can also focus on economic grounds.

Look at oil prices.

Look at the pain Americans are going through and this isn't responsive to their pain.

What's the message that you think Democrats should focus on?

I think it's very simple.

This is a war of choice and there's a distraction from focusing on what people need right

now, lower prices, be able to buy a home, be able to buy a car.

Keep it very simple.

It's simple as possible.

And I don't know if Derek and I talked about this, but I've always been an advocate

is yes.

I don't have to fight everywhere all the time.

We had to be very selective of the battles we take this president on because he does try

to overwhelm us and we are in the minority.

So we need to be very smart about when we attack and when we don't attack.

When we let some things just slide away because you know what, it's a distraction or it'll

take us away from the base of orders that we need to do.

Sometimes you have to engage because there is an ethical reasons to engage and I think

war is one of them.

But in this instance, this is the first time in quite a while that war of this nature

is also extremely unpopular at first go.

If you, you know, for those that are old enough, I'm not sure you are, but, you know,

the Iraq and Afghanistan, what we're actually very popular among, you know, voters when

they first kicked off Afghanistan, understandably so, but Iraq was, you know, still popular

when we first kicked off.

There was a lot of belief in the American public or the American government's assertion

that the, you know, Iraq was a danger to us.

Right now, there is not even a real assertion by this administration that Iran is a direct

threat to us.

They don't have the ICBM capabilities nearly enough to even like hit our homeland, not

for years to come.

Certainly don't have the capability to load on a nuclear weapon.

The nuclear weapon system, the nuclear weapon program was severely on the back foot.

And with, you know, true real diplomatic efforts, if we wanted to, I do feel that we could

have had a solution that would have kept us out of this war.

I think, you know, this was set in motion years and years ago when the president took,

the current president took us out of the Iran nuclear deal.

I told you that I wanted to talk about the future of the Democratic Party and then the

Iran war comes up.

And I think it's absolutely critical that we start there because that's the breaking

news.

But scoping out a little bit, if you told me all the things that Trump would have done

and said in the first 13, 14 months, this administration, if you told me all those things,

13 or 14 months ago, I think I would have predicted that the Democratic Party would

have surged in popularity.

And instead, at least as a brand, the Democratic Party is still less popular today than in

basically any period in modern history, according to Gallup polling.

Why do you think people say they hate the Democratic Party so much?

I think for two is, I think number one, there's just generally an anti-establishment feeling

across the country.

People that are just sick of both parties and we're one of those two parties.

Because we don't actually have a brand, and I know this sounds really dumb that I'm speaking

in this way, we don't actually have one person.

I introduced the hated word, so it's okay if you look at it.

We don't have one brand ambassador, right?

So it's very hard for people to say, hey, I like that Democrat, therefore I am a Democrat.

Now if you pull individual Democrats and individual states, elected officials, they're fairly

popular.

I'm the most popular Democrat in Arizona, Reddit Arizona, right?

There is something that's happening, but the overall brand does suck.

I think that actually starts shifting the closer and closer you get to elections, and

you could kind of see that because we keep winning elections, right?

So I think that will eventually change.

I think that it's also important the other thing that needs to happen now is that the Democrats,

House and Senate leadership have to start introducing real economic policies that people

can say, damn right, I'm with those guys, right?

And you're kind of seeing some of those things already, right?

Like the blowback to ICE and immigration enforcement has been a huge aid to Democrats, right?

Because now that one of the strongest points that Republicans have is now weakness, right?

And we're really seeing this in a lot of Latino neighborhoods and precincts where there

is massive switch from people that were Republican curious or anti-democratic, they're now running

back to the Democratic Party, which is happening in Texas as a good example.

But you're seeing this all over the country in different parts of the country and different

regions altogether.

I think an obvious thing to say is that historically, a little approval ratings for Democratic

Party are embarrassing and horrible, but there's a less obvious conclusion to draw that

I think you were beginning to scratch at, which is that even though you have historically

little approval ratings for the party writ large, in a way that almost frees up individual

Democrats to run without just being a chip off the party board, like they can be themselves,

they can, you can run a socialist in New York, you can run, you know, a centrist in Nevada,

is it crazy for me to think that the party is national brand being, I won't use the

brand anymore, that because as you said, there is no hearty leader who epitomizes what

this, that's exactly what it means, that everyone can essentially run as if auditioning

to be that possible party leader, there's, there's, there's a, that vacuum frees up people

to the spirit.

