Democratic strategist outlines party’s priorities after midterm victories

Welcome back. It's 8:20 right now as we take a live look at the nation's capital this morning and a lot to talk about just a few days after the midterm elections. We've got a lot of those results already in. The midterms are over. But now it's time to make good on campaign promises. Or is it? We shall see. We shall see, right? When Democrats will take control of Congress in January, they will have some pressing issues to address for sure. Joining us this morning, Democratic strategist PeteGINGRECO. Pete, good morning. Thank you for being here. All right, let's go back to 2024. 2024, all right, voters evidently rejected woke, they rejected cancel culture, they rejected what many perceived as political theater during the Biden years. They reelected Trump. Now that the tide has clearly turned in Democrats' favor based on what happened Tuesday, what do you want the party to look like before 2028? Well, I wanna look like a party that's solving problems and this election was about about a lot of things, but mostly was a... A complete rejection of Trump economic policy. So the first thing that Democrats have to do with majorities in the Senate and the House is a force to an end to the Iran war, bring down gas prices, reassert Congress's control over tariffs, bring those tariffs down so we can bring down grocery prices. And then the last thing is restore the. Medicaid cuts and the tax cuts that help people afford health care. Those are the big things that drove this economy. Those are the big three things that we've got to make sure. And if we've got to dust off an old policy from way back when, the windfall profits tax on oil companies to make sure that if crude prices go down when we end the war, that they don't just steal the profits. So that's where the party needs to be from a policy standpoint. That's a good point. What does the timeline look like on some of those things? Because I'm chronically online, I'm reading all the comments, and voters are going, okay, when will all this stuff happen? Because we voted for you, you got two years, and we need help now. Therein lies the problem, because President Trump has already said he's gonna be Mr. Veto. So what are the ways you can do this? War Powers Act would take 67 votes in the Senate, that's probably not gonna happen. But you do have the National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA, that's just a majority vote. The Democrats are going to have 54, 55, 56 seats in the Senate and a massive House majority. Shouldn't be a problem to force an end to the war by essentially changing the funding. Yeah. And you could do a lot of the things on Medicare and Obamacare through the budget reconciliation process. Again, that's a simple majority. And what you're doing is daring. The president to veto what would be ending a very unpopular war, bringing down gas prices, bringing down grocery prices, bringing down healthcare prices and daring the Republicans to veto it. You have run through a bunch of the policy priorities, okay, from a policy standpoint. We just got done speaking with a exit poll guy from UFC and he was basically pointing out that corruption was one of the things that was on the top voters' minds, okay, in the exit polls. How do you play that one? Okay, cuz a lot of folks during the Biden years may have read this as political theater. You're trotting out doing all these Senate hearings. How do you strike that balance if you're the Democratic Party between avoiding too much of a dog and pony and focusing on the policy thing? And honoring what voters are asking. The first thing you do is you gotta hold themselves accountable. Democrats and Republicans in Congress have gotten. Fabulously wealthy trading off of insider information. And that has to come to a complete end. If you're a member of Congress or you work in the federal government, you shouldn't be able to work on these prediction markets. You should be banned from that. You should be banned from trading individual stocks. And that's a bipartisan, there are plenty of Republicans that support that too. So the first thing to do is police your own. Okay, and let's just come out and say it. I mean, there are people, you know, talking about impeachment right now. I mean, even Pete Hegseth. I mean, what... When voters talk about corruption, what are the chances that those things may happen? The thing you gotta remember, impeachment is not a legal proceeding, it's entirely political. If you don't have 60 votes in the Senate, don't even try it. So that's where I think that's the beginning and the end of impeachment, where they talk about the president or any of the cabinet. Getting to 60, though, that's an interesting concept here, cuz if Alaska and Mississippi were to go blue, let's just say that's 56, you got four that you need. With the message that voters sent on Tuesday, is it more malleable on the red side that you could get Republican senators on board in a voting block with Democrats? You might get a Murkowski from Alaska. You might get a vote from Kentucky. But it's hard to how you get to 60. You got to have the votes first before you even talk about it. All right. That's not where the election hinged, it's bringing down prices. Okay, so when it comes down to bringing down prices, what's feasible? I mean, if you do still have a Republican in the White House and you have a democratically controlled Congress, what is feasible to actually help people? I think you force the president into vetoing what would be very popular ways to end the And the war and the tariffs and bring back Medicare, Medicaid and bring back tax cuts. Tax cuts, people like. Obamacare, the way it worked was it gave people tax, you know, people who work for a living. That's really important. They work. They have a job. They just don't have health care from their employer. Or maybe they run their own small business. Those folks need a little help. That was the whole premise of Obamacare. You've got to bring that back. You can do that on a majority vote. Pete, let's talk more about some of the history that was made on Tuesday. A lot of focus of our conversation and national dialogue has been on the Democrats flipping the House and Senate. But the race for governor in several states, very noteworthy. What's been your reaction to the statewide election? One of the fundamental misreads of 2024 was the Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, what I would call we hate them strategy. Firing of generals and admirals just because they were black or women. The ICE raids, attacks on transgender kids. And what was the reaction to it? In addition to in the US Senate, we now have the first gay man elected, Chris Pappas from New Hampshire, first Muslim, Abdul Al Saeed from Michigan, first Native American, Peggy Flanagan from Minnesota, but in the governor's races, first female governor of Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms, first black governor of David Crowley in Wisconsin, first Latina governor Governor from Texas, Gina Hinojosa, first Native American governor from Texas. New Mexico, Deb Haaland, and even the Republicans got into it. First woman governor of Tennessee, first black governor of Florida were Republicans. And you have the first women elected in Ohio and Minnesota, the governorship, Amy Klobuchar and Amy Acton. So this was, you know, one of the most American ideals there ever was with E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one. Out of many, one beat, we hate them. Mm-hmm. Pete, thank you so much. Come back sometime. Yeah. You know where to find me. Okay. Yeah, you're right down the street. Right down the street. All right.