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Yahoo
44 minutes ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Democratic Party is ripe for a takeover
The signs have been bubbling up for months: The Democratic base is fed up with the status quo of their party. Democratic voters believe their party leaders are out of touch, and they don't think they're rising to meet this moment. They want more confrontation with President Donald Trump, and they're hungry for an inspiring, forward-looking economic vision. That sentiment comes through in just about all the polling of the party, in focus groups with voters, and in anti-Trump protests and populist rallies since Trump's inauguration. The latest sign of this frustration might just be the stunning result of New York City's mayoral primary this week. The victory of a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani over the embodiment of the Democratic establishment, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, all with high turnout and a comfortable margin of victory, suggests Democratic voters are open to radical change. Of course, there are plenty of peculiarities that make a New York City primary contest a bit of a unique case: a toxic early front-runner, ranked-choice voting, and an open field of candidates during an off-year election. These specifics all make it risky to try to draw national implications from a local race. But there's at least one big warning for national Democrats from this upset: the kind of anti-establishment energy that boosted Mamdani exists in Democratic enclaves around the country. It feels familiar — reminiscent of 2009 and the rise of the Tea Party among the Republican Party's conservative base that ended up remaking the GOP. The energy also feels similar, but more widespread, than what boosted progressive victories during primaries in Trump's first term. And that energy suggests that the forces that remade the GOP could be aligning for Democrats to face a Tea Party moment of their own. It remains to be seen whether this revolt will turn into a leftward shift of the party's ideological positions. But it appears at least likely to result in targeting older and established incumbents, replacing the party's leadership, or, at a minimum, forcing those leaders to be more aggressive against Trump, accommodating of younger leaders, and less complacent when faced with populist anger. So as the national Democratic Party continues its post-2024 soul-searching, its incumbents and leaders are getting a clear warning. The ingredients are here for a populist revolt within the Democratic Party. Will leaders adjust and listen? This year's Democratic rage is very different from the last time Trump was elected president: The base wants not just confrontation with Republicans but to replace the party's leadership entirely. Consider a June Ipsos poll of Democrats, the latest of many surveys showing the Democratic base is unhappy with the state of their party. About half of Democrats are 'unsatisfied with current leadership,' and 62 percent said 'party leaders should be replaced.' This dissatisfaction is historic. Going back to 2009, Democrats haven't been this upset with their party before. As noted, the last time a party's base was worked up was during the Republicans' Tea Party movement, which culminated in Trump's GOP takeover. Unlike previous moments of Democratic infighting, this divide isn't primarily about ideology. That same June poll found that Democrats want their party to focus more on affordability, on getting the wealthy to pay more on taxes, and health care expansion. Older and younger Democrats are broadly in agreement about prioritizing economic concerns over social issues — and there aren't that many differences between what younger and older Democrats want to prioritize. Instead, it's a fight over priorities. There's a huge gulf between what each cohort of Democratic voters think their party does focus on and what it should focus on, particularly because younger Democrats are more progressive and think their leaders don't care enough about universal health care, affordability, or taxing the rich. On this front, age is becoming the big dividing line within the party. Previous polls have shown that overwhelming shares of Democratic voters want their party to run 'younger candidates that represent a new generation of leadership' and 'encourage elderly leaders to retire and pass the torch to the younger generation.' Dissatisfaction with 'the establishment' is overwhelming. The result of these combined feelings may lead to more Mamdani moments, according to some activists and strategists. Already a handful of younger candidates have announced primaries of longtime incumbents in California, Illinois, and Indiana. More are expected in blue states like Massachusetts and New York, including in the New York City region. Even party activists have announced that primarying older incumbents should be a party priority. And there are signs this energy exists at every level of politics. At the grassroots, liberal, anti-Trump energy is still bubbling up through smaller but more frequent protests. Though it may seem like the 2017–18 #Resistance protests were more visible than those of 2025, various tracking efforts show that protests this year are happening more often and in a more localized manner. One metric from Harvard, for example, finds that there have been more than 15,000 protests since Trump's second inauguration. In that same time in 2017, the number was smaller: over 5,000 protests. As far as turning this energy into political action, there are also clear signs. Since Tuesday's primary, the progressive political organization Run for Something, which recruits and supports young people who want to run for office, is reporting a surge in candidate recruitment, with more than 2,700 people signing up to explore campaigns as of Friday afternoon. The organization's president, Amanda Litman, says it's one of the biggest spikes in interest since Trump's election, mirroring the grassroots intensity generated after the Elon Musk-backed Department of Government Efficiency began to make cuts across the federal government and when Democrats helped avoid a government shutdown this spring. And it brings the number of young potential candidates who have expressed interest in running for office since Trump's election to more than 50,000 people. 'We are seeing more young people than ever before raise their hands to run, not in spite of the chaos, but because of it. They are bringing urgency, boldness, energy, and their lived experience to the table. They are ready to change what leadership looks like in this country,' Litman said. How successful these efforts at generational change will be remains to be seen. The GOP's internal revolt back in 2009 and 2010 contributed to the party's takeover of the House by boosting conservative and Republican enthusiasm, but Tea Party candidates had more success in winning primaries than winning general elections. (That dynamic shifted some after Trump's total takeover of the party.) Similarly, calls for the Democrats to move left, and embrace a more progressive agenda, seem to resonate with a party whose membership has become much more liberal over the last 20 years. But that might be a misreading of a national electorate's mood, particularly after a presidential election that showed large segments of the electorate were hostile to Democrats' 'liberal' identity. Insurgent populist candidates have many steps ahead to win primaries and then prove they can win general elections. But it's not inconceivable to think they can do it. There was a time when the GOP's populist wing was considered fringe — extreme, even. We all know how that turned out.
