showed me real respect for others. we do not have that today and politicians are not showing to each other. so who will lead young people to be in the right position civility, respect and dealing with issues and respectful way we find common ground so that it can actually get solutions for problems this country's mecca one of that because with the political future is all about us what you are talking about this idea of being here in the fact you all are here, supporting civil discussion learning from people of different parties, we need more of this. so think you all for being here and thank you for listening to us. [applause] [applause] >> we look forward to talking with you more at lunch we have demographic changes. this two-part conversation runs just over two hours.

>> welcome how -- welcome to how the democrats lost the plot. when i read that i was not sure what it meant. when i arrived i asked my friend, a former business partner, what does that mean, and he explained. according to the dictionary, it

is an idiomatic way of saying someone has become confused, disorganized, or mentally unstable. so now what we know what we are talking about. unfortunately you don't have to hear from me so much as from this panel we have assembled. first, dale, a democratic strategist, former press secretary to john lennon, his ohio chief of staff. he has a tremendous understanding of politics not just in ohio but across the region, which has become the central battleground of presidential campaigns. he was looking to volunteer for a campaign. i was in charge of the delegates and this young smart guy came in to volunteer so i put him to work and he has been working in politics ever since as a

pollster, director of polling of the kennedy institute of politics. he is also the author of a book, fight: how generation z is channeling passion to save america. he's become in recent years, i think it's fair to say, one of the leading experts on youth voting in america. michael is also a pollster and a principal at grassroots lab, a campaign management and lobbying firm in california. he's an expert on latino voting trends and served as press secretary to the california assembly republican leader. he's also one of the cofounders of the lincoln project. teresa smith is an award-winning strategist for politics, government and public engagement and was a fellow at the center for the political future and vice president of government

relations for fox. she served under president biden and in 2020 was the national woman's vote director for the biden campaign. finally, stephanie young has served in the white house in both the biden and obama administrations. she's a former deputy assistant to president biden. she was a barbara boxer fellow here at the usc center for the political future. so thank you for being here and let's begin. dale, as i mentioned, the midwest has become one of the key battlegrounds. you worked for john glenn years ago. not just in respect to ohio but to the midwest, how many counties to john glenn used to win by 20% and 30% -- how did

counties john glenn used to win by 20 or 30 points go to trump? >> i would like to make a comment more broadly on a theme of this panel. i am not sure it's quite that clear. earlier today, we had a question from one of the students who was here, who asked something similar, because when donald trump wins the kind of overwhelming victory he did in the electoral college, where he sweeps all seven swing states, when the republicans now control both houses of congress, it's easy to think this was an unmitigated disaster for democrats in november and it's maybe even easy to buy into trump's claim that he and his maga allies have won a major

mandate but i think that is a misreading of what happened in november. from for the first time in three tries for the presidency managed to win a plurality of the popular vote. he did not win a majority. to me, it's hard to clean you have a mandate would most of the people casting ballots voted for somebody else. in the house, as i think james carville mentioned, we picked up a seat, and the republicans now have the second smallest majority in the house in american history. in the senate, it's true the republicans flipped four seats, and now have a majority of 53, but remember that three of those four were in blood red states that trump won by huge margins, west virginia, montana, ohio. but in the swing states it was a different story. there are seven swing states.

five of them had u.s. senate races on the ballot too. democrats won four of those five and lost the fifth by .2%. so, as i say, i think it's easy to over interpret what happened. none of this is to say that i disagree with the theme that democrats have been losing the plot for some time and hopefully we will be able to talk about that and how we might be able to reverse it, but let me let somebody else talk. >> carissa, maybe i will bounce around if you don't mind. you were the national women's vote director for joe biden in 2020 and beat trump by 15 points. hillary won by 13 points in vice president harris won only by eight points in 2024

