The Democrats Could Still Screw This Up

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From New York Times' opinion, I'm Ross Douthon.

And this is interesting times.

The 2024 election didn't just return Donald Trump to the White House.

It also left the Democrats confronting a potentially era-defining defeat.

But here we are in 2026.

President Trump is deeply unpopular.

And Democrats are leading in the midterm polls.

Still, I want to know, what are they actually for?

Have they learned anything from their 2024 defeat?

On immigration, especially.

Do they have leaders who are capable of speaking to swing voters,

while also wooing a party base that's girded for an existential battle?

And are they ready for the dawning age and the new politics of artificial intelligence?

And who better to answer all of these questions than my guests this week?

Chris Hayes, who spends every weeknight talking to some of the most liberal viewers in America.

As the host of all-in with Chris Hayes on MS now.

And I just want to note, Chris and I recorded this conversation just before President

Trump launched a military campaign against Iran.

But I don't think the issues we discussed have changed that much, or at least not yet.

Chris Hayes, welcome to interesting times.

It's great to be here.

It's great to have you.

So you are, in my own mind, at least.

Not just a nightly news host and a podcaster.

But a true man of the left.

I think that's true.

Is that fair?

I think that's fair.

So when we first met, you were writing for in these times.

Yes, that's right.

Which for those who don't know is a classic classical, I don't even know what it is.

Socialist news paper.

So those are your roots.

And I want to talk to you about the left and where it's going, what it stands for,

how it relates to our exciting new technological future.

But first, we're going to do a little bit of partisan politics.

Sure.

We're going to talk about the Democrats, which is not the same as the left.

As they will tell you.

As they will tell you, right, maybe.

So here we are.

And I would say, you know, we're about 14 months beyond a point in American politics

when Trump had won and the Democrats were, I don't know, flat on their backs,

as beaten and I've seen them since 2004, maybe.

And now there's a certain kind of confidence on the Democratic side that, you know,

they're not just going to be living under Trump's rule forever.

But they're also very unpopular, unpopular with swing voters, unpopular with their own base,

with the left.

So, you know, from your position, give me a state of the Democrats.

How's the party?

Well, I think the first thing to just acknowledge is, you know, first of all,

thermostatic public opinion does a lot.

Does a lot.

So then you've got, you know, I think just an incredible amount of overreach by Trump,

sort of misunderstanding of the whatever mandate there was.

Like, he just has a project that's distinct from what most Americans want,

which is a project to transform the constitutional order into a personalist

presidential dictatorship.

Like, and I think that's actually not a particularly popular project.

It's not, yeah, I would say it's not what the people who had swung to buy it.

Correct.

And swung back to Trump were voting for.

Correct.

That was not like the president having absolute authority to levy tariffs, you know,

anywhere he wants.

That was not the core issue of the 2024 election.

So all of that gets you a long way.

I think the big question is right.

So there's a bunch of places where Democrats are still not trusted as much as Republicans,

things like immigration, crime, the economy still.

Just if you ask like the partisan trust question.

So there's sort of ideological factions within the party.

We can talk about that.

Those ideological factions I think are a little displaced now on a few other more important axes

that are the sort of main ones of conflict.

One is kind of business as usual versus radical break.

And sometimes that looks like go along to get along or fight, fight, fight.

Those are this would be, for example, the debate over the government shutdown.

Yes.

It would be a classic example of some people in the party saying,

you know, if we do this, it helps Trump and other people saying, how can you just stand here

letting Trump run Rothschild if you have tools?

Exactly.

And I think, you know, I want to give credence to both sides of the argument because I think

those are fraught debates that there is a real profound question, right?

Like at one level, it's like, should you be funding a Department of Justice that is like

manufacturing obviously pretextual criminal cases against political opponents?

I think there's a case you shouldn't at the same time.

By that logic, you kind of just pull yourself out into a total boycott of the government,

right?

Because in some senses, he's doing some things in each department that are, you know,

manifestly abusive from the perspective of a lot of legislators and democratic politicians

and voters.

So I think there's a real tension there.

That's hard.

You've got the sort of momentum on the side of the fight, folks, not business as usual.

And I think that's going to be an interesting animating force in the primaries this year.

You know, the Democrats never really had their tea party, levels of trust in the party

establishment have been higher, the level of like just pure rage at the party establishment.

Like I hate this party and anyone that at the top of it that animated a lot of the tea party

and then Trump has not quite broken that way in the Democratic Party.

So one big question is that looms over the party is like, how much do we see that play out this year?

Particularly along that access and related to that access of conflict, you know, status quo,

radical change or go along to get along worse.

Fight is just new leadership for his whole leadership.

You know, there is a real exhaustion or real sense that people that came of age, you know,

20 or 30 years ago and had their sort of form of political experiences then

are not well tuned to the moment.

Yeah, I feel like the connection to the leaders who kind of held the Democratic center together

is gone. But before we get to sort of who the new leaders are, how does this affect policy,

right? Like are there actual policy fights happening in the Democratic coalition right now that

are meaningful that we should be paying attention to? Yeah, you know, there are some, right?

So like the clearest right is on foreign policy, particularly vis-a-vis Israel. I mean,

that's just a enormous clear fight. Like should the US government align itself in a bipartisan

fashion with the Israeli government? Should it give them weapons? Should it fund them?

And does that just, would you say that broadly tracks the kind of business as usual versus

fight lines? Like in the main primary, which for those who aren't following it, closely pits

the Democratic governor of Maine Janet Mills against Graham Platner, who really is a kind of

Democratic tea party. Yes, very much so.

Complete with a, you know, checkered possibly Nazi adjacent tattoo past whatever, you know.

And, but there it would seem like Platner would be fully aligned with the, you know,

no more sort of liberal Zionism as the dominant force, right?

Definitely. And in fact, I think one of the things, I think it's worth actually spending

a little time on this ideological fight because I think it's come to kind of occupy a huge center

of the fights. Like there's a bunch of things that have been stacked atop it, if that makes sense.