Vox
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Vox
The Democratic Party is ripe for a takeover
is a senior politics reporter at Vox, where he covers the Democratic Party. He joined Vox in 2022 after reporting on national and international politics for the Atlantic's politics, global, and ideas teams, including the role of Latino voters in the 2020 election. The signs have been bubbling up for months: The Democratic base is fed up with the status quo of their party. Democratic voters believe their party leaders are out of touch, and they don't think they're rising to meet this moment. They want more confrontation with President Donald Trump, and they're hungry for an inspiring, forward-looking economic vision. That sentiment comes through in just about all the polling of the party, in focus groups with voters, and in anti-Trump protests and populist rallies since Trump's inauguration. The latest sign of this frustration might just be the stunning result of New York City's mayoral primary this week. The victory of a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani over the embodiment of the Democratic establishment, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, all with high turnout and a comfortable margin of victory, suggests Democratic voters are open to radical change. Of course, there are plenty of peculiarities that make a New York City primary contest a bit of a unique case: a toxic early front-runner, ranked-choice voting, and an open field of candidates during an off-year election. These specifics all make it risky to try to draw national implications from a local race. But there's at least one big warning for national Democrats from this upset: the kind of anti-establishment energy that boosted Mamdani exists in Democratic enclaves around the country. It feels familiar — reminiscent of 2009 and the rise of the Tea Party among the Republican Party's conservative base that ended up remaking the GOP. The energy also feels similar, but more widespread, than what boosted progressive victories during primaries in Trump's first term. And that energy suggests that the forces that remade the GOP could be aligning for Democrats to face a Tea Party moment of their own. It remains to be seen whether this revolt will turn into a leftward shift of the party's ideological positions. But it appears at least likely to result in targeting older and established incumbents, replacing the party's leadership, or, at a minimum, forcing those leaders to be more aggressive against Trump, accommodating of younger leaders, and less complacent when faced with populist anger. So as the national Democratic Party continues its post-2024 soul-searching, its incumbents and leaders are getting a clear warning. The ingredients are here for a populist revolt within the Democratic Party. Will leaders adjust and listen? Democratic voters are on board with generational change This year's Democratic rage is very different from the last time Trump was elected president: The base wants not just confrontation with Republicans but to replace the party's leadership entirely. Consider a June Ipsos poll of Democrats, the latest of many surveys showing the Democratic base is unhappy with the state of their party. About half of Democrats are 'unsatisfied with current leadership,' and 62 percent said 'party leaders should be replaced.' This dissatisfaction is historic. Going back to 2009, Democrats haven't been this upset with their party before. As noted, the last time a party's base was worked up was during the Republicans' Tea Party movement, which culminated in Trump's GOP takeover. Unlike previous moments of Democratic infighting, this divide isn't primarily about ideology. That same June poll found that Democrats want their party to focus more on affordability, on getting the wealthy to pay more on taxes, and health care expansion. Older and younger Democrats are broadly in agreement about prioritizing economic concerns over social issues — and there aren't that many differences between what younger and older Democrats want to prioritize. Instead, it's a fight over priorities. There's a huge gulf between what each cohort of Democratic voters think their party does focus on and what it should focus on, particularly because younger Democrats are more progressive and think their leaders don't care enough about universal health care, affordability, or taxing the rich. On this front, age is becoming the big dividing line within the party. Previous polls have shown that overwhelming shares of Democratic voters want their party to run 'younger candidates that represent a new generation of leadership' and 'encourage elderly leaders to retire and pass the torch to the younger generation.' Dissatisfaction with 'the establishment' is overwhelming. The result of these combined feelings may lead to more Mamdani moments, according to some activists and strategists. Already a handful of younger candidates have announced primaries of longtime incumbents in California, Illinois, and Indiana. More are expected in blue states like Massachusetts and New York, including in the New York City region. Even party activists have announced that primarying older incumbents should be a party priority. And there are signs this energy exists at every level of politics. At the grassroots, liberal, anti-Trump energy is still bubbling up through smaller but more frequent protests. Though it may seem like the 2017–18 #Resistance protests were more visible than those of 2025, various tracking efforts show that protests this year are happening more often and in a more localized manner. One metric from Harvard, for example, finds that there have been more than 15,000 protests since Trump's second inauguration. In that same time in 2017, the number was smaller: over 5,000 protests. How far can we expect this new movement to go? As far as turning this energy into political action, there are also clear signs. Since Tuesday's primary, the progressive political organization Run for Something, which recruits and supports young people who want to run for office, is reporting a surge in candidate recruitment, with more than 2,700 people signing up to explore campaigns as of Friday afternoon. The organization's president, Amanda Litman, says it's one of the biggest spikes in interest since Trump's election, mirroring the grassroots intensity generated after the Elon Musk-backed Department of Government Efficiency began to make cuts across the federal government and when Democrats helped avoid a government shutdown this spring. And it brings the number of young potential candidates who have expressed interest in running for office since Trump's election to more than 50,000 people. 'We are seeing more young people than ever before raise their hands to run, not in spite of the chaos, but because of it. They are bringing urgency, boldness, energy, and their lived experience to the table. They are ready to change what leadership looks like in this country,' Litman said. How successful these efforts at generational change will be remains to be seen. The GOP's internal revolt back in 2009 and 2010 contributed to the party's takeover of the House by boosting conservative and Republican enthusiasm, but Tea Party candidates had more success in winning primaries than winning general elections. (That dynamic shifted some after Trump's total takeover of the party.) Similarly, calls for the Democrats to move left, and embrace a more progressive agenda, seem to resonate with a party whose membership has become much more liberal over the last 20 years. But that might be a misreading of a national electorate's mood, particularly after a presidential election that showed large segments of the electorate were hostile to Democrats' 'liberal' identity. Insurgent populist candidates have many steps ahead to win primaries and then prove they can win general elections. But it's not inconceivable to think they can do it. There was a time when the GOP's populist wing was considered fringe — extreme, even. We all know how that turned out.