notwithstanding the fact that hillary and biden ran before the dobbs decision, which changed the landscape in terms of politics. what happened with women in america in 2024 and why did these changes come about and just explain it in the context of losing the plot. >> sure. overall i can speak to 2020, some of the trends we were seeing. we made sure we built a coat -- a diverse coalition and 2020 that focused on all classes of women and overall i think that messaging was able to propel us to win in 2020, especially with black women showing up and doing what we have always done at the polls at 92% to 96%. we saw that was our base and

were going to vote based off the issues and what would secure our kitchen tables and neighborhoods. in 2024 we saw a shift in some of that. some of that was based off the economic messaging. there was a clear narrative that it was not good for people's kitchen tables. they were looking at grocery store prices and the cost of living and i will say the messaging from republicans was successful in building the case that it was because of the biden-harris administration it costs had gone out. we know that was not the case if you look at gdp and other facets and fact sheets that came out of congress at that time but they were successful sticking to you have a new administration and the cost of living has gone out.

it was able to resonate down to kitchen tables. that was being evangelized with women voters of maybe i need to vote differently because i cannot afford the cost-of-living and despite robust economic plans and vice president harris coming in and making it clear that she had an economic plan to lift up families, whether it was through homeownership, grants or student loan repayment, it was not really resonating i think based on kind of the wall of the economic distrust that republicans had built, particularly for women. i think we will be talking about this, of how did we go from the 15% to the 8% of women this year and i don't think i fully have the answer based off of the data. we will see the vote that took place and how people respond to

it. >> i think we cannot ignore all the cultural pieces that were in play they had the advertisement about transgender people and all these pieces and the vice president talking about transgender americans. i think that played a role. i also think racism played a role. they did not know vice president harris. she has a black woman with some indian heritage as well with her mother being an indian and i think all those pieces coming together did not work in our favor and i think looking at it from an economic perspective, that's not it. we have some strong things that

came out in big moments and just because she's a woman, all women don't identify with her either, so that's a big issue considering you had a black woman and other women of color but the thing we did not talk about on the campaign trail in a robust way, what was happening in the middle east and in gaza, one thing that we know or i knew from the research done was that a lot of millennial women and women of color were impacted by that and upset with the administration and that was not addressed in any form. it was this big thing that nobody talked about, this book the monster that we are not even going to address -- this boogie monster that we are not even going to address. also fear mongering. on the flipside, i think we went so hard in on the abortion peace

. that does not resonate with everyone. it did not have the same kind of pull that we anticipated having. i don't think it has that same residence. but it is still an important aspect. it's not a simple answer and i don't think you can leave out the cultural or racial pieces. all of them came together in a moment that from my perspective was not good for this country. >> let me follow-up quickly and ask you about something raised, and i say this as someone who worked with michael dukakis. we worked for john kerry and the swift boat ads came at us. we can talk about that.

the trump campaign spent $125 million on that advertisement or versions of it in battleground states. when i worked for kerry in 2004, we were given a check for $76 million to run the campaign. inflation has been a lot but that's a lot of money to spend on something. did you feel pressure to deal with that in the paid media environment, in some way to engage and reassure voters who might be concerned? >> absolutely. one of the reasons why we lost the plot is i do feel that leadership does not reflect what this country looks like. this country has changed dramatically and when you think about the people who are voting and all the walks of life they come from, you have to have

people leading campaigns who reflect that diversity. i do not know how to talk to certain people but i know how to talk to others. i think from my perspective at the time i was there i saw that was a major challenge, who was making the final decisions did not reflect the people we were going after. we were using a very old playbook. i led michelle obama's voting initiative so i worked in this space of power you going to reach people and talk to them? they had been doing things differently. they went to every note and cranny on the web and preached

their message in places that we deemed did not pass purity tests , was not presidential or appropriate and some of those places are not presidential or feel appropriate but that's what the american people are consuming. so if we are not going to take on things head on and push past it, people are beyond that. i often say donald trump is a reality tv show host president. we are a reality tv show culture. we want whatever feels authentic and because we have played from such an old playbook of let's not address this and forget them and focus on those voters, it won't matter. it does matter. and i think now we see that. the challenge is how do we start changing the way in which we do this work and looking around and