So this sort of outsider insider incumbent, fresh voice, status quo, radical break, like

age even have lined up around this access. And I think in some ways the reason it's so important

is because it just, I think the experience of the Gaza war represented both just a genuine

profound wedge tension on a coalition that literally contains people on both sides of what is

arguably the most polarizing issue in the globe over the last thousands of years.

Like people strongly and passionately on both sides, right?

Both within the coalition, right? So, so you've got that. That's always going to be a huge

problem for any political coalition. But what's, I think sort of happened is it's come to represent

a bunch of other like corporate versus grassroots establishment, first challenger kind of axes.

So it's, it's both a first level fight about an actual policy disagreement.

And then there's a bunch of ways in which that fight have come to sort of embody something broader

about what kind of democratic party it's going to be. Right. So what about domestic policy then?

If you've, if the Gaza wars like the key place where policy lines up, are there meaningful

domestic policy arguments? There's a fight right now within the democratic party about

ice enforcement, which I think is really important and interesting one, right? So like

there's the ice needs to be reformed. So we should, you know, take the masks off.

There's ice needs to be abolished. The country did perfectly fine for 230 years without

that particular agency, which that is a kind of proxy fight for a larger fight, which I think

isn't actually being had right now in earnest, but will in the primaries.

Meaning what should our immigration policy be? And I think there's a sense that the old,

the old consensus is dead. And the old consensus was what was called by the groups,

the notorious groups was comprehensive immigration reform, right? Basically the old structure

of democratic policy making on immigration went this way. Increased enforcement, increased

enforcement, particularly funds, right? There was a ton of money that was in 09, 10, 11 put into

border enforcement. You know, I think people sometimes underappreciate just how much the spending

on the infrastructure of essentially immigration enforcement has gone up in this country. And then

in exchange, you know, a path to citizenship for the however many folks that are here. Now that

started to come apart in a bunch of different directions. One, it starts to come apart because

starting in 2014, there's just a new phenomenon that starts happening. And I think this is also

underappreciated, right? The immigration arguments that we had, particularly in the 90s and the 10s,

largely were about undocumented immigration who are economic migrants, largely from Mexico.

That was the sort of focus of it. This new thing starts happening with right border

presentments, right? We start getting it in 2014. Meaning, meaning people who show up at the

border claiming asylum, right? And who are not sort of sneaking across to get exactly right?

This is a key, right? Key difference, right? It's like they're not hiring a coyote, a sneak

in under night. And then like get over there. They're actually coming and saying like there's a

part of your law that applies to me. And then that, you know, those numbers, they sort of expand,

they contract, they expand wildly in 2023 quite famously. 2020, 2021, early by, but then they,

they go, you know, they really grow. And then they come down to 2022, 23, they go really high.

The reason I say all this and walk through this history is that the way that policy making

happens in democratic coalition politics is like there's sort of grassroots fights,

there's, and then there's policy operas and then there's what's called the groups.

And there's a sort of like coordinating middle spaces that these policy arguments happen in.

I think there is a lack right now of consensus on what is that affirmative vision there?

Right. But I see to me, and you can tell me why this is wrong, it seems to me that there's a

desire actually to default back to what you just described as the old consensus from at least

some Democrats, right? That you have people where essentially the view is, okay, things got out of

hand under Biden, but Trump's enforcement is super unpopular. But we don't want to go all the way

back to what the Biden administration was doing, which was effectively allowing millions of

people into the country on the promise of giving them a hearing at some future date. We don't want to

go back to that. We can see that was unpopular. So what's the sweet spot? Guess what we're going to

say? We'll do border enforcement like Trump is doing. That'll be popular. And then we'll do a path

to citizenship, boom, problem solved. Like I hear that from Democrat policy. No, I think you're right.

I just think it's not going to work. I think there's a, and to me, it's a little why is it not

going to work? Well, I think it's, I think there's a few things. I mean, one, it reminds me of,

sometimes you see politicians to go back to that sort of defining Israel Gaza thing that sometimes

you have politician cornered on a question about Israel, and they say Israel is right should defend

itself. And it's one of these sort of like thought-terminating cliches, right? They're just like,

when you have nothing else, just go with that. And it's like, well, who can argue with that, right?

It's like this sort of, you know, practices, border enforcement, path to citizenship has this kind of,

right, who could be against it? That's a sweet spot. And I honestly, I think there's a reason for it.

Like I think there's structural and actual substance policy reasons that that's a combination

that works both in polling and policy. To me, the bigger thing is there's a fundamental fight

over what kind of country we are happening right now that cannot be addressed with that at that

level. I mean, the, the emergence of a genuine blood and soil strain of conservatism,

this country is for us. And by us, the people that can go and visit their ancestors graves,

where they will bury their children. That's what this country is. It's not a country of ideas. It's

not a cradle nation. All that sort of pluralist clap trap that you got taught. People come from all over

and they can all be Americans, the famous Reagan speech race. As you know, you can go to Germany

and Campiata, German, you can go to Ili and Campiata, anyone can come here and be an American.

This is like this is last speech, right? Last speech. Yes. Which is a perfect articulation of what

used to be a fairly kind of consensus vision that underlie the debates happening above it.

That consensus torn apart. When that fight is happening at this elemental level, I think it's very

hard to to come back in with like the old policy question without actually making an affirmative

case for what kind of country you want. But why can't you make the Reagan case and pair it with

a moderate-seeming agenda? I think you can. When I look at younger right-wingers associated

with nationalism, what you'll see often is that if you push people even self-proclaimed Christian

nationalists who believe that white Americans under threat and so on are still kind of civic

nationalists, right? Like the actual support for a true heritage Americans or the only real Americans

is really narrow. So if the Republicans seem to be moving in that direction, that seems like an

opportunity for the Democrats to present themselves as an extremely normy mainstream party. But with

the problem that nobody trusts them to enforce the problem. Well, one place that you have to

deal with this head-on is changing asylum law. It is bizarre to me that this thing, which is the

central technical issue at the heart of the way that we've experienced immigration in the country,

since really since 2014. I remember covering that. Like that was a huge moment, right? People's

kids start showing up the border. The first child migration crisis, yes.