Atlantic
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Tea Party Is Back (Maybe)
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Signs were all around, but the clinching evidence that the Tea Party is back came this week in New Hampshire, where the Republican Scott Brown announced that he'd be running for U.S. Senate. Fifteen years ago, in January 2010, Brown, a state senator in Massachusetts, defeated the Democrat Martha Coakley in a special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by the late liberal icon Ted Kennedy. Brown's victory was a landmark for conservative opposition to Barack Obama's administration, and in particular to his attempt to overhaul health insurance. Protests in the streets and angry crowds at legislators' town-hall meetings had given a taste of the brewing voter anger, but Democratic leaders dismissed demonstrators as rabble-rousers or astroturfers. Brown's victory in deep-blue Massachusetts proved that the Tea Party was a real force in politics. Brown turned out to be somewhat moderate—he was, after all, representing the Bay State—and his time in the Senate was short because Elizabeth Warren defeated him in 2012. But in the midterm elections months after his win, a big group of fiscally conservative politicians were elected to Congress as anti-establishment critics of the go-along-to-get-along GOP, which they felt wasn't doing enough to stand up to Obama. Led by Tea Party activists and elected officials, Republicans managed to narrow but not stop the Affordable Care Act, which Obama signed in March 2010; they briefly but only fleetingly reduced federal spending and budget deficits. By 2016, the Tea Party was a spent force. Its anti-establishment energy became the basis for Donald Trump's political movement, with which it shared a strong element of racial backlash. Trump provided the pugilistic approach that many Republican voters had demanded, but without any of the commitment to fiscal discipline: He pledged to protect Medicare and Social Security, and in his first term hugely expanded the deficit. But now there's a revival of Tea Party ideas in Washington, driven by some of the same elected officials. Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act follows the long-running Republican principle of reducing taxes, especially on the wealthy, but it doesn't even pretend to cut spending commensurate with the reductions in revenue those tax cuts would produce. This is standard for Republican presidents: Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Trump all ran for office railing against deficits, and then increased them while in office. They were eager to lower taxes, but not to make the politically unpopular choices necessary to actually reduce federal spending. In theory, at least, the Tea Party represented a more purist approach that insisted on cutting budgets, even if that meant taking on politically dangerous tasks such as slashing entitlements. (Republicans could also produce a more balanced budget by increasing revenue through taxes, but they refuse to seriously consider that.) Some of the Tea Party OGs are striking the same tones today. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, elected in the 2010 wave, has emerged as the foremost Republican critic of the GOP bill. 'The math doesn't really add up,' he said on Face the Nation earlier this month. Trump called Paul's ideas 'crazy' and, according to Paul, briefly uninvited him from an annual congressional picnic at the White House. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, another member of the class of 2010, has also demanded more spending cuts and described the bill's approach as ' completely unsustainable.' 'I'm saying things that people know need to be said,' he told The Wall Street Journal. 'The kid who just exposed that the king is butt-naked may not be real popular, because he kind of made everybody else look like fools, but they all recognize he was right.' (The White House has lately been working to court Johnson.) Standing alongside these senators are representatives such as Andy Harris of Maryland, who was elected in 2010; Paul's fellow Kentuckian (and fellow Trump target) Thomas Massie, who arrived in the House in 2012; and Chip Roy, a Texan who first came to Washington in 2013 as chief of staff for Tea Party–aligned Senator Ted Cruz. Staring them down is Speaker Mike Johnson. Like Paul Ryan, who was a role model for many Tea Partiers but clashed with the hard right once he became speaker of the House, Johnson has frustrated former comrades by backing off his former fiscal conservatism in the name of passing legislation. As my colleague Jonathan Chait has written, this has led Johnson and his allies to brazenly lie about what the bill would do. The neo–Tea Partiers are not the only challenge for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. More mainstream and moderate GOP members are skittish about a bill that is deeply unpopular and will cut services that their constituents favor or depend on. Nor is fiscal conservatism the only revival of Tea Party rhetoric. Zohran Mamdani's victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary has elicited a new burst of bigotry, sometimes from the same exact people. Meanwhile, Democrats are experiencing their own echoes of 2010, as voters demand more from elected officials, and anti-establishment candidates such as Mamdani win. The 2025 Tea Party wave faces difficulties the first wave didn't. Rather than being able to organize Republicans against a Democratic president, Paul, Johnson, and company are opposing a Republican president who is deeply popular with members of Congress and primary voters. Roy threatened to vote against the bill in the House but then backed down. Now he says he might vote against the Senate bill when the two are reconciled. 'Chip Roy says he means it this time,' snickered Politico this week, noting that he and his allies have 'drawn and re-drawn their fiscal red lines several times over now.' Then again, how better to honor their predecessors than to back down from a demand for real fiscal discipline? President Donald Trump said that he had cut off trade negotiations with Canada because of Canada's tax on tech companies that would also affect those based in America. The Supreme Court limited federal courts' ability to implement nationwide injunctions in a decision that left unclear the fate of Trump's executive order restricting birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court ruled that parents can withdraw their children from public-school classes on days that storybooks with LGBTQ themes are discussed if they have religious objections. Dispatches Atlantic Intelligence: Damon Beres interviews Rose Horowitch about her latest story on why the computer-science bubble is bursting. The Books Briefing: As a writer and an editor, Toni Morrison put humanity plainly on the page, where it would outlast her and her critics alike, Boris Kachka writes. Evening Read The Three Marine Brothers Who Feel 'Betrayed' by America By Xochitl Gonzalez The four men in jeans and tactical vests labeled Police: U.S. Border Patrol had Narciso