saying if everyone at this table looks like me this is not the right table. how do we do things out of the box and make ourselves uncomfortable and stop saying certain people have to pass purity tests to help us push our messaging and also addressing these issues head-on. there's a fear among us at times and too many silos. tad: after the election, i remember reading this, and i am probably one of the few people that still gets a hard copy of the new york times every day. an article entitled democrats have won. our excuses mask a devastating reality. talk about the message of that op-ed. john: you mentioned our

relationship of 37 years and also a shout out to bob for being a friend and mentor. thank you, bob. i have learned so much. [applause] tad: you are no going to tell him -- not going to talk about driving to boston to pick him up. john: i put some thoughts down the day after and i think the point of that is it was early and there was a lot of finger-pointing and the polling deficit in the summer was too much, the campaign was too short, inflation was too high, and focusing not entirely but a lot on younger voters, this is a winnable race.

if certain people change their mind we don't have a president blaming dei for a tragedy in the potomac for example. when democrats win the youth vote by 60%, they win elections. john kerry and hillary clinton won 55%. you start with 55%. your job is to get to 60% and the math takes care of itself. the harris campaign started with 55% and rather than expanding it , it got somewhere in the low 50's and i think that is, to connect with what stephanie said earlier, kind of a lack of listening and understanding what

the real anxieties and fears were of this particular cohort of voters. there were a lot of lessons from the 2022 campaign that were not changed. to me a lot of the messaging is consistent with what happened in 2022. one other point is that half of 18 to 29-year-olds more days than not over the last two weeks suffered from depression, hopelessness or anxiety.

and i'm reminded that in 2008, when barack obama won indiana and north carolina, he won it by winning only one age cohort, 18 to 29-year-olds. those states were not in play until that election. that is the power of the youth vote. this is a little technical but as a good -- as a great consumer of polling, you also read about your concern that the democratic party has replaced the art of listening to and pulling -- and pulling voters with data analytics.

what does that mean? john: mike will weigh in in terms of polling surveys and tracking surveys and quality of research and focus groups being replaced in my view by analytics, which don't go in depth and listen to people and instead model people and say what they predict will happen based on the model is like a radiologist. they play an important role but that radiologist is not necessarily talking to the patients, understanding where the pain is coming from, understanding their perspective and how to get better but just one piece of it. campaigns over allied on analytics -- campaigns and particularly this campaign over

relied on analytics. if they did not they would have made different choices. they would have gone to the dearborn coffee shop and listened to voters. a 20-point difference in certain towns in michigan between the cycle and the cycle before. this is a cohort where two out of three people have values aligned with the democratic party. so it's not a disconnect in terms of values or issues. carissa: but they are not going to poll and listen to everybody either. it is who do we deem important to win. we don't do that. we didn't do that this time. i know that when we did poll people in our base, it was towards the end at a time when you couldn't turn anything

around, so there's an obsession -- it's like a game we are playing. how are we going to get the ungettable? tad: did you have something? >> mike, go ahead. >> young people obviously are important but i will tell you from the midwestern perspective we cannot ignore the other elephant in the room, which as we have been hemorrhaging working-class voters. when bob was working for ted kennedy and i was working for john glenn, it was not just ohio that was a quintessential swing state but west virginia was bright blue. everyone was a democrat in west virginia. tad: by the way, mike dukakis won west virginia. dale: i think it started 30

years ago roughly when we embraced globalization and promised everybody there will be some short-term dislocations but in the long run everyone will be better off. in fact, the benefits from globalization came, but they were not evenly distributed. people who were college educated elite, highly trained, did very well, but everybody else didn't. let me say that -- i will tell you, in a country where only 36% of the population has a college degree, becoming a party of the college educated elite is not a recipe for winning a lot of elections. let me tell you how bad it has gotten. this last november, and the 20 states that had the highest median annual -- in the 20 states that had the highest median annual income, we won