It's kind of weird that like there has been no progress on rewriting the law on this. I mean,

even just to flip it on the other side for a second, you would think a thing that a

Republican unified government would do would be like, wait a second, yes, we're going to

not close down the border using executive action. But this thing is broken and written by

lives. Like, let's change asylum law. Yes. You would imagine that, but you would imagine

that a Republican administration would ask Congress to do a lot of things that this administration

does not. But that's a vacuum, right? It's a vacuum, but it's a vacuum. It seems to me that only

relatively small group of sort of self-consciously moderate Democrats would want to claim. Like,

if you're on the insurgent side, you know, the insurgent side, and then you've got an insurgent

vision, plus you agree with Chris Hayes that we're having this kind of existential battle about

what kind of country we are. What kind of country we are? Are you really going to want to be the

Democrat who comes out and says, and by the way, we're going to reform asylum so fewer people can

apply for asylum here. That isn't that an impossible cell in the Democratic Party right now. I

don't think it is, honestly. I think my own way, I'm not the politician who's going to do this,

right? But my own thing is it is your time may come. Just to be clear, I want to just want to say,

there is an absolutely to me compelling case for essentially open borders, like in a moral sense.

We're saving this clip for when you do run for president. I mean, I don't personally,

I would not support it as a politician. I wouldn't vote for it. But I also think it's not like

a ludicrous idea. You and the Kato Institute are there. Absolutely.

So there, like that animating moral spirit, you're right to identify as animating a huge part of

the left and fundamentally causing attention with the fact that most people don't want open borders.

And there are people that are morally committed to essentially that vision. And I don't think

they're necessarily like ethically incorrect, right? As a policy, I don't think it works. And

most importantly, it's impossible, I think, to marshal majority support for that.

So in this sense, to me, the fundamental thing, I think, to keep in mind is immigration policy

has to be in the national interest. First, orderly and humane, right? And the key part of that,

and this is why I come back around to this discussion about what kind of nation we are.

The key thing that has fallen away, I think, on the democratic side in this discussion is the

first one. It is in the national interest. Like immigrants are great. Immigrants are awesome.

My immigration is an incredible bounty and gift to this country. It is the reason that

the differentiating thing that has made America different. I'm just going back to like

the civic pluralism of like a 1980s public school education in New York City.

It's amazing that we have all these people from all these different places who bring all

these different kind of talents and perspectives and come here and become American and bring that

to do things like win gold medals and start companies and be your doctor.

And so you have to sell, you have to make that argument, you have to make that argument

in the style, you know, you have to make the 1980s New York City public school argument,

which was perhaps slightly more liberal in the country as a whole, combined with an argument

that persuades people that you're not going to do what Joe Biden did, right? And so,

let's talk about potential leaders of the democratic party who could make that argument or not.

Right? But like who is the leadership class for the Democrats going into 2026 and beyond?

Well, it's very, I think, out parties are always in this position where there is no national

leader, but you're trying to discover one. Yeah. But it's a particularly intense one here,

I think, because of the rupture represented by Trump. I mean, I think a really important thing to

kind of understand from the perspective of people in the Broad Center left is that it's a real

before and after situation. Like, if you view Donald Trump's project as a fundamental assault

on the constitutional order, which is to fundamentally transform the nation into something that's not

democratic, it's very hard to find continuity in like the politics of old. Like his abnormality

and the abnormality of his conduct creates a world in which like, it's like you've been untethered

from the spaceship and you're just like floating onto space, you know? Okay. That's right. So,

you didn't give me a single name. Well, well, people, well, right? No, but the reason I say that

is just because what I'm saying is I think you need to understand that like the way democratic

party voters are viewing this is in extreme terms. I guess that's where I'm trying to say this.

Yes. No, I can see that and I can see that the core reality for a lot of democratic voters

in 2026 is total frustration with anyone who told them in 2016 or 2018 or 2020. This will go away.

This will go away. You just have to sort of be normal or store normalcy and so on, right? But

the dilemma for the party is that to win national elections, they actually have to be normal and

restore normal. But you also, you have to win people who voted for Trump. Yes, right? And this

was something that Democrats didn't think they had to do after 2016 because Trump didn't win the

popular vote. But guess what? Right. After 2024, he won the popular vote. You also need to win

Senate seats in seats that Trump won by more than a few points, right? So it seems like this is,

you know, not not an impossible problem to solve, but a very challenging one where you have this

a base that wants an acknowledgment of rupture and abnormality and a swing constituency that you

need to win or hold that is just living in the new reality. So let me give three examples of

national figures that I think are doing interesting things to pull off that because you're right.

That's the fundamental thing that you have to do, right? Mark Kelly, Rubengaigo and Raphael Warnock.

I can even say Jon Ossof too. Tell me with what state each of those men represent just for the

same thing. Right. So, so let me, let me give examples of two states that are kind of key states

here, which are Arizona and Georgia and the four Democratic senators in those states, right?

They've all won statewide office. They've all won statewide office in the era of Trump. Rubengaigo

and Mark Kelly in Arizona, Jon Ossof and Raphael Warnock in Georgia. I'm choosing this

advisedly because of course, Arizona and Georgia being like the key states, right? That Biden won

and that Kamala Harris lost. And particularly because they're outside of the, you know, blue belt,

the blue wall, right? This was a huge deal that these states flipped to Democrats in 2020.

And I think all four of them have, and I'm not saying they're necessarily national leaders,

but what I would say is that all four of them have their own way of dealing with precisely this issue.

So like Rubengaigo's voting record is fairly moderate. He, for instance, I think all four of those

centers are not mistaken voted for the Lake and Riley Act, right? So like that was one of the first

votes. It was a big Republican-led measure to essentially increase sanctions and for immigrants

who committed crimes named for a woman who was killed by an illegal immigrant. Yeah.