Barranco surrounded. Their masks and hats concealed their faces, so that only their eyes were visible. When they'd approached him, he was doing landscape work outside of an IHOP in Santa Ana, California. Frightened, Barranco attempted to run away. By the time a bystander started filming, the agents had caught him and pinned him, face down, on the road. One crouches and begins to pummel him, repeatedly, in the head. You can hear Barranco moaning in pain. Eventually, the masked men drag him to his feet and try to shove him into an SUV. When Barranco resists, one agent takes a rod and wedges it under his neck, attempting to steer him into the vehicle as if prodding livestock. Barranco is the father of three sons, all of them United States Marines. The eldest brother is a veteran, and the younger men are on active duty. At any moment, the same president who sent an emboldened ICE after their father could also command them into battle. More From The Atlantic Culture Break Coming soon. A new season of the Autocracy in America podcast, hosted by Garry Kasparov, a former world chess champion and democracy activist. Watch (or skip). Squid Game 's final season (out now on Netflix) is a reminder of what the show did so well, in the wrong ways, Shirley Li writes. Play our daily crossword. P.S. Tuesday was a red-letter day for blue language in the Gray Lady. The New York Times is famously shy about four-letter words; the journalist Blake Eskin noted in 2022 that the paper had published three separate articles about the satirical children's book Go the Fuck to Sleep, all without ever printing the actual name of the book. An article about Emil Bove III, which I wrote about yesterday, was tricky for the Times: The notable thing about the story was the language allegedly used. In its second paragraph, the Times used one of its standard circumlocutions: 'In Mr. Reuveni's telling, Mr. Bove discussed disregarding court orders, adding an expletive for emphasis.' It printed the word itself in the 16th paragraph, perhaps because any children reading would have gotten bored and moved on by then. The same day, the Times reported, unexpurgated, on Trump's anger at Iran and Israel: 'We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing,' the president told reporters. I was curious about the discussions behind these choices. In a suitably Times -y email, the newspaper spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha told me: 'Editors decided it was newsworthy that the president of the United States used a curse word to make a point on one of the biggest issues of the day, and did so in openly showing frustration with an ally as well as an adversary.' It's another Trumpian innovation: expanding the definition of news fit to print.
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Chabria: Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump have a lot in common. California should pay attention
Zohran Mamdani is a stylish, millennial, African-born Muslim with a Hollywood pedigree who just won the Democratic primary in the New York City mayor's race. If he sounds like Donald Trump's worst nightmare, he just might be. But he's also a lot like him. They're both charismatic leaders who have bucked their parties, tapped into the current political ethos that eschews traditional loyalties and by doing so, made themselves popular enough with fed-up voters to win elections when — to many in the political elite — they seem exactly like the kind of candidate who shouldn't be able to get their grandmother's vote. "Working-class people want somebody who really takes on the status quo, who pushes an economic populist agenda and convinces them that something's going to change," Lorena Gonzalez told me. She's the head of the California Labor Federation, which represents unions, and even she's fed up with Democrats. "There are days that I'm like, why am I still in this party?" she said. "When I see them cozy up to tech, when I see this abundance issue that streamlines worker protections, when I see this fascination with billionaires and this acquiescing to not taxing billionaires and not doing anything about rent control, you know, there's a point where I'm like, come on, grow some balls, go decide who you're for." Or, as Trump put it in a social media post after Mamdani's win, "Yes, this is a big moment in the History of our Country!" Read more: Chabria: How conflict with Iran could supercharge Trump's domestic agenda Trump is right, words that I don't often say — Mamdani's victory may signal something deeper than a lone mayor's race on the East Coast. People — both on the left and the right — crave authenticity, and want someone to believe in, be it an orange-hued boomer or a brown-skinned hipster. The Democrats, as political strategist Mike Madrid put it, are having their own Tea Party moment, when populist anger eats the old guard, as it did beginning in 2007 when the far-right of the Republican party began its now-successful takeover. Trump was never the impetus of the party's swing to the fringe, he just capitalized on it. "This is just a populist revolt of the Democratic Party against the establishment base," Madrid said. There's been ad nauseam amounts of pontificating about the current state of the Democratic party. Should it go more centrist? Should it embrace the progressive end? But the truth is the voters have already decided. They do indeed want lower grocery prices, as Trump promised but failed to deliver. But they also want democracy to not crumble. And they want to buy a house, and maybe not have their neighbors deported. But really, in that order. And they don't trust many, if not most, of the current Democrats in office to deliver. Like Republicans before them, they want outsiders (Mamdani, 33, is serving in the state Assembly), or at least someone who can sound like one. Gonzalez spends a lot of time talking to voters and she said left and right, Democrat and Republican, they see few differences remaining between the two parties, and are tired of voting for career politicians who haven't delivered on economic issues. Mamdani, whose mother is the film director Mira Nair (and who once rapped under the name Young Cardamom), campaigned on "a New York you can afford." That included freezing payments on rent-controlled apartments, building new affordable housing with union labor, making both transit and child care free and — you guessed it — cheaper groceries. Whether he delivers or not, those were messages that a broad swath of New Yorkers, struggling like all of us with the cost of living, wanted to hear. And he delivered them not just with credibility, but with an entertainment value that nods to his mom's influence: hamming it up Bollywood style for the South Asian aunties, walking the length of Manhattan to talk with people, jumping in the Atlantic ocean in a suit with a skinny tie. Charisma and chutzpah. Which, of course, is how Trump made his own rise, promising, with showman verve, to be the voice of the toiling voiceless who increasingly are in danger of becoming the working poor. Yes, he is a con man who is clearly for the rich. But still, he knows how to deliver