18 of 20. in the 20 states with the lowest median family income we won three. in pennsylvania 15 years ago, democrats outnumbered republicans in registration by one million. it's now down to 200,000. the day before yesterday, the las vegas review journal reported that for the first time in 20 years there are more registered republicans in nevada than democrats. in ohio, you asked about that. in 1992, john glenn's last campaign for reelection, which i ran, the best county we had in the state was a county called belmont, which is a working-class, blue-collar county in east central ohio along the river. we won belmont county by 36 points, better than we did in any of the other 80 counties in the state -- other 88 counties

in the state. last november, sherrod brown w los belmont county by 30 points. we promised all these benefits were going to come from globalization but the problem is the people who live in the belmont counties of this country are living in hollow downtowns and working -- and hollowed out downtowns and working dead-end jobs and cannot make ends meet. unless we go back to our rooseveltian roots with for one of a better term a liberal populism that focuses on how we can bring back good standards of living to regular people, things like not just raising the minimum wage but all wages across the board, maybe cap credit card interest rates,

making childcare and elder care more affordable. go down the list. there's lots of things we can propose. we will not be able to enact those because republicans control all the levers of power in washington but we can propose and amplify them and make republicans vote against them over and over and over again. we should oppose the republicans and, you know, if trump was elected to bring down the cost of eggs, to bring down grocery prices, to close the wealth gap, which has become a yawning chasm in this country, he will not do that. we all know that. you can see that from his inauguration. he is going to fail. it is no accident that, for the last three consecutive presidential elections, for the first time in 120 years, voters have thrown out the incumbent party.

it's no accident that control of both houses of congress has changed four times over the last 20 years, because neither party is fixing the problem, which most people think is an economic system that is rigged and works against them and a political system that does not work either and seems more concerned about cronyism and taking care of the politicians than the people they were elected to serve, so with this renewed emphasis on populism, maybe we can start making our way back, and history tells us that in the first midterm after a presidential election, it's always a good year for the party out of power, and that of course will be us in two years. tad: i will say that, 2016, when i worked with bernie sanders and we were trying to figure out a frame, bernie basically wanted

to talk for an hour and 15 minutes to everybody in the country. i asked a pollster from california, you know, we were talking it through, and bernie was talking about a rigged economy and campaign-finance system. i suggested -- because in these campaigns, you have to make an ad. i suggested, we should test "rigged economy held in place by a corrupt campaign-finance system." it did well in iowa and new hampshire and that's what we began to focus on. i've it would work in the next campaign. the same audience is still waiting for someone who can deliver that message and deliver on it. mike, you are one of the leading experts on this in america.

biden won latino men by 23 points in 2020. in 2024, trump won latino men by 10 points. hillary won latino women by 44 points in 2016. harris by 19 points. what happened and why? mike: get comfortable because it is a long story. fascinating to be a republican on stage helping the prognosis. my career trajectory probably leads to the book i wrote in june, the latino century, written more as a warning than as a prediction although everything i was predicting in june came to pass. the story starts a little bit before that. i think there's a cultural problem in the democratic party preventing itself from recognizing that single largest ethnic demographic transformation this country has ever undergone.

15 short years away from becoming a white minority country and yet the democratic party -- i say this is someone who has run campaigns for democrats -- worked for george w. bush in the lincoln project. i cannot keep a job anywhere, and any party, but i have seen both parties address or not address the single largest challenge from my perspective facing a demographically -- facing it demographically, because the common thread through all of this, the fastest growing segment of every demographic is the latino vote, and the way it is approached in the democratic party is parochial, stereotyped, limited, and is focused on the fastest freaking segment of that demographic.