Yeah, it's not even let's say, yeah, it's not a vacuum frees you up so you could be the

leader, but the vacuum is, is there, so therefore you don't have to check in with the leader.

In the sense that, like I don't have to check my messaging with team Biden, because team

Biden is not there, there is nobody there there, right?

And not that I wouldn't have, that I would do that necessarily, but I think a lot of people

are team players, Democrats are team players, not just under Biden, but under, you know,

President Obama, under President Clinton, even, or even under, you know, VP Harris's race

or Secretary Clinton's race, we are team players, so I, you know, we don't want to necessarily

hurt our own leadership as that leadership is the brand.

So we don't actually move too far left or right.

We don't experiment.

We don't kind of go away from the party line, because then it actually is going to potentially

hurt people in our coalition and the coalition leader, which is tends to be the president

or the leader of, you know, the Democratic Party at that point, where the nominee is.

Now, we don't have that right now, right?

A hundred percent true.

And I think what that does is does make a lot of us feel a lot more liberated to kind

of just test things up.

And the other thing is that we don't, especially younger members of the House in the Center

which is younger political leaders, I think a lot of us just aren't stuck on orthodoxy.

I don't believe that I can only have, you know, conservative democratic positions, moderate,

you know, centric, centric positions or, you know, liberal democratic positions.

I think I can mix them all up because I think that's how the American public is, at least

that's what I've seen.

And I will pick and choose what I think is good for, you know, for the people I'm trying

to represent.

In the past, what I've seen, kind of older politicians, they kind of get stuck in their

orthodoxy, right?

If I'm a blue dog, I'm only going to be a blue dog, I'm going to do blue dog things,

the blue dog way, right?

If I'm a progressive, I'm going to do progressive things, the progressive way, and that's it.

And know across over.

And I think you're seeing that that environment change a lot, which is extremely, extremely

helpful.

And, you know, it helps us, can I just throw shit against the wall and see what sticks?

I guess that's a bad analogy.

Throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks.

Well, let's stick with spaghetti.

Okay, spaghetti, yeah.

The way you just described, you know, sampling policies, I don't say sampling policies across

the buffet because it's not, it's not frivolous.

It's not frivolous.

It's not frivolous.

Yeah.

You don't, you don't feel bound by the straight jacket of some ideological legacy that like

spaghetti because you're a center left senator, that therefore you have to embrace all the

positions that some elites designate a center left.

Absolutely.

And I thought that during the Senate race, like when the Senate race, for example, people

were very confused, like, you're all over the place, like, no, I'm not over the place,

like literally I am, you know, progressive in some areas, I'm conservative in some areas,

I'm moderating some areas.

And by the way, that's how the Arizona electorate is.

And I think that, you know, that's a little more authentic than us kind of being orthodox

all the time.

There's so many places that I want to go from this and I'm just trying to keep things

straightforward in my head.

The first place that I think this connects to, the first conversation I think your comments

connect to, is this conversation about the value of moderation, you know, as I'm sure

you know, like close to my world of policy and polling nerds, there's a furious debate

about whether or not Democrats need to moderate.

And this word is particularly used for cultural issues, moderate to win.

And there's this knockdown drag out debate among the political scientists.

You see the text messages, you see the group chat, I'm not going to labor this point,

but let me, we're not going to make this a Harvard seminar over the definition of moderation.

Maybe they put it too.

You don't want me to be.

Okay.

Let me, let me put it to you really, really simply.

Here's a claim to expand their appeal in states and districts currently controlled

by Republicans.

Democrats have to moderate to win.

Okay.

Period.

How would you evaluate that statement?

I guess like for me, the problem is more the word.

You need to do whatever, let me, let me, you need to do what it takes to win that states

within the, your value system.

First of all, as an, as an elected, right?

This is me telling you, someone that had to put their name on the ballot and had to

run a very hard race in a very hard year, you know, Arizona was a very, very Republican

year in 2024.

And the way I look at this, like my state has, has, has 315,000 more registered Democrats

than Republicans.

It's Republicans, then independence, then Democrats and declining, right?

And so I didn't think about this, like I need to moderate on this in order to get, you

know, this vote to come this way with you like that.

I kind of thought about it more along the line.

So like this is the demographic.

And I know in some areas, this is where they care about.

And this, am I aligned with that, right?

Look, I'll give you some really easy examples.

Yeah, give me like policing, right?