They all four of them voted for that. And I think, you know, we're looking at their internal polling

and understood the states they represented. I think there were issues with that legislation

subsequently, but putting that aside, I think all four have found different ways to

rhetorically emphasize how abnormal and wrong they think the direction of the country is

while keeping their eyes on the main issues that won them their senate seats. I mean,

Warnock is sort of an amazing example. Warnock is, you know, speaks in the sort of register of

a preacher, which he is, broad moral language. That guy will bring it back to healthcare and kitchen

table issues every single time. He will call what's happening a parent and evil. And he will also

go back to this sort of kitchen table vision. And Mark Kelly is another great example, right?

Mark Kelly's got a fairly moderate voting record in the United States Senate. He is, you know,

he's being maybe prosecuted. Military pension possibly suspended. I think all of which is

clearly good for his political position. The best possible thing for it. Yeah.

And so I think in all those cases, you're seeing a combination of

a rhetoric that speaks to like the deep sense of democratic and spiritual crisis in the center

left that I think all four of those are pretty popular figures with basically a voting record and

a sort of substantive policy agenda that pretty squarely sits in a kind of center of the nation's

politics. I think I would say that all of them also have personal characteristics that

separate them in some way from the kind of churchiness of academic progressivism. Maybe,

right? Warnock speaks the language of Christianity in a way that democratic coalition tends to be

comfortable with. Guy Ego, I would say, is just kind of an unwoke Hispanic dude. If I can,

you don't have to comment on that, but that would be my take. And Mark Kelly is like the

whitest white astronaut you ever saw, right? And again, it's sort of some of these are policy

positions. Some of these are identity positions, but all of them create a perception that like,

this is a form of democratic politics that is somewhat distinct from the kind of competition

to say Latinx the most. Yes, right. I mean, I also do think like I think that I think there's a

little bit of fighting a last word on that. I think I do think there's a little bit of

the alienating rhetorical excesses of a certain part of the, let's say, non-profit academic and

online left, which sort of came together in Twitter, particularly in 2014, 15, 16, which were real.

Real enough, yeah. But it did get kind of beaten out of people a bit. The idea of what the

language of that 2016 or 2020 primary looks like compared to now is pretty different.

And I think partly that's just because people lost elections and we, you know, democratic

party lost the most important election of its lifetime. And you have to talk in a way that people

understand and feels like a thing that they've heard before.

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So let me do the horrible thing that we'll talk about presidential politics in 2028.

Right. So I would say just as an observer of American politics, that if I were going to pick

nominees for the Democrats in 2028, all of the guys you just mentioned would be very plausible

presidential or vice presidential candidates. If you're trying to maximize your popular vote,

maximize your share of swing states. The people leading the polls in the Democratic primary right

now are Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, who represent somewhat different models. They are sort of,

Harris is a legacy candidate in the polling potentially could collapse upon contact with political

reality. It's name recognition. That's possible. Right. Newsom, tell me what you think about Gavin

Newsom. I think Newsom has a Hillary Clinton problem, which is that Hillary Clinton was perceived

outside of the Democratic Party and Democratic Coalition as like the ultimate lib,

like the libiast lib who ever lived and was never actually like that much of a lib. It was like

and also had a record that was like fairly centrist, particularly as a US senator.

And that's like the worst uncanny valley for a Democratic politician to be in, where the base

doesn't trust you because you don't have a kind of organic relationship with like the left

parts of the party. And then the swing voter like just thinks like that's a lib.

You want the inverse, right? Right. Like you want the person that

has authentic and relationships with the left parts of the party in the grassroots

and also communicates broadly and is viewed as a not particularly partisan or liberal figure.

Barack Obama being, you know, a good example of that. And I just think right now, and this could

change, like Newsom has the opposite set of factors. Like he is made very clear attempts to

show that he's by partisan, centrist, independent. You know, there's some stuff he'd done around

the billionaire tax and policy around trans folks that have been actual substantive things he's

done, but moves to the center. Yeah, or to the right as some people would say.

Yeah. But I haven't seen evidence that that like comes through, like I just think there's a

reputational thing that's very problem. Also partly if you're just like the governor of California

is a tough place to get the next Democratic nominee from. Right. I mean, he has he, I mean,

they're like Kamala Harris. He has never run a important election in which he had to win large

numbers of centrist to center right votes. And that showed up big time in Harris's campaign

style, I think. And you could see it as his weakness. But look, here's his strength, right. His

strength is that he is able to get attention and hold attention. And you Chris Hayes wrote a book

recently called The Sirens Call. It's a very interesting book highly recommended, even though I

disagree with, you know, important parts of it, right, about what the internet has done to

political culture. And you talk a lot about attention in that, in that book, right. And

what is the power of attention and how has Newsom succeeded in grasping it?

Yeah. I mean, the thesis of The Sirens Call is basically that attention is the most valuable

resource of our age that the competition for it has grown so fierce that it is increasingly

valuable, but it's both valuable to us and it's valuable to the companies that can extract it.

That's the main thesis of the book, but it has a specific importance in politics, right,

which is, you know, attention is prior to everything you need to do else in politics. Like

name recognition is the thing we use, right. Part of wire Gavin Newsman is running highs. He has

high name recognition. That's been true forever, but it's more true than ever because more things

are competing for our attention that ever before. They're filtered through these algorithmic

platforms, right, that can pull us hither and yon. And so the primary thing you have to figure

out more than ever before in my lifetime to be a successful politician is how to get people's

attention and cut through that. Donald Trump did it incredibly effectively, had a whole bunch of

innovation in how he did it. And I think you're right to identify the fact that Newsom has a real

talent for that. Like the whole sticky did where he was like posting in Donald Trump's voice.

Some people found it cringey. Some people found it hilarious, but it it worked. It got attention.