-- fastest shrinking segment of that demographic. this is largely driven by u.s. born latinos. we are witnessing some of the most rapid expansion of third-generation and increasingly fourth-generation, which you could not even measure when i started studying latino voters because the segments were not that big. all of this rightward shift -- the vast majority of it is happening with these later generation latinos as they become more americanized, but the stereotype you hear from the democratic party is its racism, misogyny, you are conservative catholics. these are lazy stereotypes i heard in the republican party in the 1980's and 1990's. now it is democrats casting the same aspersions. in fact, the highest level of support any democrat ever received was barack obama among latinos.

hillary clinton was the second highest. kamala harris's entire career has been predicated on her rise in california with dramatic over performance with latino voters. they know her, voted for her, have supported her for 20 years. they did not suddenly just become misogynists and racists. there is clearly something much more profound going on and i would suggest -- my warning to democrats in june was you need to get off of this lazy idea that has no empirical basis that latinos are driven and motivated by the immigration issue, but you cannot do it. they literally cannot do it. and in fact you are going to watch your own party continue to double, triple and quadruple down into this same wrongness in the next 30, 40, 50 days. it does not mean we are anti-immigrant.

the polling would suggest we are sensitive to these issues. the 2018 midterms were an anomaly for democrats, when trump was cracking down on the undocumented. we saw the highest turnout among latinos in the history of elections in this country and the most decisively anti-trump, but if you want to build a long-term party and get back into relevance, focus on the longest growing demographic -- on the fastest growing demographic. i believe the midterms will be a good year for the democrats because history tells us it should be and a lot of what donald trump is already doing is unpopular. his inauguration is probably the mark of the highest level of support he will have. without a working class agenda, you are just being a party of

opposition picking up campaign wins based off what you are against. you cannot build a sustainable movement or a party on that. and that is exactly why all the key indicators amongst latinos are moving away from the democratic party. it is not just that they are moving to the right, although they are. what's happening, as was pointed out in the earlier panel, is a dramatic decline in voter turnout. that's a problem for democrats. that's a political act in itself it's telling you something -- in and of itself that is telling you something you need to pay attention to.

poll, not a single credible poll in the past 30 years that's been taken, to suggest that the economy is not the number one issue, ever. show me where your aspirational latino working-class agenda is. what is your policy?

if you tell me it is minimum wage and strengthening labor, call the last century because that is where those ideas belong. it's not that i don't support them, but the average latino voter does not believe those are real solutions, because for their lives it's not. it's not. ask ruben gallego or catherine cortez masto. there's such a heavy emphasis, no disrespect, to the blue-collar working-class voters in west virginia and ohio. that's not the future of the party. the future of the party is in the southwest. remember when we used to talk about turning texas blue? you have not heard much of that lately, right? the issue set remains the same. the states that are likely to turn more blue if you get back

to a more populist economic agenda are going to be taxes more than ohio for those reasons , for those same reasons. that is where the growth is happening. one final point. there has been a lot discussed about polling in the latino community over the past couple years. in every single one of the races, the democratic polling was wildly wrong with latino voters. they were promulgated and pushed out. bidens pollsters who became harris's pollsters were all the same. they were putting out data showing donald trump would get 31% of latino vote. 15 points lower -- 15 points lower than what actually manifested.

there's a reason why and it is not just because they were bad pollsters. they could not conceive that nonwhite people would be voting for the republican party so they would weigh and skew the methodology to adjust for that. look at every poll from that firm from hillary clinton's race in 2016 to 2024. dramatic overweighting with first-generation spanish-speaking latinos, which is why there's been such an emphasis on the immigration issue despite that being the faster shrinking -- the fastest shrinking demographic in the country. if you cannot get past that culturally and internally as a party you have no hope of getting back into the game. tad: my recollection from reading the exit poll was that this was the first election in the history of exit polls that latinos were the second largest group. mike: i would argue 2020, but

the trendline is going to start moving a lot. john: a number to put this in perspective. relative to 2020, younger hispanic latino men and women, there was a 50 point underperformance. in 2020, biden won younger hispanic men by 41 and younger hispanic women by 63 points. this cycle, harris lost hispanic men by four and won latino women by single digits, a 50 point shift, and the data was there. all the warning signs were there when you are looking at even party affiliation. tad: stephanie, i want to ask you a question. this is my last nerdy poll question. in recent years, education has

become one of the most important predictors of voting. white voters without college degrees have always been the core of trumps support and that continued in 2024. he beat hillary by three points in 2016 with white voters with college degrees. vice president harris beat trump by eight points in 2024 with that group but harris lost support among voters of color at all levels of education. why did this happen? why were they going one direction there and then another? stephanie: it's the convergence of different things. i will say that i would like to caution that especially when it comes to men, everybody started paying attention, saying we are going to lose black men, lose latino men. it was anything but nationally eight in 10 black voters supported harris overall, so still pretty high.