You know, there was, there was a vein that carried all the way into 2024, among definitely

based Democrats about, you know, not being too pro-police, not just that you had to be

abolished, I, sorry, abolished the police, which was a very, you know, extreme movement.

But even if you actually were too, you know, police, pro-police, that was actually kind

of, you know, anti-democratic or piss off your base.

And I remember, I'll give you a good example.

I got the endorsement of the police union in Arizona, that same police union endorse Donald

Trump the same year, right?

And there was a lot of conversation about whether I should even take the endorsement, whether

I should, you know, take the endorsement, but don't announce it.

And one of the things that I had to, you know, be very clear about to supporters, to staff

was that, you know, we don't have the luxury of not winning, right?

We just got handed a winning hand.

Are we in agreement with the police union 100%?

No.

But is it, doesn't matter if I win or I lose, because if I don't win, Kay Lake is, is in

this office.

And though the politics of Arizona changes, and potentially, you know, because it's only

100 centers, the politics of the country changes, right?

So I need to understand that, you know, at this position, you know, and because I can morally

support it, because I do believe that, especially lone Cameras want good policing, that I should

take that endorsement.

Immigration enforces the other one, right?

You know, we had a very, what I think would be described as to some of moderate position

on immigration enforcement during the election.

Somebody would say it was actually kind of liberal, because I, I was, it was like, I think

we should have immigration reform, but I also think we should have secure borders.

Like, that was like a, a very moderate position to some people, but that's actually literally

what everyone there was on a thought.

And I felt like I can ethically believe that, because I did believe that.

And I ran with it.

What I won't do is I won't do something that's just truly inauthentic, because I think

the American public is really smart.

And if you are just like triangulating for the sake of votes, they're going to smell it.

And if you're trying to, for the sake of, of say, so you could say that you're moderate

and show the moderate, they're going to smell it.

So I think that's not necessarily what we want to do.

But look, when it comes to individual candidates in these really, really red states, especially

because yes, we have to win races.

We should tolerate what we can from them, as long as they win those races.

And when we get, we get the men, then we have to get through a negotiation, right?

Like you may run in some areas where you're a little more on the conservative side.

But when you get to the Senate, you know, you could speak all you want.

But when it comes to certain votes and stuff of that, you know, we want to make sure that

you're not out there to screw some of the most important, you know, basis.

I want to drill down an immigration a little bit.

It's a really interesting issue where it seems to me that the polling is relatively straightforward

that America is in some ways almost historically pro-immigration from the standpoint of do

Americans think that immigration makes the country better?

I think these are questions that Pew and Gallup ask a lot of time.

And in general, that line is gone diagonally up.

Americans also don't seem to like chaos at the border or chaos.

Anyway, there's really not a lot of the American voters that are like what I really

want is the feeling of chaos right outside of America.

Absolutely.

And I say that by the way that nobody wants chaos in the border and it wants chaos in our streets.

Right.

Yeah, no, I think I think your anti-KS message has large purchase.

It's an issue to me that immigration, the moderate position seems relatively easy to identify.

And yet policy, as it exists in the executive branch, seems to swing quite wildly

from far right in Trump 1.0 to an incredibly different lacks.

One could argue left wing immigration policy under Biden and then swinging back all the way

under Trump 2.0 to ICE in the street.

What is it about immigration that makes it so hard for the moderate position

that seems to be the mainstream American opinion on this issue?

To actually find a home in the White House.

It's because immigration, immigration issues when it comes to policy side are actually

shaped by the extremes of the issue.

And so, you know, for example, if you if you were involved in policy making for the last

because a million years like I have when it comes to immigration,

immigration enforcement issues, the people that have actually been have had the most power

have had the most kind of liberal positions on immigration, right?

Liberal to the point where, you know, Latina voters felt that they that it was out of line.

But what happens a lot of times because the policy making brain of the Democrat party in terms of,

you know, immigration tends to come from liberal groups.

A lot of times when these senators and members of Congress and committees start looking for

the brain power, they go pick from those liberal groups and bring them in.

And that's where it's shaped.

And so, you know, if you talking to some former Biden cabinet members and staff,

one of the things they had a very huge internal problem was that there was no consistency

or forceful immigration policy that made that help the Biden administration make decisions, right?

Instinctively, some of them knew that what was happening, the border was horrible.

They needed to come down and, you know, have enforcement.

But they just didn't know how to do without having political blowout or fall back.

My contention to them last November before the elections in November 2023 is that

the blowback they're talking about doesn't exist.

