I Went on Meidas Touch. Here’s What I Said.

Go Big or Go Home

I was on the Meidas Touch Network this week and we covered a lot of ground. If you’d rather watch than read, the video’s is just blelow. But for those of you who prefer the written version, here’s what I had to say.

The host started by playing clips of the propaganda coming out of Fox and the administration, the usual stuff, the immigration fear machine, the four pieces of paper they managed to scrounge together to justify terrorizing immigrant communities. And look, we all know the data. Immigrants are far less likely than native born citizens to commit crimes. The people we actually need to protect ourselves from are the rich, the powerful, the oligarchs, the Epsteins and the Trumps of the world. That’s who’s actually doing the harm. But the courts are tied up and the administration is ignoring court orders anyway. So the only things standing between an out of control regime and where we’re headed are Congress and the American people. And Congress, the opposition party at least, is not exactly rising to the moment.

One of the things that makes this so hard to respond to is that life goes on. The cars are still going down the street. People still go to work. The bills still have to be paid. Kids still go to school. Our electoral infrastructure and our social infrastructure are collapsing and it feels normal because for the overwhelming majority of Americans daily life still feels normal. That’s not the case for a lot of our immigrant brothers and sisters. But for most people it’s hard to get yourself steeled for something that doesn’t look like a crisis from your kitchen window. And that’s by design.

We talked about the polling showing Trump underwater with non-college educated voters, which is significant because those are the people he’s supposed to own. And I brought up something I think about a lot, which is what happened in my home region.

In the 1930s, Europe went one direction and America went another. We were in a very similar spot then. Republicans had a slim majority in both chambers and the presidency. Sound familiar? And then in just a few cycles, Democrats had a supermajority in the House and the Senate and held the presidency for four terms. How? They delivered. They had a grand vision for the country called the New Deal and it transformed people’s lives in a deep and significant way. That coalition held together for 40 or 50 years.

In East Tennessee, my region, the New Deal built TVA dams, dozens of them. The Manhattan Project built Oak Ridge. The Interstate Highway System. Rural electrification put electricity in places that didn’t have it. This area was transformed by bold public investment and public ownership. And it could be again.

But here’s what I keep coming back to. When I look at Tennessee’s voting history, Bill Clinton won this state twice. Obama only underperformed Clinton by about three points. Tennessee voters didn’t really turn their back on the Democratic Party until Obama’s second term, and then they moved hard toward Trump. And the thing about Trump originally was that he gave people a vision. It was a dark vision, immigrants taking your jobs, corporations and politicians stealing your livelihood. But embedded in there was the hope that something better could be rebuilt. People fell for it and they got duped. But the level of understanding Trump had about where Americans’ minds were is something the Democratic Party mostly doesn’t have.

Gavin Newsom is a good example. He’s positioning himself as the anti-RFK. Fine, RFK deserves plenty of that. But he’s not saying hey, actually, big pharma does have too much control over our healthcare system. Hey, actually, our healthcare system is screwed up. We’re eating stuff that’s illegal in other countries. The Democratic Party is too reactive. They want to be anti-Trump, anti-RFK, anti-this, anti-that, instead of having a strong vision of their own that can win hearts and minds.

We talked about how you cut through the propaganda, and I said two things. One, Democrats self-censor constantly. They try to analyze what voters are going to think and then calibrate what they say based on polls instead of just saying what they believe. I’ve had so many politicians ask me how do I sound more genuine. The answer is be genuine. If you believe we need a public option not just in insurance but in the actual delivery of care, say it. If you believe we need a better system for generating energy, say it. You can change what people believe. Donald Trump bought 10 to 15 percent stakes in a dozen companies and that would be called socialism in any normal circumstances, but he just did it. Stop overthinking and start saying what you actually think.

And two, take the message everywhere. Go on Fox, go on the new independent media, go where the audiences are. But don’t water down your message for the audience. Take your message to the audience. It gets through more easily that way.

The last thing I talked about, and the thing I think matters most, is the piece that’s missing from progressive politics right now. The Democratic Party and progressives think what we need to do is tax billionaires and corporations and then use that revenue to invest in the existing healthcare system or the existing education system. And what that misses is that if you put money into an already broken healthcare system that’s not creating more doctors, more nurses, more hospitals, that’s not creating the supply we need, then all you get is more of the same. Consolidation. Very rich corporations. The money goes in and it doesn’t come back out as care. It comes back out as profit.

We used to own about 50% of our healthcare delivery in this country. The hospitals, the clinics, all of it owned by counties, municipalities, states, and the federal government. Same thing with TVA here in Tennessee. We own the electrical production capacity. And I think that’s the only way you actually compete with the oligarchs and the monopolies. You create your own massive, vertically integrated, publicly owned systems that are competitive. That restores competition. That restores access. That’s the vision.

Saikat Chakrabarti and New Consensus are building the framework for this through something called Mission for America. It’s the most important work happening in progressive politics right now and almost nobody is talking about it. Go look at it.

More Sunday.

Coribn

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