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We'd also like to thank our founding sponsor , the Carrie and Linda Killinger Foundation Hello and welcome to the Crosscut Festival to today's session.

Politico Coal Power Play.

My name is Karen O'Connor.

I serve as the chief marketing officer for Braver Angels.

We are a national citizen movement that works to bring Americans together to bridge the partisan divide, not to necessarily meet in the middle, but to talk, listen and to better understand one another's perspectives.

I also host the Braver Angels podcast , where we seek to model this sort of cross partisan discourse in the media space, bringing together politicians, journalists and thought leaders to face conflict head on.

To get beyond the talking points, clarify disagreements and illuminate new solutions to the biggest problems facing our country.

As we move toward another divisive election cycle, it is critical that we have these kinds of frank conversations and today I'm here to talk with two political veterans who are never afraid to jump into the fray offer strong opinions.

Expert analysis and engage opposing perspectives in good faith Robert Gibbs is a longtime political strategist who's worked with former President Obama since his run for Senate in 2004. for from 2009 to 2011.

He served as the White House press secretary and an adviser to the 2012 Obama campaign, where full disclosure I served as a staffer in Chicago in my past life.

Robert currently serves as senior counsel to the consulting firm BPI, and he also hosts the Hacks on Tap podcast with fellow campaign gurus David Axelrod and Mike Murphy.

Rick Wilson is a political strategist, media consultant and author to work in Republican politics for several years.

before leaving the party.

After the 2016 presidential election, in 2019, Rick co-founded the Lincoln Project Act, a political action committee composed of Republicans and former Republicans opposed to President Trump.

He's written for a variety of publications across the political spectrum and endeared himself to his over one million followers on Twitter, who come to expect expert analysis and the dose of sharp wit.

Rick and Robert welcome Thank you.

Thank you.

It's great to have you and we're going to take audience questions in the latter half of the session But first, we're going to dive into the current state of American politics.

We'll talk a little bit about the midterm elections, the recent leak of the draft Supreme Court decision related to Roe v. Wade, and we'll offer some analysis for both the Democrats and the Republicans as they seek to mobilize and persuade Americans to give them their vote.

But first, I just want to step back and talk a bit about the greater partisan divide that seems to be threatening the very existence of our country as a pluralistic democracy.

Aside from how our politicians are behaving and treating one another.

It also seems that ordinary Americans no longer seem to view their political opponents as simply wrong or misguided.

They see them as bad people.

They see them as enemies whose ways of thinking are dangerous and incomprehensible.

And I think anyone who saw the reaction this week to the Supreme Court news saw that in action , and we'll talk a little bit more about that.

But Robert, I'll start with you and then same question to you, Rick.

How did we become this divided and what can we do about it?

It's a great question , and I don't know that I've got the entire answer.

Obviously, I think we want to take a step all the way back.

We've been divided for a really long time.

It's become much sharper and it gets accelerated by the advent of social media.

The sort of hyperbolic rate in which we see and what people say on cable TV That makes things really accelerates things.

I think also we have in our politics that you mentioned this and that we have this theory of I'm right and you're evil.

And I think part of the challenge of that is if we look at our national government and we look at a place, let's take a look at Congress, which is where a lot of this, a lot of our national debate, obviously , centers will.

Congress is not representative of where the American people are.

We live in a closely divided country.

We live in a.

If you look at the last election, maybe a fifty one, forty seven election, there are more members of the Freedom Caucus on the Republican side, than there are those type of members in the Republican Party and there's more members of the Progressive Caucus on the Democratic side than there are that make up that level of membership inside of the Greater Democratic Party.

So I think the challenge in some of our politics right now is there's there's no impetus to sit down and have a conversation like we're having around issues because in reality, in most congressional districts, I'm not worried about losing to a Rick Wilson Republican , and he's not worried about losing to a Robert Gibbs Democrat.

I'm worried about making sure that I'm not losing to another Democrat and Rick's not is worried he's not losing to another Republican.

So that means the impetus for us to sit down and have a discussion and figure out where we have some commonalities It is just not all that great.

I'm more worried about being called not liberal enough and Rick's afraid of not being called , not conservative enough in in that sort of interplay And and it's dangerous, and it really is hard because none of our problems are like one They don't get better with age.

And if we don't sit down and start to have some of these conversations and each side understand we're going to get something but not everything, it's going to be a long time before we can either have those conversations that come together or worse yet, find ourselves on a path towards some bipartisan agreement , you know?