It got attention. So the question is right. So how does that fit with the analysis? I mean,

look, the ideal situation you want, I think if you're like designing this in a lab is someone that

both has a proven ability to speak to swing voters that the voters you need and is also really good

at attention. And the kind of nightmare scenario in a democratic primary is someone who's like

bad at the former and get the latter, right? I don't think I don't think the Democrats nominate someone

in 2028 who is sort of a kind of pure creature of base craziness or whatever. I do think though

that there's a way in which the narrative of attention is itself potentially a kind of

it's something that people can reach for as a substitute for again, like doing hard things like pivoting

to the center, right? Where you say, you know, I mean, like if you look at the center. He is pivoting

to the center. Well, he's pivoting to the center, but from I would say from a position and this is

to your point as governor of California, right? That's the problem. It's where he's starting from.

Yes, right. It's tough. It makes the pivot tough. But like trying to do it. I mean, clearly it's not

like he's he's not like the thing that I think you're going to see a lot of politicians try to pull

off and it'll be interesting to see how the base responds is like maximal kind of like

attentional trolling resistance, you know, rhetorical performance and substantive pivot to the center.

Right. That's what you're going to see a lot of people try. But you do have a lot of situations

right now that I see again, as a conservative looking at liberals, right? Like if you look at the

Democratic Senate primary in Texas, right? And James Tolerico has a kind of religious pivot

to the center. But fundamentally, I don't see that in his positions. He's sort of just doing a

Christian gloss on very conventional progressive messaging. I just wonder if you see that, you know,

again, as the author of a kind of attention thesis as a situation where

Democrats are like, yeah, we're winning. We're winning the attention more and therefore we

don't have to worry about swing voters. I think we have to interrogate some of the premises

here, right? Because underlying this listen to this academic liberalism, Chris, interrogate the

prep go on. Yeah, interrogate the premises for premise. Well, here's I mean, here's the question,

right? All this depends on like how much we're dealing with median voter theory here. Like

there's a median voter. That voter is in the middle of a traditional ideological access.

They're cross pressured on issues and they move towards the people who substantively align with

their policy views the most. I think there's a lot to that. I think that clearly was very true

on immigration in 2024. Like really clear story to tell there about that. I also think the Donald

Trump and his success just like confounds that in a million different ways. And people will be like,

well, he moderated on social media. And it's like, yes, okay, that mattered. I think that mattered

a lot. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. It mattered. Was it that was that why Donald Trump became the

president? And I'd say twice. I'm a little skeptical about that. So the reason I say that is

the question presumes that like the way to go back is that you need to like move to the center

on this sort of like traditionally ordered access, right? Right. Which is like the left right

access and on individual issues. And I'm just like a little skeptical that that's true, right?

Like you need to be perceived as a moderate 100%. That is true. You need to be perceived as

relatively independent as not a kind of like traditional partisan to win swing voters.

Is the way that you get that perception? Like what your substantive policy is on asylum law?

Maybe. Maybe not. Like it's just not clear to me that those two things add so neatly to each

other. All right. This seems like a good moment to pull away from electoral politics a little bit

and talk about the left just as a force unto itself, right? A force that sort of wants to pull

politics in its direction doesn't necessarily want to worry about exactly what the median voter

thinks, but wants to be a kind of gravitational force in American politics independent of what

you need to do to win election after election. I've asked you where things stand for the Democrats.

Where do things stand for the left? Like what does the left want besides Donald Trump out of office

and defeated and so on? What is the positive left wing vision in American life right now?

The question of the left is a little complicated because we're talking about the sort of people to

the left of liberals, the kinds of folks online who would like use liberals and insults. Let's start

with people who would define themselves as left as opposed to liberal mainstream Democrat whatever

else. People who have a self-conscious identity. I mean, I think the positive vision would be like

a society of shared flourishing and equality. Let me frame the question differently. Before

we got to the possibility of some kind of artificial intelligence revolution and we're going to

talk about that possibility in a minute, but let's bracket AI for a second. It seemed to me like

the left all across the Western world had run into a kind of big cul-de-sac obstacle,

whatever else in the last 10 or 15 years. Basically, you have a bunch of countries that are rich,

have big welfare states. They're all pretty expensive. These societies are getting

old at a really rapid clip. It seems to me that that basic dynamic just sort of traps the left

in a kind of desperate attempt to shore up a status quo that's under threat. Defensive battles

and doesn't leave room for a utopian revolutionary vision, which is sort of essential to the left as

I understand it. I think that's a fair critique. I mean, I think that's not a critique. To me,

it's like the challenge and what are there sort of solutions? I think that that is truly the case

of the central left parties of the, say, the Socialist International and Europe, right? I mean,

which is completely hollowed out more of a bun and electorally in a lot of trouble.

The Western hemisphere is a very different story for a bunch of different reasons.

We can stick to America. But in the US, yeah, I mean, look, you know, one attempt to do that was

the Green New Deal vision, right? Was, look, let's talk about a sort of techno utopian world.

We, you know, we could have a world. And this is actually a world that still exists

possibly in the future, although it seems like so remote of essentially like zero marginal cost

energy. That's carbon free. That would allow us to do all sorts of things, right? And a society in

which like we don't have this enormous concentration of both wealth and energy wealth that's much more

distributed and much more equal. The biggest issue right now on the left, I think, is

they have the wind at their backs on the central political economy question, which is,

does American capitalism work for the ordinary person? And I think the polling reliably shows people

say the answer to that question is no. Profoundliness. Younger people especially. Younger people

especially. And I think the level of wealth concentration we've seen, the explosion in spending

by the wealthiest folks on our political campaigns, whether it's efficacious or not. And the kind of

like tech folks all there at the inauguration, like all of this creates a world that should be ripe

for a left critique. And in some ways has been, I mean, there's a reason that the mayor of New

York is a democratic socialist, which would have been, you know, a very remote possibility 15 years

earlier. The question is, what do you, what kind of society do you want? Right. But isn't the

question, how do you pay for the society you want? Because it seems to me that, yeah, that vision

is in principle very popular. Bernie Sanders has been a very popular figure making that kind of case.