a line to his base: "They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs." That may be the biggest lesson for California, where we will soon be voting for a new governor from a crowded field — of establishment candidates. Even Kamala Harris, maybe especially Harris, fits that insider image, and certainly Gavin Newsom, despite zigzagging from centrist to pugilist, can't forward his presidential ambitions as anything but old-guard. "What makes someone like Zohran so compelling, is even if you don't agree with him on everything, which few voters do, you understand that he believes it and that you know where he's coming from," said Amanda Litman, the co-founder and executive director of Run for Something, a PAC that recruits young progressives to run for office. "I think that's the distinction between him and say someone like Gavin Newsom, which is, like, does Gavin believe what he says? Does he buy his own bull—? It's sort of unclear," Litman added. The anger of voters is strikingly clear, though, especially for ones who have for so long been loyal to Democrats. A new Pew analysis out this week found that about 20% of the Republican base is now nonwhite, nearly doubling what it was in 2016. Republicans have made gains with Black voters, Asian voters and Trump drew nearly half of Latino voters. Ouch. "One of the real challenges for the Democrats is two central pieces of the orthodoxy has been that they are the party of the working class and that they are the party of nonwhite voters," Madrid said. "Both of those are increasingly proving untrue, and the question then becomes, well, how do you get them back? The way you get them back is by having some sort of economic populist policy framework." Read more: Chabria: The secret police are everywhere. Do they really need the masks? Litman said that the way to capture voters is by running new candidates, the kind who don't come with history — and baggage. In the 36 hours after Mamdani was elected, her organization had 1,100 people sign up to learn more about how to run for office themselves, she said. It's the biggest spike since the inauguration, and it shows that voters aren't disinterested in democracy, but alienated from the existing options. "The establishment is not unbeatable. They're only unchallenged," Litman said. "And I think the more that the Democratic Party establishment, as much as it exists, can understand that the people and the playbooks that got us here will not be the people and playbooks that get us out of it, the better off we'll be." So maybe there are more Mamdani's out there, waiting to lead the way. If Democrats are looking for advice, Trump may have offered the best I've seen in a while — highlighting the insider/outsider Democrats who have, like Mamdani, made their name by rattling the establishment. "I have an idea for the Democrats to bring them back into 'play,'" he wrote on social media. "After years of being left out in the cold, including suffering one of the Greatest Losses in History, the 2024 Presidential Election, the Democrats should nominate Low IQ Candidate, Jasmine Crockett, for President, and AOC+3 should be, respectively, Vice President, and three High Level Members of the Cabinet — Added together with our future Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani and our Country is really SCREWED!" Or not. Wouldn't that be a slate? Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
CNN
2 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Alaska's Senator: 'You're Roadkill in the Middle' - The Assignment with Audie Cornish - Podcast on CNN Podcasts
John King 00:00:02 'Senator, let me just start there. This poll is remarkable. It shows you as a write-in candidate at 3737. But you know, and I'm sure all your advisors are telling you, a number is one thing. It's tough when people have to not only fill in that little circle and spell out your name. How do you get from a dead heat today to victory on election day? Audie Cornish 00:00:21 I, like many people at the time, did not always spell the name Murkowski right, the first time I tried. But after Lisa Murkowski lost to a Tea Party candidate in an upset primary in 2010, she made sure everyone would learn. Lisa Murkowski 00:00:35 Let me tell you, you tell Alaskans that we can't do something and by golly our backbone just gets a little bit stiffer and we say of course we can. You don't think that we can't fill in an oval and write in a name. Audie Cornish 00:00:50 This was back when it was said that the Tea Party and politicians like Sarah Palin were the future. And incumbents, like Senator Murkowski, were going the way of the dodo. John King 00:01:01 If the Republicans ignore the message of the Tea Party, do you see a civil war in the party? Audie Cornish 00:01:05 This is an interview with John King. It took place around 15 years ago. Lisa Murkowski 00:01:09 I want to be able to deal with those in a manner that is realistic, pragmatic, thoughtful, reaches across the lines, works to build consensus. Consensus should not be a dirty word in the political process. Audie Cornish 00:01:25 'In the end, they were both right. Alaskans were convinced by her historic write-in campaign, and Murkowski won that 2010 Senate race with a message of pragmatism and consensus building. At the same time, the Republican Party did enter a philosophical civil war that purged most other consensus builders from the party. It culminated in the triumph of Donald Trump and his brand of pugilistic politics. Now, she's known as a Republican who regularly straddles party lines and one of Trump's harshest critics. She's a self-described positive centrist. She's the thorn in the side of Republican leaders who can't always count on her to vote the party line. I mean, could a leader like Lisa Murkowski still rise to power in today's GOP? Lisa Murkowski 00:02:13 'I cannot accept that we will forever be this holy, bitterly divided nation. We won't survive as a bitterly-divided nation. We can't eat ourselves up with our own internal divisions. And that's where we're headed right now. Audie Cornish 00:02:31 'What did she learn from her comeback story that has helped her thrive in the Trump era? And what's it like to be in the dwindling number of independent-leaning lawmakers when threats, both political and physical, are commonplace? I'm Audie Cornish, and this is The Assignment. Senator Lisa Murkowski, welcome to the assignment. Audie Cornish 00:02:57 Great to be with you this morning. Thank you. So you have been asked to write a book many times. Why are you writing one now? Lisa Murkowski 00:03:06 Because I've been asked to write a book many times, actually. Audie Cornish 00:03:10 I have declined many times. Well, because here's the thing, when you write a book, you've got to come out and talk. Lisa Murkowski 00:03:15 Well, I didn't realize that part of it. Audie Cornish 00:03:17 Okay. Lisa Murkowski 00:03:18 'You know, I have this story and it kind of began really with 2010 and the write-in campaign, just kind of the history that really Alaskans made with that amazing event. When I think about acts of political defiance, it was not... Lisa Murkowski