But I think I think Robert's exactly on point here, and I think this is one of the great dangers that faces us in the country today because particularly my former party, there is a perverse incentive structure now to not talk across the aisle to not cooperate with anyone else.

But in fact, to describe everything , every motivation outside of a very narrow set of loyalties to Donald Trump and to this sort of nihilism that's infected the former Republican Party to describe those things as evil, to describe them as as seeking to destroy, you know, the American culture the American country as they define it and describe it.

And it is a I think it's an extraordinarily dangerous moment because those perverse incentives on the right , particularly.

And look, they exist on the on the on the fringes of the left in some ways as well of what I call the hamster wheel.

It is this you go out and do something absolutely outrageous You're Marjorie Taylor Greene or you're Matt Gates or Madison Coffer.

You say or do something outrageous.

And when people respond, they don't do that You run to Fox News and say, I'm being canceled.

And then you put out an email saying, Hey, I was on Fox News, send me money and that that hamster wheel rolls and rolls and rolls, and it never stops And that is corrosive to any kind of dialogue, because if you're a Matt Gaetz or a Jim Jordan or a Ted Cruz, you have no incentive to sit down with an opposite number in the Democratic Party and say, Hey, you know what?

We ought to deal with health insurance costs.

You know, we ought to deal with, you know, we ought to deal with with with inflation, we ought to deal with climate, we ought to deal with with any number of issues that are meaningful things for American families day to day.

There's no incentive for that in fact, the incentives are at this point.

If you do something with the other party frequently, the question is not who?

What are you talking Those people want to kill us.

And so it is.

It is a I think it's a dangerous moment in our republic because unless we have a common language and a common dialogue and a common set of of basic assumptions about the goodwill of the of our counterparts, we're in big trouble.

Hmm.

Yeah.

And there's obviously a host of issues that are bitterly dividing Americans right now.

But perhaps none more so than the debate over abortion and reproductive rights.

And as many folks in the audience probably know , earlier this week there was a leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that showed the court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, which would be obviously a watershed moment in our country.

Robert, I'll start with you just first.

What was your reaction to this leak, which seemingly came out of nowhere?

And then secondly, what do you think the effect will be on the national political conversation as we head into the midterms and both parties are seeking to use it to their advantage?

Yeah.

Well, I think first and foremost it was it was absolutely shocking when I first saw the news alert, I thought, Wow, I didn't realize the Supreme Court put out decisions at five o'clock on a on a Monday evening I thought, this is odd.

And then obviously I go to read the story and I'm shocked.

And it's interesting, you know, because there was a little commentary of like, I mean, one of the first things I said was, Wow, I can't believe this leaked.

And then some people were, you know, you read on Twitter and some people like it, the leaks, not the story.

It's not the story, but it is.

It's absolutely an essential part of the story.

Right?

I mean, for for people that haven't spent a lot of time in Washington, almost nothing gets leaked without some sort of agenda.

Right?

You're either trying to sound and look smart and pretend you're in the room for all the important stuff or you're trying to make a point and set to set the tone.

And so that clearly happened here.

Q Let me let me push back on one thing you said those we we we we went into this question I don't.

We're divided on this issue, but we should be clear that well, north of 60 percent of the American people in a world in which you know, Democrats and Republicans can argue over the color of the sky on a sunny day, 60 plus percent of the people are for legalized abortion for for what Roe versus Wade stood for or stands for.

So I think, look, I think there's no doubt we were.

We were.

If the Supreme Court decides what they leaked in June, this was always going to accelerate it and make it even hotter these midterm elections.

Now that we've got basically a pre runway to that excitement, it's just going to talk this up even more.

I will say , just purely as a Democratic strategist, I do not think I think this will have an impact on the elections.

I've seen some people sort of guess that now the entire election is about Roe versus Wade, which is what is just simply not the case.

It'll it'll play a role.

But so too will economics and inflation And just how people generally view the future But but boy, you can imagine, as you said, the one thing that is clear is the passion on each side , even if it's not an equal number of people on each side is is strongly held and is likely to only get hotter as we both lead into the election.

But let's say one last thing and let Rick talk here.

I don't think this is just a big decision by the Supreme Court.

I think this is an enormous decision for the Supreme Court.

And what I mean by that is for the first time in probably 50 years, we're taking away rights from people not expanding them as the court had been doing over the several decades.

And that's a moment that is, I think, fraught with quite a large amount of peril for the court and for the country.