The blowback is, is imaginary, which really surprised me that they just did not get that because

the Biden, what do you, what do you mean the blowback is imaginary?

The, the, the blowback at the polls is imaginary because people are going to pick up the phone

and scream at the Biden administration, pick up the, they're definitely going to pick up

and scream and they're going to get on Twitter and call you everything else like that.

But you're not going to get punished at the polls for trying to bring chaos,

the chaos down on the border, right?

But they just, there was no way for them to kind of feel that that was correct,

even though I was on the same ballot and I was telling them, like, no, no, no,

this is what I'm doing and I'm hearing on the road, like what I'm saying is working,

you could do the same.

And they were looking for an out.

Let me tell you because I, again, I was involved in all this when the, the Senate Democrats

and Senate Republicans said, we're going to negotiate a deal.

The Biden administration was so happy because now they got to give, take this issue away from.

They didn't have to be the bad guy.

They were hoping that the Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats would come up with a solution

to the border and then it was a bipartisan solution.

And of course, that never happened, right?

And what did Biden do correctly?

Starting in June, July, he came down with a lot of these changes and you started seeing

border crossings dropping dramatically.

He, again, but it was like the extremes that were kind of forming the policy positions

of the White House at that point.

The same thing happens though to Republicans.

Even though the moderate position is yes, border enforcement, but yes,

I want some kind of immigration reform and I want some visas.

The extremes of the Republican Party, in terms of the policy making side,

come from the numbers USA guys, all these other people that believe in zero-sum game when it comes to

immigration. And they also create this world that informs Donald Trump.

And that's why Donald Trump is losing now because he went out of where the normie-american is,

right? The normie-american wants people that are here in this country legally to have serious

crimes to be deported. They want that person that is working at the taco shop that they really

like or the coffee shop they really liked. They want that person to be given an opportunity to stay

here legally. You could question whether citizenship is here or there.

Pretty big consensus that if you have a son or daughter that's an American citizen,

you should have a right to stay and become a citizen. Pretty big consensus if you're a dreamer

or the same thing. But the people that are the most extreme are on the Republican side are the ones

that are in the policy making world. Lastly, the reason this all comes to a head is because the

filibuster has created an environment where the extreme will get to dominate that because if you

can't get to 60, then you end up losing the battle. And some of this has been Democrats

on our part. We had the opportunity to pass the Dream Act. We didn't. Three Democrats

joined with Republicans to block the Dream Act. A dumb move on their part. They assumed that it would

be politically hurt them to give dreamers a pathway to citizenship. Republicans on the other end

also thought that we have any type of immigration reform happens. It would be in the world.

So they fill the bus with that. There is no world just to be clear. And I think Democrats

will explain that there's no world that we're going to get conference immigration reform

with the filibuster. It's just not going to happen. And what has happened in the past is that

Republicans have said no. And the Democrats continue to push forward this massive, massive bill

that makes it easier for them to say no. So two things are going to have to occur. We're going to have

to start doing piecemeal legislation, which, you know, some of these groups have been against for

quite a while, or we have to bust a filibuster and just get this done, which I am for. But the

status of us not doing anything, by the way, is the thing that's hurting us the most. The fact that

we keep talking about it is what hurts the most when it comes to some of these voters that we

keep promising we're going to do it. What does it mean to live a rich life? It means brave first

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A theme from what you just said and I think a theme from immigration policy in the last few years

is that good politics, good electoral politics, I think, is very responsive to what's happening

in the world. But that can sometimes mean that the policy that emerges from various elections

is over-responsive. We react, the Democrats react in 2021, as opposed to Biden becomes the

president, too much to the Trump example and swing too far to the left, and then you have Trump

coming back in the office and his politics is incredibly reactive. Yeah, the policies are

holding on that idea just a bit. The idea that good politics are reactive, but one outcome of

that is that policy can sometimes be over-reactive. You've said that one of the policies you're

interested in if, or when, Democrats have executive power again, is you want to target these

big mergers if the Trump administration is allowed among his friends. So for example, Warner Brothers

Discovery was recently paid on by Netflix, but Warner Brothers will instead go to Paramount.