The right, the populist right has traded on elements of that vision and tried to appropriate it

and so on. But when it comes to, you know, are we going to do a massive new public works program?

Right. It seems like the left, it hit one wall with inflation under Biden. It's spent a lot of

money and got inflation, which is incredibly unpopular. And the other wall is that, yes, you can

tax the billionaires and that's popular. But to fund a totally revised welfare state, you need to

tax a lot more people than that. And that is deeply unpopular too. And does anything change

those facts for the left? Well, I would say there's a different set of questions that are to me a

little more important. I think one of the traps in center left policy in the last say 30 years is

that we have this sort of pretax and transfer inequality and then tax and transfers to change it.

And we just keep getting more and more inequality in the, you know, what the market does.

And then the recipe is more and more redistribution. And like, it's more than rhetorical.

Ask rich people in New York, whether the leftist project of taxing wealthy people in New York has

been rhetorical. It has very much not. I mean, I won't ask you how you're aware of that trend.

It is the most redistributive tax regime in the entire country. You know, there's a new line

put in above $25 million. They're trying to get the billionaire tax in California like

they're right. That's real stuff. That's real money. The problem is you can't have a political

economy that just keeps producing like this larger and larger forms of inequality that then

have larger and larger amounts of redistribution to produce an equitable society.

So the question then becomes, well, what is a vision for an equitable

market economy or labor market or labor force or society that is genuinely middle class?

But even for that, you have to, as far as I can, like, I just don't think you get that more

equitable society by passing like some pro-labor regulations or something. You mentioned the

Green New Deal. Like any story you want to tell about changing just the way people are employed

and paid in America itself would require massive public work spending, massive new industrial policy.

And that money has to come from somewhere and the left certainly doesn't want to cut social

security or Medicare or anything like that. So it isn't it's still sort of stock saying,

we're going to add another line above 25 million to get the money to create the redistribution.

Well, I just think that it's thinking in two-hour terms to think about this like specific tax

and transfer question. I mean, the other thing I'll say is like there really is a lot of money at

the top. Like you can't fund a welfare state with it, but like you can start with a welfare tax.

Like that actually is like a very developed, clear idea. It's very popular. It would be

fought tooth and nail, but yeah, there really is a lot at the top. But yes, you're correct that

you have to build, I mean, what's the most durable form of social transfer, right? Social security

and Medicare, really social security the most. And you know, social security is actually relatively

regressive as a tax and is broadly shared. And so to get back around to the point I think you're

making is that like you do at a certain point have to take the tax revolt head on. Yes,

you do. Right. You have to convince some middle class people that they should pay more taxes.

Yeah. But the thing I would say about that is if that's what your ultimate project is,

right? Which is, I mean, this would be what say Bernie Sanders Medicare for all would require.

And he was clear about that. There will be more in taxes. And yes, for you, right? He didn't try

to like wave away the math on that. He was crystal clear about it. That said, that is only a

plausible political vision, right? A shared vision if you're also really going after the billionaires.

I mean, right, a country in which like those people who are billionaires are paying a slower

effective tax rate and like, yes, is this a campaign cliche? Yes. Is it true? 100%. It's also true.

Is not a world in which like you can plausibly ask people to have this sort of shared vision.

This is H.E. Solzberger. I'm the publisher of The New York Times. I oversee our news operations

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Let's talk about how artificial intelligence might shake up the landscape.

Because I think it enters into all of these very much in powerful ways. But start,

again, since we're talking about the left, there is a narrative to which I have contributed that says,

basically, the left right now, meaning academics, intellectuals, activists, and so on,

lesser politicians maybe, is just not taking AI seriously. That there's a bunch of people on the left

who just keep wanting to say, it's just not as big a deal. It's getting hyped. It's the AI

company is talking their book, not and what is actually being delivered is not a game changer.

To the extent that that's what the left is saying, I think it's wrong. I don't know how big a deal

AI is, but I think it's a pretty big deal. But how do you see the left-wing conversation on

artificial intelligence? Well, I think there is a fair amount of that. I think there's a little bit

of wishful thinking of like, this is the metaverse. It's the crypto, the metaverse. We had a run

of things from Silicon Valley that were not- Right. Indefense of people saying that, like,

there is very recent evidence of an enormous bubble in which one of the most powerful rich

companies in America literally changed his name to meta. It was ridiculous. The holodeck didn't

appear. Sometimes everyone does jump in the high pool and everyone is wrong. As a baseline,

that's an important thing. The reason I say that is because that is a very key part of the way

that I think a lot of people think about this. You would concede that more people are all in

in much bigger ways for AI than I think ever were for fooling around in virtual reality.

Well, I think that Mark Zuckerberg was in for it. I think the distinguishing thing is that it's

just obviously a more impressive and useful technology. You can explain to a person very quickly

what it does or what it could do that's useful in a way that you couldn't with the metaverse.

That's the key thing. I would say, yes, there's a certain amount of

it's all a scam. I do think it's probably worth distinguishing between the technology and

the business model, which are distinct. I was thinking about this the other day.

There was a company called Cosmo.com in 1999 to 2001. I remember them well.

Urban Fetch. Their idea was you would be able to order anything you wanted,

whether it was soda, a VHS, groceries within an hour, two hours, whatever.

It was the typical classic late90s.com boom. It went out of business very quickly.

But they clearly were on to something. They were just a little too early.