You know, America has long had, as Robert pointed out, what I like to call the uneasy consensus about abortion and even people who believed that, you know, that were that were broadly pro-life as I like, I'm I consider myself broadly pro-life, but I'm even more broadly government staying the hell out of everybody's business, especially when it comes to these these intimate, moral and personal and medical decisions And and and the idea that the court is going to to to to climb the Mount Everest of the culture war in an election year and make this decision in a way that that is the end point of a 40 year arc by the Federalist Society and the social conservatives and the far right of of the party and even when I was in the party, I was always, you know, a Bush Republican I was a moderate Republican by by, you know, on all the social stuff, especially as most Americans , most Americans thought abortion was a was a was a difficult thing.

They didn't want to talk about it or look at the problem too long.

they wanted.

And Bill Clinton captured it with absolute perfection about where America's soul is and was on abortion.

Safe, legal and rare And what I what I heard him say, that phrase I went I took it to a focus group know almost immediately , and it was exactly where America was But what you're going to have now is, is this again, this pinnacle of the culture war where it will be reverted to the states and it will become dangerous and it will become a hot spot in the states?

And I think Roberts , right?

Look, Democrats there were there was a little bit of strutting around by some, some Democrats the night this leak came out where they said all of this changes everything for twenty two.

We have the election in the bag.

This is the only issue.

It's it's never going to be the only issue.

It is a difficult problem with Americans really, really, really feel passionately about on on about 15 percent of either edge.

And but the bulk of Americans we had come to a consensus that has flawed ID as Roe was as a decision, and it had a lot of legal It had a lot of legal deficits to the way it was constructed, and that's why the Republicans were able to go at it the way they they have and pick it apart for years and years.

Even with that, Americans didn't want to walk away from it as it is currently constructed.

It's a it It is a I think it's a perilous moment, but it is not an existential moment for either party.

It is not going to ensure the Republican sweep November or the Democrats sweep November eight.

It is It will continue to be a sticky and horrible problem for our political culture in the country.

I think I also want to ask about the divides within the two parties, and I'll start with you, Rick.

Do you feel that President Trump's stranglehold on the Republican Party has slipped at all?

Look, Donald Trump is the most powerful force in the Republican Party.

And a lot of.

So the divide, the divisions inside the Republican Party are people who support Donald Trump publicly or privately.

And that's that Venn diagram doesn't always overlap.

And a very, very, very small fraction of Republicans who oppose him and who will publicly state the danger he posed to the country in the party You can sit those people around a table at a Waffle House that is not a big group.

That is not a meaningful cohort in the GOP.

Today, The people who either fear him or love him and support him because of either of those two reasons or the vast majority of the party , they are winning the primaries.

Many of them are are post-ideological They are all about power and education of Trump.

They are as at minimum, they are authoritarian curious.

They do not believe the things that Republicans believe for a very, very long time and that were supposedly the centerpieces of the party limited government, individual labor, rule of law, adherence to the Constitution Those things are out the window now.

They want the strong man, the man in the white horse, the authoritarian again authoritarian curious because Trump broke them and he gave them the rein to be.

Their worst selves.

And if Trump does decide to run, what do you think is the best hope for people like you who would like to see him defeated in a Republican primary?

Honestly, the actuarial tables of the end result of eating too many Filet-O-Fish sandwiches.

I mean, this guy, unless he is dead Donald Trump will continue to dominate the Republican Party for our lifetimes.

I mean, he and until he is gone and even then, God knows he will continue to have a stranglehold on the party.

He controls the entire party fundraising apparatus at the national level.

Now the party committees go out and raise, but that's the Washington transactional ecosystem.

He controls whether or not people make it through primaries for the most part.

Look, look at Ohio.

Last night, J.D.

Vance was in third place.

Trump came in and told Republicans, You will vote for him and more electable candidates, not Mandel , but Dolan was a more electable candidate.

The JD Vance And he is now, you know, he ended up coming in in second Trump controls the party.

He is the party and And look, it's unprecedented.

The fact that the Republican National Committee today raises money and spends money to support Donald Trump, a next president.

They pay for his lawyers They pay for.

God knows what else.

It's a remarkable grip on power.

I mean, as Robert can tell you, when Barack Obama was done as president, of course, he was still an influence in the voice of the party.

But they weren't out there every single day.

basing everything they do and say on on President Obama as as the centerpiece of the future.

It's a really remarkable and I think, kind of terrifying , you know, political culture artifact that we face as a country And Robert, how would you diagnose the divide within the democratic Party?

You know, the left wing of the party has been making the case that Biden should really lean into progressive priorities , use executive orders to do things like cancel student loans.

At the same time, the more moderate wing of the party seems wary of embracing , particularly some of the rhetoric of the left.

