Democrats face task of turning midterm wins into affordability agenda

Mo, it's good to see you. Thanks for hanging out with us tonight. Thanks for having me, Jim. It's good to see you. Good to see you, too. And I know we were kind of bouncing around here because we talked with a conservative strategist a little bit ago. We just talked to Dion to get the nuts and bolts about the vote count right here. But if you are a Democrat and you you've worked, you worked on the Buttigieg campaign, you have worked in Democratic politics. What do you feel after the reality sets in from election night and those those record those record wins across the board? At what point does the excitement subside and the reality of. Now comes the leading part. Now comes the fulfilling promises we made. When does that set in? I think it set in really on the campaign trail. We had a slate of folks who fundamentally wanted to talk to Americans about what was most important to them. And they told us loud and clear It's clear that is affordability top to bottom. And so I think now the. Primary goal here is to get started on finding ways that we can lower costs for Americans. And you've heard straight from Chuck Schumer, from Hakeem Jeffries, the primary targets here are gonna start to legislate for ways to lower American costs, finding ways to roll back tariffs, finding ways to ensure that we are lowering gas prices, utilities prices, healthcare costs, and putting money back in Americans' pockets. I'm curious, you mentioned Chuck Schumer, I know Hakeem Jeffries, there has been There's been... Not not a ton of excitement from a lot of people in the Democratic Party. Maybe it's just the loudest voices right now who are concerned about their potential leadership. I don't think there's any doubt that Hakeem Jeffries will be the next speaker. I think Chuck Schumer, his his previous leadership of Democrats, he's been the type that say, I'll write a letter to the president and call it a day on that. Are either of those men... Are they in trouble, or is their leadership more or less a foregone conclusion? I think ultimately the party is going to make whatever decision is going to be best to push forward. I think that Chuck Schumer has been with the Democratic Party and led throughout this election cycle. I think Hakeem Jeffries has done the same. And fundamentally right now, we're in a really fantastic position of having a ton of incredible Democrats who understand that Americans care less right now about party alignment and care a lot more about who's gonna get stuff done. And so I wouldn't say that either of these men are in trouble. I would say that fundamentally, the leadership of the party is gonna be whoever is going to put things in place to pass legislation and put things on the president's desk. Yeah, there are some progressives who made some noise about maybe not supporting Hakeem Jeffries, but the reality is it's nothing. To the level of what Republicans saw during the Freedom Caucus when they were when they went 15 ballots before they elected Kevin McCarthy, which, God, that feels like forever ago. I know. I know that you've worked on state-level politics, including in Michigan, where we saw Abdul El-Sayed win, and again, in a race that everybody thought was going to be tight, tight, tight. And there was that palace intrigue in the last couple of days where Haley Stevens crossed party lines to endorse Mike Rogers. That didn't really seem to make much of a difference, if she thought it would, because he won decisively. As you look at that blue wall of Michigan, of Wisconsin, of Minnesota, And those states up there that have been... Key for Democrats to win the White House in the past, what do they have to do to keep the foot on the gas going into 2028 and not see a return to 2024 when they lost some of those states? Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing that we saw on the blue wall was that we saw massive excitement amongst young people swinging our way 30 points over previous elections, especially young men. We saw, as usual, high turnout with black voters, particularly black women turning out in huge numbers for the Democratic Party, especially in Michigan. And I think that we're gonna have to deliver. I think the Democratic Party is going to have to come and say. The cost of living has gone down, and we've done our part to make that happen. Things like we're aiming to close the war, we're aiming to repeal tariffs, and put things, like I said, on the president's desk to ensure that we're fighting back. There has been a lot of discussion and a lot of speculation how the Democrats might start putting forth their agenda when the new Congress convenes. And President Biden put forth that large Build Back Better plan, which is more or less a social infrastructure effort where it's just one big bill, not to co-opt President Trump's parlance when it came to his own legislation. But what's the way, what's the best way to get that ahead, knowing that some of these pieces of legislation that will get to the president's desk are likely, or at least as he threatens, to face a veto? So is it going bit by bit, or would it be more beneficial to lump everything together and have the president decide up or down on that? I think that the answer is really gonna be persistence rather than whether we do it in one chunk or bit by bit. If Democrats aim to get this passed in one bill and the president isn't working with them to make that happen, they have to try again. Americans wanna see fundamentally success, they wanna see things pass. And it is the Democratic Party's job to continue to work towards that over and over again over the next two years while President Trump is in office. I got to ask, as somebody who's worked on a presidential campaign before, and there's always speculation, and it seemed as though as the polls were closing, I mean, I was hearing people toss out John Ossoff 2028, you know, the second that he won his race in Georgia. The reality is there is still there's a lot of work to be done. There's a lot of work ahead. But also, to be realistic, the idea of setting the groundwork for presidential campaigns starts generally after the midterms. So at what point what point do we start seeing those announcements? Does it happen? Now, does it happen? Does it happen after after the new year? Like from your experience, when do we start hearing these candidates? Because we're going to have more or less an open race on both sides here. I'll say that we've already had exploratory committees form those are so I think we do believe there's some that are out there. In the during the 2020 primary, the first candidate was with one campaign to click opened up an exploratory committee in December of 2018. So we are likely to see declarations of somebody before the end of the year. When do we see sort of the full democratic field starts to appear? I would say in the early half of next year, knowing that the first thing that folks are gonna have to do is get some things done. Yeah. That's what it all comes down to, man. I mean, when you put the agenda out there, it's one thing to talk about it. Now they've talked the talk. Now they have to walk the walk. Hey, Mo, I'm really glad that our pal Vernon connected us tonight, and I'd love to keep having these conversations going. Yeah, I wanted to give Vernon the chance to get himself on camera at least once during this hour. Thank you, Jim, for letting me out of my cage. I love you. I can't believe I'm in the W. Mo, thank you very much. We appreciate it. We'll talk soon.