I think it's important to keep this distinction in your head between

is the technology useful and going to be transformative? Is the current business model or business

hype around it correctly valued in the market? The reason I say is because those get conflated

sometimes in this discussion in ways that I think are not helpful. Particularly, I think people

on the left who are like, it's all BS or it's all going to go away. It's like, yeah, there might

be a huge crash. But very clearly, this is a transformative technology. Then the question becomes

how people on the left think about that transformative technology. I would say, overwhelmingly,

it's extremely negative. Let me defend why it's negative. One is, it really is the case that they

just took everyone's intellectual property without compensation and trained up models that could

then replace the people that generated that. That's like an actual thing that happened. That's

pretty messed up. It's kind of a crazy transfer of value when you think about it. Like artists that

made stuff, people that wrote things. Now. Newspaper column. Newspaper columnist. I mean, cable,

cable TV. I'm in the anthropic settlement. I have also received literature from the anthropic

settlement. So like, yeah, A, B, the people that are controlling it are a tiny sliver of people.

And one of the fundamental insights that left is like real intense forms of concentrated

power of billionaire capitalists making huge decisions for everyone is pretty bad. And right now,

you've got like, what, five or six people that are making decisions about how trillions of

dollars of capital is allocated and what all of our futures are going to look like. No, thanks, man.

Like, I don't, I don't like that at all. Well, fortunately, the people making those decisions

are completely normal in every way. Hold no eccentric views about the nature of the human

future. No, I think that story makes sense. But then what is, what is an actual left wing

AI politics look like? Because right now, right now, you have Bernie Sanders. You have Bernie Sanders

called for a moratorium on building data centers. To me, this seems like something that is likely

to be fairly popular in a lot of places. And ultimately, basically useless that it's basically sort

of nimbism, not in my backyard. And what will happen is the data centers will get built in other

states where they'll get built in the Middle East or they'll get built in Africa. And at most,

you're slowing down AI, maybe a tiny bit. You're not doing anything about China and you need

some other plan. So let me, can I argue against that for a second just because I think

the question is like, okay, well, where do you start? Right? So I think there's a real parallel

to the arguments around globalization trade and neoliberalism that happened in the late 1990s

because people said the exact same thing there is like, well, what are you going to do? You're like,

this is just the way the world is moving. And if we don't make this trade deal, then other

countries will make that trade deal. And things are going to get automated. And what you want to

like cling to factories for the rest of your life. And this is just like the way the world is

moving. And yeah, you kids can go riot in Seattle with your dumb WTO protest and like try to save

the owls. But like, in the end, that's all going to be ineffectual. And then what really happened

was like, Donald Trump and JD Vance came along to be like, hey, man, probably not a great thing to

like absolutely sledgehammer the entirety of our industrial base and just take millions of people

and turn their towns into like, absolutely hollowed out husks and leave everyone just like begging

for enough opioids to kill the pain of what had been taken. And I want to go back and be like,

wait a second, those people were right. They were identifying something correctly. When they said

back when we had this debate the first time, that there were going to be enormous consequences

to this model of economic development to a bunch of policy decisions that were actually made.

Remember that led to that destruction. Right. But the downsides of data centers

as I understand it is, yes, there are some questions about electricity generation and sort of

green concerns. Well, I don't think we're going to resolve that. I'm not convinced that they're

that big, but like my concern with data centers is the thing that they are enabling and how it

transforms forms. Well, that's what I'm talking about. Right. Okay. But my point is,

let me say that as I know, because I'm saying the full thing, right? I'm saying, if you're saying

my project is to put a crowbar in the wheels of the machinery of the creation of a new vision

for how the world will be ordered. And the way I'm doing is I'm stopping this data center,

right? Right. Like what else do you want people to do? I mean, I think you do need to figure out

the right place to put your crowbar, right? So if this is to use a different historical analogy,

right? If this is akin to the industrial revolution, in the end, the people who, you know,

smashed looms and so on didn't really have a plausible agenda. Right. And the people who

instituted child labor laws and tried to and and did, right? Yeah. So that would be a left

total left friendly example. I'm not sure that works. Like, look, there is a part of me,

certainly that looks at certain doom laden projections for the future of AI. And it's like, yeah,

you know, you stop it wherever you can. And if you've got to use, you know,

nimbism that I might oppose in other circumstances to do it, so be it. Right. I just don't see the path

from that data center. It doesn't get built in Oregon. Totally. Yes. Well, we prevent AI from,

you know, total something bad. Yes. I mean, let me, let me just say that like the reason that I

sort of defend that project is just because like, as a means into the politics of it, right?

To mentally, I mean, Lawrence Leicester said this to me, um, the Harvard Law professor,

and he's been thinking about AI and democracy, where he's like, he said this thing and stuck with

him. He's like, imagine if we had the nuclear arms race, but it was just private companies.

Like, well, and, well, and, but, but also the people building, building the nukes were talking to

the nukes and the nukes, the nukes were, the nukes were saying, don't you want to press the button?

A lot of things. Right. No, no, it's very, it's, it's very, I agree. And we're having, again,

we're having this conversation. I should note in the shadow of an ongoing dispute between the

Pentagon and anthropic about the uses of anthropics technology. But wait, in that debate, you're on

this other side, right? You don't want, like if I said you should the Department of Defense take over.

Right? That's what they're threatening. They're threatening the Defense Production Act, right?

Right. So, but you would, but you don't want, no, I mean, the AI race managed by Pete Higgseth.

No. Okay. So what is the solution to Leicester's conundrum? I mean, there has to be at the broadest

level. I don't, I mean, let me just be clear. Maybe I don't know. Maybe a board, maybe a board of

peace. Yeah. No, I mean, like, I don't know. But some kind of civilian governmental control,

right? Civilian governmental regulate, like, I mean, right now, as far as I can understand,

there's zero regulation. I mean, I don't think there's nothing. Again, I am not at all at enough,

like not even begin to be at the threshold of being enough of an expert or AI wonk,

to tell you, like, what should the governmental regime be? Right. But sticking to the level of

politics, though, right? It seems like there's a line that Democrats, liberals, and not only

Democrats and liberals, but some form of populist AI backlash, which by the way, everyone who works

in AI expects, right? If you talk to people who work... Dario said it in... Yeah. He said it on my

podcast, but like you, everyone who is in that small sliver of people who you mentioned assumes

that 2028, 2030, if we get that far, right, that our politics will be consumed by people who have

your, some version of your reaction. But that could go in a lot of different ways. Well,

definitely politically, different political valences of that same reaction. Right. It could be

the Steve Bannon anti, but just on the left, like, do you think that sort of the idea that you

need to regulate AI for safety actually breaks through as a political issue, or do you think it

only breaks through if it's like about job loss? You know, part of what's difficult to disentangle is

there's such an obvious concerted effort to paint a maximalist picture of the possibility of the

power of the technology by people that are right now in rounds of investment raising, right?