politically defying the norms. It was Alaskans saying, we don't care how they do it on the outside. That's a bumper sticker, actually. We don't care. We, this is the person that we want and we're gonna figure out a way to return her. And so beginning then, people were like, you need to write a book, you need put this down. And I tried a couple times and it, you know, you get busy, it's hard. I didn't know how to write book. And I think it was just too, too fresh. You didn't know if, okay, well, maybe this is... Maybe this is not gonna be so interesting. Maybe it's going to be an event that was interesting and exciting for a brief moment in time and then people move on to other things. Audie Cornish 00:04:18 Narrator, we would not move on to other things. Because that turned out to be a very formative moment like in our politics because it was a moment where we saw Tea Party candidates start to overtake incumbents and you had lost your primary. And I tried to convey to like some of my producers, I was like, you don't understand. She didn't just lose the primary. In the book you talk about you are sort of like political roadkill. Like the caucus was like, you can't have those committee seats, goodbye, we're not going to be seeing you. How much did that affect, even more than losing, how much did it affect how you saw the party at that time? Lisa Murkowski 00:04:58 It's really hard to say that they were doing wrong. Or that it was not right that they had kind of discarded me. The fact of the matter is, is I lost. I lost a Republican party. So the party now had a different candidate, right? The party was changing. Audie Cornish 00:05:20 In a very profound way. 00:05:21 The party, the party was change, the part was changing, and I don't deny that at all. I didn't feel ill will towards them, they did what they had to do. Now, did I feel that the party had shifted in a way that we had not anticipated? That is absolutely true. We saw it play out in Alaska in my race, but before that, earlier in the year, my friend Bob Bennett from Utah had been kind of the first fatality, if you will, to the Tea Party and what had happened in Utah. And he had advised me literally 10 days before the primary. He says, you have to take this seriously. They will take you out. And I said, Bob, Alaska is different. Alaska is different. That's not gonna happen here. We're gonna be just fine. And I get taken out. Audie Cornish 00:06:15 It's interesting, when you look back at that period of politics, most political watchers thought that the politics of the Tea Party, emphasis on fiscal responsibility or states' rights, that that is what would last and that the style, whether it be Sarah Palin's kind of disregard for a lot of different norms or those candidates who said outrageous things, that that was going to go away. Can you talk about, because you write about her in your book, and I know some people have talked about the relationship that you guys have, both coming out of Alaska. I feel like I'm trying to ask in a subtle way how you both came out of Alaska. Like you're the most, Alaska's big. Lisa Murkowski 00:06:56 Alaska's big! 00:06:57 But I don't know if you ever look in the mirror and say like, I don't know how we came from the same place. Like, what is it that, you're laughing, but like, this is a real thing people want to know because we don't if your path is extinct or hers is. Lisa Murkowski 00:07:10 Oh, that's a fair question. I think what it says is how diverse and how eclectic. Alaska really is, and how... Audie Cornish 00:07:21 But is your way of politics done? Lisa Murkowski 00:07:25 Absolutely not. Audie Cornish 00:07:26 Because I look around and I see way more Sarah Palins than I see Lisa Murkowski. Lisa Murkowski 00:07:30 Well, then you need to come to Alaska. You need to come to Alaska. Audie Cornish 00:07:32 I was waiting for that invitation and we are ten minutes into the interview. Lisa Murkowski 00:07:37 I'll tell you why I think that my approach to politics resonates in Alaska, and it kind of ties into some of the political reforms you've seen in Alaska recently with the adoption... Audie Cornish 00:07:52 But I actually don't mean Alaska, I mean nationally. there are not more Lisa Murkowski's. There are more Sarah Palins. Audie Cornish 00:07:59 Okay, I'm not going to debate you on whether or not there is more of me or more of her. I think those that are more like me are perhaps quieter about it, and those that are more in the kind of more outwardly MAGA are louder about it. I look at Alaska specifically and I see, again, these voices in the middle, those who don't want the aggressive, partisan bickering, who want to try to see things actually get done, who just are tired of everything being divided between red and blue and R and D. And they just say, you know, can't we just have better communities, better schools, you now, better whatever? Audie Cornish 00:08:49 But do people vote that way? I know you're saying Alaska does, but the reason why I'm harping on this is it feels like the group of people who talk the way you do is just smaller. It's much smaller than it used to be. And there are times, even in the book, for instance, you talk about Mitt Romney speaking out against Donald Trump, and being very forceful in the way he was doing it, and the reasons you weren't, that you were running for office, that you didn't feel it could make a difference. I'm trying to understand if those decisions, those moments of silence, are why we are where we are. Lisa Murkowski 00:09:23 I think that there are... There are consequences when you voice your opinion. And when I say consequences, I'm not saying retribution, if you will, but you're subject to criticism, right? And I don't care whether you're in political office or whether you are a photographer. You speak up, you've got to now defend. I think what you're seeing is people are just, it's too wearying, I'm just not going to. That is worrisome because when people stop engaging, then those of us that are elected to office feel like, well, the signals we're getting from folks back home is everything's okay. Well, everything's not okay. Everything's not, okay. And so how can we encourage you? And this is where I guess one of the reasons why I felt it was still timely to focus on a book was because I think people need to have some level of hope and optimism. That maybe just maybe things can change, that maybe there are people who are willing to be that voice in the middle, even if it means that you're roadkill in the Middle. That's what happens when you stand in the the middle of the road. But there has to be encouragement to that. Audie Cornish 00:10:42 I was actually wondering if you put this anecdote in the book also, because did you have some regrets? You spoke so highly of Romney, right, in that moment, and you seem to be revisiting that moment for a reason. And what do you think that reason was? Lisa Murkowski 00:10:59 I try not to spend a lot of time on regrets, wishing that I had done something different. Because in this job, you just don't have time to do that. I was asked the other day, you know, do you regret