biden i think had nine out of 10. and about three in 10 black men over the age of 45 went for trump, so we are not talking about a huge number and i wanted to put that into context, because i think sometimes we blow these things out of proportion, not saying they should not be addressed and looked at. i mentioned earlier about the purity tests that i think we do have. the populist agenda i think lives. all the things we want to do to provide mothers -- i'm a new mom -- with support. now that i have become a mother, unlike, jesus christ -- i am like, jesus christ. democrats have the ingredients to do that, have the bills. we do not communicate it. we get wrapped up in these big pieces moving and obviously trump is taking over the media

in a way that does not just distract us but keeps us jumping from one thing to the other. it's like the cat watching the light. we are not able to figure out how to message people -- message to people that reaches them and feels authentic. we don't know how to do that well. that's partially because we don't think before we speak. i'm not saying we should take on those traits but we have to figure out how do we communicate with people where they are in ways that they understand. talking to you is different from talking to another audience that might not have an understanding of how government works. people don't understand how government works. when we are talking to them and we are using -- not trying to be patronizing -- big words, if we are not talking about issues in a way that people just get it, the bread and butter issues

doesn't work. so that's one reason we are failing and we lost a lot of those people. we also don't go where they are. they are not on msnbc or cnn. they are watching fox, unfortunately. i cannot tell you how many people i talked to that watch fox. they are watching it and we are not there. the joe rogan interviewed became a thing at the end. and even charlamagne from the breakfast club who has been and can be provocative but has shown himself in that platform to be a huge platform for reaching the working class and young people. we go to these places with caution and have these conversations that are supposed to be candid and real in such a rigid and confusing way that does not resonate, so we have a

messaging problem and will continue to if we are playing by the old book. when i worked in the obama white house, we had the first office of digital strategy, focusing on twitter and facebook at the time . i don't remember when instagram came to be. at any rate, that was new media we were dipping into. we have not gone beyond that. we don't have an office of cultural strategy but we are going to the cultural platforms the majority of people are consuming because they are not consuming news. we don't even play in those places by going there to talk directly to people in ways that people understand. when we do have these big races and campaigns, we don't advertise there the way we should. he did. youtube has become the new source -- i know it's the number one news source for latinos but

it's become the number one source for young people. he was outspending us on youtube like crazy. we were not there because we don't value that as news. beyond the messaging problem is understanding the world has changed and we are using the old playbook that does not work anymore and we will have to figure out how to change our messaging, how to change the messengers too at times, and how to be real with people, because that's what people are wanting to connect with. it's going to take acknowledgment and work and having different people at the table. >> and recognizing that just because hispanics or african-americans or young people voted for you last cycle or last month does not guarantee its going to happen again if you don't constantly check in. donald trump had a clear pathway. he needed to basically expand

from 2020. he saw a ceiling when it came to women so he focused on younger men who were not participating. >> and who are not talked to. john: he spent 10 times as much money as kamala harris did. he flipped it and he won. >> let me speak to how that happened in real time when it was happening, because the rnc in the spring was criticized after laura trump took over heavily because they shut down their offices in black and brown neighborhoods. they are not serious about this. everyone who has done campaigns no that's not turning out the real vote. the amount of money you get for showing up in those areas, there's mountains of data and results showing that's not how you win this vote.