For companies that are absolutely bleeding capital that are nowhere near profitable.

So there's a skepticism of like, is it really going to be the Doomsday machine and it's going to,

you know, be halting all this stuff? I'm pretty worried about that actually. Like, I think just

descriptively, I feel like that doesn't have that much purchase. I think the thing that does have

purchase are two things. One is this notion, and I've talked about this a bit, is just like

to the extent they have a business proposition, which they do, is to replace white collar workers

and machines. Basically, like, we automated all these other jobs. We're going to automate these jobs.

And, you know, to go back to the metaphor I was using before about this sort of big trade

debates, it's like, yeah, what do American politics look like if you turn Marin County into

Youngstown and, you know, Park Slovak and Gary, Indiana? Probably not great.

What does the American economy look like? Like, so I think there's a real sense of like,

the sledgehammer is coming for the part of the economic capitalist American project.

We're like, people have homes and they take vacations and they send their kids to good schools and

it's like, if the project of AI is to just now take out that layer,

I think AI will create insane amounts of political backlash. But I also think American

politics will go even more insane than they are now. I think you essentially gave an answer

to this question earlier when you talked about sort of the problem with redistribution, right?

But it seems like the left under those circumstances could take a form of saying, look, we need

UBI, universal basic income, job guarantee of some kind? Well, these are different things,

right? There's a version that says you basically want to look at all the money that the people

in the AI world are going to be making and you want to tax it, just directly subsidize Americans

out of that large S. Or you need a politics that basically protects work. And it sounds to me like

you are on the job side, not the UBI side. I guess I haven't thought it through enough to

feel like I have a very fixed view on either. I think there also can be complimentary in certain

ways. I think to me, the animating principle here, which I think is the animating principle for

a lot of left liberal resistance to this is just like an increasing appreciation of the

specialness of being human and the dignity of being human and humans doing human things like

making stuff and sharing it with each other and a world that feels increasingly designed to

strip away, extract, exploit and reduce that fundamental humanness. And that to me is kind of like

the beating heart beneath whatever the policy is, which I think I don't know. It's something

like a job gives life meaning. But we need space for people to be able to create a stable

world for themselves, raise their families, be with their friends, pursue their goals and projects,

and be engaged in the world and their communities.

Yeah. And so this is a good place to end because this is where I wanted to ask you about this.

I think the left has been radically underestimating the capacities of AI and in a way that has left

left-left-wing politics somewhat unprepared for where we're going. At the same time, I appreciate the

extent to which the left critique of AI has been framed in those terms as a kind of defense of

humanism and dare I say human exceptionalism in the face of machine alternatives because

that's not the only possible direction for the left to go in. There has been a kind of

various kinds of sort of anti-humanist tendencies on the left for as long as I've been alive,

right? There's a kind of secular materialism that sort of is incredibly reductive about the

human mind and dismisses free will. There's a kind of academic deconstructionism that reduces like

all human art to power relations. And then there is a kind of environmentalist

left that is skeptical, let's say, about the human contribution to the biome. So I'm really happy

to have the left in their defending human exceptionalism. Are you confident that that will stick?

Like as opposed to a world where the left decides that we need to defend the

parasocial relationships that people have with their AI that are just as important as male

female marriage of the old school, right? I think that's a direction the left could take. Do you?

That feels very remote from what's happening now. I agree. I think it depends a lot on

the trajectory of the technology and also the deployment of it.

Yeah, because I think that the, yes, I guess the sort of thread you're pulling on intellectually is

like this sort of, yes, beefies exceptionalism, right? Like, is there something particularly

uniquely great about being a human and distinct about it? And if you're a materialist

or you're an animal rights activist and you know, you're skeptical of those claims,

I guess I would just say again, like as a sort of sociological fact, what I found sort of

bracing at this moment and which I feel deeply personally, just speak for myself for a second.

It's really put me in touch with humanism in like a deep way of like,

what it means to be human, what's amazing about being a human, what's distinct about being a

human, what the tradition of the liberal arts and why it's like important to read and study and

actually, you know, write for yourself and not hire a robot to go to the gym to work out for you,

which is like what we're doing in colleges in mass, right? And I think, I think that right now,

that's the dominant reaction, which I think is, I think is good. And I think, you know,

I've been thinking about this, just say this about, because I think it connects in some ways to

one of the things that we saw in Minnesota, which is this notion of like, I think coming out of

COVID and the experience of that, this sort of sense of like the power and importance of just

human connection, like face to face, and community connection and neighbors, you know,

neighbor is the term that all the folks in Minnesota were using and that like, there does feel like

there is above and beyond this AI discussion, a kind of resurgent humanism and an appreciation of

human connection in a lot of what's happening right now in this political moment on this sort of

broad center laugh. Yeah. Yeah. And well, too, I, we can end with politics, but just this,

do you think, is it an AI election? Like, is that, is that your expectation? I just, I feel so

much radical uncertainty about the future. I know. I know. You have to end, you have to end by

giving me a prophecy. Imagine that you are, that you're Claude or chat GPT and I'm typing in

and, you know, I'm asking you, you know, here's what I think, I, I think in the sense that I think it will be

I think the odds of it being the center or whatever the economic story is in that year are high

enough that that's likely to be the dominant thing. Okay. I'll accept that. Chris Hayes, thank you so

much for joining me. I enjoyed it.

I

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