No surprise, Paramount has run by David Ellison. He's the son of billionaire oracle CEO,

Larry Ellison, Trump's friend, and regarding these sort of friends of Trump deals, which is a theme

that extends beyond Warner Brothers Discovery Paramount. You said the following, quote,

once we take power, whoever the president is, we're going to break up your companies. This is what

you told Simifore, continuing with your quote. So all the investments you did to create those

mergers are going to be for naught. Your investors are going to be pissed at you and you're likely

going to end up getting fired as a CEO because you wasted so much time and money and corrupted

yourself in the process. And quote, I don't want to suggest that this is an overreaction. I want to

make that very, very clear. My real question here is of all the things to focus on. Why are you focusing

this? Well, it's not a focus. It's more of a warning shot because you were dealing with multi-billion

dollar corporations that right now feel that they can do whatever they want. Now, why does that matter?

Who's in charge of Twitter right now? Who's in charge of, you know, all the other social

media TikTok? TikTok. Who's in charge of some of those? By the way, for folks who don't know

at home, Ellison, Larry Ellison, Ellison, the elder is also on the buying party that got TikTok.

Who's in charge of some of these massive media collaborations? We have seen

anti-Trump messaging being throttled by social media already. We have seen pro-democratic

messaging being throttled already by social media. We're about to go into another election.

And we have to put it within our brain that is entirely possible that these massive corporations

that feel that they owe it to Donald Trump will listen to Donald Trump. If he says, like, I'd want

you to stop democratic messaging in this upcoming election, I want you to, you know,

meet or what's happening. That's entirely a possibility. Now, we don't actually have control

because we have no power as elected officials right now. We don't have control of the FTC or

anything else like that. But we have the power of, you know, future repercussions. And as, you know,

you have a lot of one of the most important areas to do is have these corporate boards that are,

you know, have a lot of shareholders. And to see, oh, you have to look out for the betterment

of your, you know, company, or you can be held responsible, we need to start basically socializing

that. So is it the thing I'm worried about? No. What I'm worried about is making sure we win election.

And this is one of those instruments that they're going to potentially use. And we need to make sure

that there is a serious, serious threat so they could actually make a calculation in their minds

if they're going to engage in this type of corruption and over, you know, government-aligned fascism.

I mean, it's that simple. So I co-authored a book called Abundance. You co-authored an idea with

Madaglacedus called Big Ass Truck Abundance. What is that? Well, Big Ass Truck Abundance. And it could

be anywhere, right? Like the Big Ass Truck for us in the Southwest for Latinos is important.

And for people in New York, it's like, you know, the Brooklyn walk-up, maybe some like that, right?

Sure. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not trying. I'm not even trying to be funny.

Brooklyn walk-up is the Big Ass Truck is a funny sort of cultural translation from Arizona to

Brooklyn. I'm doing my best here. But what I'm trying to say is that most, I actually think this

is actually like majority of Americans, super-majors are aspirational, right? And they want to

succeed. They want to be comfortable. This is this comes more from an immigrant background. The

reason we, you know, my family did everything to get to the United States is because it sucked

in the countries they were at. You know, my family was poor in Mexico and poor in Colombia.

They could have stayed there and stayed in poverty. They could have stayed there and been on the

their version of the social welfare endole. But they didn't. They came to the United States because

they want to build something. They wanted to have stability. They wanted to be successful. And I

think Democrats need to own that. We need to be the party of success. We need to be the party of,

you know, what it's okay if you do well. We just don't want you to screw other people in the

process of doing well. And so we need to kind of like, you know, organize around that because

that is something that is very, you know, I think very deep and personal to every American

that they want to succeed. And we should be the party that figures out how to do that, right?

The policies, the programs that help them get that. So that way they can, you know, do well

enough to buy that big ass truck, right? And the big ass truck again is not the actual truck.

It's the pride of it, right? You get out there, you'd ride around with your,

your boys on the weekends, you drive it through your community, you know, you wash it with your

family. It shows to your community that I'm here. I've made it, right? It is, it is a symbolic,

you know, totem that you are living the good American life. And again, that could be anything for

everyone else. But we need to be the party that that's with that like, I'm want to vote for the

Democrats is I'm going that those guys are going to help me hit that. We kind of split away from

that in the past like it for the last couple of election cycles. I think we need to we move back

into that. That's part of like a big, you know, winning message or they're going forward.

I'm so interested in this idea. I mean, we only have 10 minutes left. I could do an hour on this.