voting for this nominee? It was actually RFK. Do you regret it voting for him, in the light of his changes to the vaccine? And I said, yeah, I'm mad at what he has said. I don't I think that this is a way to regain trust and confidence in the system of vaccines. But I don't have the opportunity to redo that. I've just got to figure out now. What do I do with it? Audie Cornish 00:11:40 I think there is a perception that maybe there are lawmakers who are going along to get along, or maybe they want a certain outcome, and so they're willing to put up with a lot. And what people are seeing is cynicism. I think I remember Saturday Night Live skit along these lines, that Republicans somehow were all disliking Trump, hating Trump, but going along with it in public. And do you hear that? I'm sure you hear things from all sides. But the idea that Republicans like went along with a lot if it got them what they wanted. I worry about that. Lisa Murkowski 00:12:13 'I worry about that because we don't want to be in a situation where basically... The ends justify the means. So, for instance, let's use tariffs as an example. A month or so ago, the president moves forward unilaterally with tariffs declaring this emergency using the authorities that he had under emergency action. I don't happen to think that trade imbalance that has existed for a period of time constitutes an emergency. But what I was hearing from many colleagues was that, Well, no, I- I agree with where the president is going. We want to get these other countries to a better place in terms of trade. So I'm okay with where he's going. So I am okay with how he's getting there. We have to make sure that we've got some fidelity here, some fidelity to the rule of law, some fidelity our responsibility. And so I worry about the kind of the purity test. There's this expectation that you've got to line up because this is what your party is asking. And so, again, to take it back to why I spend so much time in the book talking about how I get somewhere is because, believe me, the easiest thing to do would just be to follow the party line. Audie Cornish 00:13:39 We are in a moment with a climate of fear and a fear around political violence. You had these Minnesota lawmakers, one who was killed, who was a pragmatic politician in her state, along with others of the attempted murder there. Right away you had a senator, right, Mike Lee, kind of casting aspersions online saying, "oh, well, this is what the Marxists deserve." I mean, just wrong on so many counts, the politics of the alleged shooter, what that would mean, the implications. First, can you give me your reaction to that? Because it has become something of a conversation in the Senate. Lisa Murkowski 00:14:21 Political violence against anybody is wrong. It's just wrong, and so to make light of it or to suggest one way or another that somehow or other the victims had kind of... Audie Cornish 00:14:37 I know, but it's also the native tongue of the internet. Like, when I think about that world online of influencers going back and forth and political chatter on X, on truth social, et cetera, that's extremely common. And Mike Lee, in particular. Lisa Murkowski 00:14:52 And extremely wrong. Audie Cornish 00:14:54 Say more. Lisa Murkowski 00:14:56 It's just wrong. Audie Cornish 00:14:58 But it seems to work. There are certain lawmakers who, I mean, this is how they've been propelled. Lisa Murkowski 00:15:04 Why is it working? It seems that the more aggressive we become with our words, the more defiant we become with our positions, the people eat it up. Instead of saying, yes, let's cool the temperature down here. Let's dial the rhetoric back. Let's keep us all safer. So I don't know why we are seeing this other than maybe the public is expecting it or demanding it. I don't even want to think, then, about how Audie Cornish 00:15:40 Right. If you want to cool the temperature, shouldn't more of you be saying to each other, hey, chill, like this is unnecessary, and why don't people do that? Lisa Murkowski 00:15:48 'And what I will suggest is more of those conversations are happening directly. Bad thing, really we need to dial this back. But there's a difference between what is said privately, one-on-one with one another or in a small group versus to the broader audience through the media. Again, my sense is there is this need to make sure that my base knows that I'm a tough guy Levi. I don't ascribe to that, and maybe that makes me odd man out. I don t know. I've been in the Senate now for a while. We didn't operate like this before. We just didn't. I think that is problematic for the country because people look to their president. They look to the members of Congress. They look their governors, their mayors. They look at their elected officials for leadership. Audie Cornish 00:16:58 Do they? I've had moments where I'm watching guys up there and I'm like, okay, no oversight. No one's doing any real oversight of anything anymore. When it comes to legislation, we're waiting for a speaker or a leader to pretty much tell us how to vote. And I sometimes, other than the raising money, I'm, like, what do lawmakers even do anymore? Lisa Murkowski 00:17:22 Maybe I can just suggest that you are too close to it. Audie Cornish 00:17:27 That's a kind thing to say, but... Do you know what I mean? Lisa Murkowski 00:17:29 I know exactly what you mean, yeah. Audie Cornish 00:17:31 What is the point? Because in the end you're like, come join politics. But I'm like, I don't know how you do it if you're not Lisa Murkowski. Lisa Murkowski 00:17:37 I think we are seeing good people who say, you wouldn't catch me in an assembly meeting for love nor money because they're turned off by what they consider to be the unappetizing political environment that we have there. So how do you change it? You got to stick with it and demonstrate it doesn't have to be that way because I'm convinced that after a point, the people who want to make their partisan issues and and say, you know, we're gonna ban these books, so. I want to get on the school board so that I can take care of that. After a while, maybe they're going to get tired of public service is actually hard work and you don't actually get to ban books every single meeting in your school board meeting. Sometimes you just have to work with really dreary things like the budget. Maybe they wander off after a while, because governing is hard. I have to remain optimistic. Every single one of these questions that you're asking is absolutely valid, and it's absolutely the moment that we are in, but I cannot accept that it has to be this way going forward, that we will forever be this holy, bitterly divided nation. We won't survive as a bitterly divided nation. If we're going to be this amazing country with all of these extraordinary opportunities, we can't eat ourselves up with our own internal divisions and that's where we're headed right now. Audie Cornish 00:19:15 'We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, I'll ask Senator Murkowski about how her political past shapes her decision-making today. Stay with us. Audie Cornish 00:19:27 I want to