the biden campaign announced three times, historically early and significant in terms of the size of the buy, latino advertising, and every time they did, their numbers went down with latinos. so at a certain point there's a policy problem. it's not a tactical problem although that is also true. there is a policy problem and here's the kicker. this didn't start with donald trump. these numbers, especially if you look at registration and turnout, they have been a pernicious problem for the party for decades. this predates donald trump, predates social media, and the data has been clear for decades on this. if you don't talk to voters about what they are screaming at the top of their lungs, telling you they want some redress about, don't expect to win their

votes. it's that simple. >> people do want to see you in their neighborhoods and communities. they do. the door-to-door stuff doesn't work like he used to put its hand in hand digital pieces -- like it use to it's hand and hand with the digital pieces. they were not in the neighborhoods. i worked on obama 2012. that was a machine that was built really early and the people knew us. the people who are running organizations, leading in the community. those are the people that you are attracting when you are physically there. and they help to bring people in. the doorknocking is different and doesn't work as well as it used to but it's still important for you to have a presence.

we didn't feel like there was a general election happening. >> he was all digital but i am talking more about our people and what they expected and needed to help us galvanize. i know he has been able to be this magician from the wizard of oz and being able to manipulate and do things digitally only. i don't think we hafted -- i think we have to do all the -- all of the above. dale: we have not just a messaging problem but a medium problem. for those of you who may be old enough to remember marshall mcluhan, we have a medium problem too, because even if we are able to construct a populist centerleft agenda, we also have to figure out a way to amplify

those proposals enough so that our message is heard, annette means we have to figure out a way to break through the conservative media ecosystem that sets the news agenda for this country. some of you may read the new republic. there was an article a few months ago that pointed out that the ecosystem starts with fox news but goes way beyond that, that it includes newsmax, one american news, iheart media, elon musk's x, and most recently, podcasts have become the latest thing. podcasters who deal with politics like joe rogan mostly have a conservative bent. they are sympathetic to trumpism and trump himself used those platforms to great effect in this last election.

a poster wrote a piece for the hill and says that trump's podcast appearances in the election last fall reached an audience of 23.5 million americans whereas kamala's podcast appearances reached 6 million people. it is not as easy as finding and funding progressive podcasters and influencers because research shows that whether the format is talk radio, cable news or podcasts, outrage is a much easier sell than moderation or a careful analysis of the issues. bob schrum identified this problem 30 years ago. you called the talk radio thing the grievance network.

those of us of a certain age will remember that previous democratic attempts to build a more liberal talk infrastructure like air america, if you already ever that, never gained much traction, wind down in flames shortly after they were launched. i am not smart enough to know how to square this circle but i know if we want to stop conservative voices from setting the nations news agenda, if you go not into california may be put into ohio or michigan or pennsylvania, you go into a small town into a barbershop or a bar, you have fox news on tv everywhere. it is constant and we have to figure out a way to stop this right wing media ecosystem from dominating the national conversation. >> i have been listening. on the media, there has to be a

direct deposit into investing in media infrastructure so that the voices and policies of the party are getting out there in new and nontraditional ways. most people get their news from youtube or their community or different apps. the right wing has been able to expand and get what they are saying to far and wide reaching voters. for us, we have had a very old playbook and it's time to move away and use this time to reset, and even the framing of this of how we kind of lost the plot, we did not lose the plot with the candidate who was most qualified, when she was taking over as the nominee, so i want that to be clear. she had the best policies and agendas. when it came to culturally competent messaging and narrative building that was not the case.

thank you for reminding goes that she was a candidate at the local level where latino voters was her base for every part of her career. i am afro latina so immigration voting does not register with me or my folks and i have plenty of family members who ultimately voted for trump because his messaging reached them so i am glad you brought that up because with everything we do we cannot see our voters as a monolith. we cannot take any of them for granted. there was the we need to focus on black men, on latino men, or do some messaging even towards black women. we are not feeling as though there's a connection there. for us to go forward and grasp the new constituency that is emerging, especially among latino voters and new youth voters who are turning 18, we will have to revamp the way we do politics, policy and people,