But there's really something that I think you hit on with big ass truck abundance. It's not SUV

abundance. It's not many than abundance, right? There's there's there's a celebration of success,

exuberance and extravagance that isn't embarrassed at extravagance. Exactly. It's almost sounds

you're probably an American essentially. It's like the it's you're just you're just one step away

from just like, like, damn right. I made it in this country. What I think is what I think is

cool about this idea that that doesn't doesn't have sufficient articulation. I think the Democratic

Party yet is that, you know, Democrats are in danger, I think, of developing the reputation of

like tall poppy syndrome. Like you've got local Democrats who are against gifts and talented

programs. You've got Democrats talking about the rich who often do terrible things. You've got

Democrats reposing billionaire wealth taxes, which in many cases I think might be worthwhile. And yet

when you pull it all together, I feel like it's a party that's very good at using euphemisms

for middle class plenty. Well, sort of. I mean, I think it makes me

let's back up because, for example, you talked about like getting rid of the gifted program and

what are like one of these other things? Like, I don't know where that comes from, but there's

no actual parents and parents group. And you and I are both parents. I have a kid in elementary

school and he's, you know, in one of these gifted programs. But there's no parent or parental

group that wants to get rid of these gifted programs. It's it's some it's it is capture

biological capture by the school boards. And it's the dumbest thing you could do because the way

you keep the best parents in the school systems, which sometimes, you know, have a mixture of all

these economic, you know, groups is to have these programs, right? And the those parents are the

ones that are most involved to the ones with the biggest advocates. They want to hold everything

more accountable. I hate when I hear these things happening where in the name of, I guess like

equity or a egalitarianism, whatever the hell it is, they go and they destroy some of these

programs that are actually very important, by the way, for lower income students to actually use

to kind of rise in terms of the economic and social economic and power. Like, you know,

English is my second language. If I didn't have some of these programs when I started hitting

junior high, I don't think I would have built the confidence order for me to even decide to go

to college. When they start stripping these kind of programs away, you're no longer telling,

you know, the voter base that Democrats are about building that aspirational future, right?

We replace what is, you know, a good idea, like in a very valued thing that we should go for,

which is equity, and you're replacing it with everyone potentially just ended up on the same level.

And that doesn't make sense to people. It doesn't make sense to, especially to to work in class

Latinos, which I would probably know the best. Even when you're billionaires, right? Is there a

billionaire tax that could work out and voters can be for, especially middle classers? Absolutely.

I think there's something there. I think we have to work out the numbers with the effects,

right? All that kind of stuff, right? But there also has to still be this general attitude, like,

hey, we want you to be super rich. We're totally fine with that. We just don't want you to screw

people in the process and we want you to pay your fair, fair taxes, right? There needs to be a

real good kind of messaging component to this beyond just punishing success.

Right. I think you need, it's these two ways together, right? You need affordability and you need

aspirations, right? We want to make your life easier now. And also we want to, right,

pave this road, legal road that allows you to dream about a better life. You know, the Wall Street

General did this, this survey that I've never forgotten, maybe like three years ago. They asked

Americans how much money do you need to be happy? And every income level said, I need 50% more.

Folks who made $40,000 said, give me 60. Folks who made 90s said, give me 135. And so on all the way

up the income ladder, people want to be meaningfully richer. And I want, and I think this is especially

true for young, for young folks, especially for maybe even for young men. And I really don't want

the Democratic Party to shut its doors to the millions of voters who might see themselves in the

party. Right. If they thought the Democratic Party was outwardly and unembarrassed. Yeah.

Who being for success and not just a merely. The other thing is the reason we want to be successful

because we're actually the only part of that. We'll actually deliver that for them. Right.

We're the only party that will actually put the policy, the programs together to make sure

they succeed. Right. Because a lot of this requires government intervention, government

investment. It's going to have higher taxes on the rich to actually give some subsidies to,

I would say, the poor. And if we, and if they, we are not elected to do it, the Republicans

get like to do it. And they're just going to like throw more hate and distraction to them.

And so, and, but I do want to make sure that we, we, they, they feel they have a future with us.

And we have to actively think about what that means. Like, how do we make their lives better?

Lastly, we, I think we, it's just my point before I got to go though. The reason I think

young people have a problem right now is because they actually remember what how their parents were.

And their parents had jobs, they had vacations, they had stability. And now they're looking at

their own personal policy choices. She could come in. She could come in. My daughter's asking for

me. They're asking for personal policy choices. They don't get these policy choices that are,

that they're not getting. You know, they're working harder and they have less. They're working harder

and they have more stress. And the Democrats need to figure out how to answer that.

Senator McGiaggo, thank you very much. Thank you. Have a good one, bud.