talk next about the lessons that you learned from the last couple of years because I think it'll help people understand why you speak out the way you do now. For instance, when the president was willing to call in military to support ICE on the streets of LA during those protests, you've been asked about whether you think people calling him authoritarian was valid. How have you thought about that since? Lisa Murkowski 00:19:55 I think the comment that I made was, is he being authoritarian or is it Trump being Trump? I think we are seeing authoritarian acts. Audie Cornish 00:20:07 Is there a red line for you? Lisa Murkowski 00:20:12 I've told people that when it comes to legislating, I don't like to advertise what my red line is because I've got to negotiate, right? But I think when you have clearly overstepped that rule of law, have defiantly pushed back. The Supreme Court as a president and said, I'm going to disregard that. I think those are red lines. Audie Cornish 00:20:38 'Another thing that you're faced with right now, that quote-unquote big, beautiful bill in the conversation about entitlements and Medicaid cuts, for example. People have been very interested in seeing Senator Hawley from Missouri sort of speak up on behalf of Medicaid, of all things. I wanted to put this to you because, again, thinking about that Tea Party period where people cared about, like, the fiscal hawks, it's not the the fiscal hawks that are seem to be leading the obstacles here. It's the people who are kind of defending a certain kind of spending which is Medicaid Help me square that like is that still Republican? Audie Cornish 00:21:22 A different kind of Republican? Yes. And I've had some good conversations with Senator Hawley about this. So many of the people that supported President Trump for president are people who are blue collar, lower income, for whom Medicaid is important to them. And so, has it changed? Is there a real reason that you're seeing a focus on Medicaid right now from some of the more conservative members? Yes, because it has significant impact on their constituencies. Audie Cornish 00:22:00 Are you worried people will turn to Medicare to look for cuts or changes to get to the math they want? Lisa Murkowski 00:22:09 You know, there are some, I think, legitimate areas within Medicare and Medicaid where we can look at and say, you know what, that's a method that's being used that isn't equitable, isn't fair, and needs to be addressed. You put it in the legitimate account of waste, fraud, and abuse. And so when we say absolutely nothing can be done when it comes to Medicare, Medicaid, it limits your ability to really address some challenges. That I think by all rights should be. Now, in the eye of the beholder, obviously, my review of that is it looks like there's some gaming of the system there. It's challenging because people don't want to know the details. All they know is what they've heard, which is, ah, you're going after Medicare, ah, your going after Medicaid. So this is why you really haven't seen reforms. Audie Cornish 00:23:05 There's just a handful of you who are considered potential votes to put this thing over or to cause problems for it. And you've been in this position over and over and again now, where you're one of one, two, three votes that everybody is looking at. And you're the office that their phone rings off the hook when people make threats on social media or whatever it is. You're at the center of something. Are you ever scared there? Lisa Murkowski 00:23:31 I'll tell you, I worry about my staff because it puts a lot on them. You're right, the phones ring. It's like nonstop. Sometimes it's great stuff saying "hang in there Lisa." And other times it's awful. And that's hard on them. Audie Cornish 00:23:50 What's awful? Lisa Murkowski 00:23:53 Like, you know, foul language threatening the... That leaving a message anonymously threatening, you know, what I consider to just be stupid stuff, but just being mean and ugly. If there are threats that are left, we report those as we should. Do you take those threats seriously in a way that you didn't maybe 10 years ago? I think we all have to consider the environment that we are in. Yes, I have to. It's not just members of the United States Senate. You have to acknowledge that there is an anger that is out there in our society today, and you have to be aware and not dismiss it, as hard as that is. I've got to be aware. Audie Cornish 00:24:50 You write that you learn that Trump responds to strength and bluffs, but if he doesn't get what he wants, he moves on. And I thought that was sort of an interesting thing to write about, and it made me wonder what advice you have for other sort of targets of the White House, so to speak, the universities or the attorneys or public officials, students. What do you say to these institutions right now Are talking as though they are fearful? Lisa Murkowski 00:25:19 They need to believe in themselves and their mission. Maybe it's easier to say than do. Audie Cornish 00:25:29 'I mean you had to tell a room full of non-profits, I think this went viral in April, look I get it you're afraid. I get it, there's uncertainty. Lisa Murkowski 00:25:37 And I feel that that fear, I hear it from you. I can relate to what you're talking about. And sometimes it's really hard to speak up because there is that fear of retaliation and retaliation is real and we're seeing that. But you've got to figure out how to find your voice even when it's hard. Audie Cornish 00:25:58 Do you expect to use your voice more? Do you expect to be louder? Because frankly, a lot of times when I meet lawmakers who are in that phase, they're also heading for the exits. Lisa Murkowski 00:26:10 You know, it shouldn't make a difference whether you're headed for the exits or not. Sometimes there is that fear that, well, if I speak out, if I vote for impeachment, you know, I will never survive another election. And I guess my response back would be, is any job, is any position worth compromising your own personal conviction and integrity? I don't think it should be. And so don't let that position define you, but do the right thing. Audie Cornish 00:26:47 Well, Senator Murkowski, thank you so much for talking with me. Thank you, I really, I appreciate it. Lisa Murkowski 00:26:54 I appreciated this, Audie. I enjoyd the conversation. Audie Cornish 00:26:57 That's Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Her new book is called Far From Home. This episode of The Assignment, a production of CNN podcast, was produced by Grace Walker, Matthew Vann, and Kara Harris. Our senior producer is Matt Martinez. The technical director is Dan Dzula. And the executive producer of CNN podcast is Steve Lickteig. If you'd like to share this episode, please know it is also online. You can catch it on YouTube. We're going to have a link in our episode notes. And to get that done, we had support from Osmon Noor, Jonathan O'Beirne, Steve Williams, and Joseph Merkel. I want to offer special thanks as well to Wendy Brundige. We'll be back with a new episode on Thursday. Thanks as always for listening. I'm Audie Cornish.