and then is something the party has not come to the realization yet, that to me the republican party made the shift to acknowledge where their party has moved from. we can do a test of where they were from the last decade to now and i think the signaling of the candidates they are running, that their party is investing in , goes to show they have seen the data, seen the polling, but also looked at voters and said we want to win so we will put candidates that are going to win up. it's not saying that harris could not have won because i believe that but because there was a narrative that was put forward that was quite frankly for a candidate that doesn't look like her, a groundbreaking candidate -- we have never seen a woman of color take the helm. there were so many aspects of her and the essence of her that was put come in

and that to me is one of the things i think we did lose the plot in the sense of our messaging and narrative. how can we take this candidate to me that hit all of the boxes, and when she did take over the nomination, we saw the excitement in the polls. people are like, wow, the democratic party are paying attention. they are going forward with something that has never been done before, and for us to sit back and -- i will be honest, we cannot put that candidate. we know the undertones. i think that is regressive to where our party is going, and she has the record to show that she performed well across every constituency, but even among latino voters. >> just an observation, to meet the next criteria for the next

democratic presidential candidate should be who can perform on fox news? i think one of the vice president's best moments was the interview on fox, and the previous highlights was when she did that college tour. and she integrated and fed that the younger people that without them we don't have the first bipartisan gun legislation, we do not have historic climate change, we do not have wanted $150 billion in student debt. it is almost a quarter of the pentagon budget. somehow between the college tour in the last six weeks of the campaign the people did not hear that message. the most significant predictor

is there a tangible difference? i believe more would have shown up. >> on the college tour, i went to highlight this. we usually do those things during election year, what took place in 2023 and bled into 2024, but students were not used to the president or vice president coming to their campus just to talk to them and not as them for anything. we went to hbcus, schools in nevada, all over this country, college campuses and we packed it out every time she spoke. those kids were hungry.

there were hungry to hear from her. they were hungry to hear what you wanted to do for this country and what this administration has done, and that can be a sense of hope but also understanding that you cannot ask people to participate in this democracy when you do not go to talk to them. the majority of people do not vote because nobody asked them to. it takes seven touches for someone to get registered to vote. it is a process that we do not engage in at all, so we need to take our messaging literally to where people are, more college doors, or tangible moments where people feel like i know you and you know me and you understand my needs and can meet them. >> really, those of us who have been doing this a long time recognize kamala harris i thought ran a very good campaign in the very short amount of time she had but the fundamentalswere arrayed against

us. she was the sitting vice president at the time the sitting president had an approval on election day of 39%. when 70% of the electorate told posters they the economy was lousy, no income and party in american history has ever won reelection by numbers with that -- like that. kamala harris lost because she got 7 million fewer votes than biden. those voters did not good trump. he only increased his vote total by 1.5 million to 2 million. most of those missing democratic voters did not show up, and that is the challenge going forward. we have to give these people a reason to show up, a reason to want to go out and vote, and the way to do that i think is to

start pushing policies that will improve the lives of them and their families. >> we are going to be done soon, and i promised to end on time, but i will make one last point and if anyone wants to comment on it you are free to. one thing i love about coming here, democrats and republicans seem to get on the same stage and not be killing each other. it is something we could use in america, and i am glad the spaces provided, and i love the fact that today whether it was mike murphy, talking about latino voters here, that i found myself in agreement with all of the things -- not all of the things, most of the things my republican colleagues and friends have said. ben said something that shocked me. he talked about the unintended consequences of campaign finance reform in the 1990's and that

leading to many of the problems we had today. i feel very strongly about it. i probably voted for bernie because we tried to make that a centerpiece of the campaign. i do not think it was the unintended consequence of what the legislature in the united states congress did with campaign-finance reform in the 1990's. it is the intended consequences of what the united states supreme court did not only in the citizens united decision, but other decisions to create a corrupt system of campaign-finance, which is illegal. i understand. i have worked in 29 campaigns outside of the united states, and let me tell you something. if they did what we do here they would go to jail. if they came in and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect somebody president that would go to jail, and we will continue in this country to have a rigged economy, which is held in place by a corrupt system of campaign-finance until we muster

the will to change it, and i hope we do. [applause] and that is it for us. thanks so much, everybody.