You know, ideas like defunding the police have proved unpopular with many voters.

How do you see this divide and how can Biden and the Democrats toe this line?

as they head into the midterms?

Well, to take the last part, how to how to toe the line, I think that this Congress has shown not altogether well, but I think part of that is you've got a big party with a lot of different beliefs But you know, quite frankly, we've proved over the last six months that for us to be successful as a party and for those ideas, whether you're a moderate or progressive requires a bigger party.

It requires more more people in the Senate.

So that ranges from people that are getting elected in California with 67 percent of the vote to Joe Manchin, who gets elected in a state that Joe Biden got less than 30 percent of the vote in.

So look, I think we have a vociferous debate inside of our party.

I think the challenge that I have for that , the left is you mentioned two of them.

One is their their policy ideas that just don't have a majority of people, not just in the Democratic Party.

but in the country that don't support you.

And I think there has to be if I was on the left, my project would be not just electing more on on on the left, but changing the perception of those ideas among a broader population.

of people.

Because, quite frankly, if those ideas carried the day, Hillary Clinton wouldn't have been the nominee in 2016 and Joe Biden certainly wouldn't have been it in 2020.

So, so that's that's, I think part of it.

And again, we've got to get our tent has to become bigger because we're not likely to, you know, add two senators from Puerto Rico and two senators from the from the District of Columbia and add four different Supreme Court justices and whatnot.

We've got a we've going to have to win elections in places that Democrats have altogether not necessarily done well in.

And that's going to mean that we're going to have to have enough space for a lot of different ideas.

But I think, you know, on a lot of the really big issues there, there is good unanimity, maybe not in how, but in what.

And I think, you know, I think in some ways, you know, Obama was able to bridge that divide and something is as sacred as health care among the Democratic Party , you know, and President Obama said this and you know, when I worked for him in 2004, candidate Obama , this may not be the health insurance system we would design if we were starting from scratch.

But it's the health and health insurance system that's existed for a really long time.

A big portion of our tax code is predicated on that system.

And how do we make that system work well?

And he was kind of agnostic about how we improve that as long as the end result was the outcome being more people had access to health insurance and fewer people were becoming bankrupt from getting sick.

And I think to me, that's that's the sort of posture you have to get.

You mentioned this the last thing to do if you if your slogan is defund the police and the first thing you do and an answer when you're asked about defunding the police is explain your slogan It's time to stop and go back to branding school right Slogan explains your beliefs.

If you're explaining your slogan, which explains your beliefs, chances are you need to go back and retool.

I think in many ways , defunding the police was extraordinarily dangerous for Democrats And the outcome was extraordinarily bad in 2020, I mean, look, it may be that Democrats don't lose as many House seats because we got a head start losing House seats in in a year in which Joe Biden was elected president.

And I think some of that was because of that, that type of rhetoric that was was not helpful from a national brand perspective.

And looking ahead to 2020, for Robert, do you expect Joe Biden to run and if he doesn't?

How would you see a primary shaking out given the current standing of vice president Kamala Harris and other Democratic hopefuls?

Yeah, I mean, I look, I I and I don't know, not on this answer off of any inside knowledge to start with.

I take him at his word in the answer I think he gave in the spring when he was asked this question, which is and the truth is, every president wants to run for reelection, right I mean, that's that's part of the game.

So I take him at his word that he wants to.

But I also take him at his word that after this election, he'll decide whether physically and politically he can run.

I do think he also was very true in the 2020 election, very truthful when he said he understands he's a transit, a transitional figure for the Democratic Party I think that's absolutely the case in the event that he doesn't run.

I think Kamala Harris starts likely as the favorite because the favorite will be based largely off of name recognition.

I don't necessarily believe , though.

You know, I don't necessarily believe that she'll be the nominee if she runs.

And I'm not saying she won't be.

But I think you'll have a pretty loud , boisterous primary of, you know, 10 15 people not unlike the Republicans had in 2016, because I think there'll be people that you'll have , you know, eight to 10 people that you know, their names right now.

I think you'll have six people that you don't know their names right now that are going to decide now's the moment for my voice to be part of this national conversation and I'm going to take a chance at it, mostly because I think this if Donald Trump runs Donald Trump's, the nominee and if Donald Trump is the nominee, I don't think the Republican Party wins the White House.

Hmm.

What do you think about that?

Rick , in terms of Trump running and if he does?

Look, if Trump runs, he's the nominee.

Roberts Exactly right.

We are.

We are in a world where no matter how many fantasies Ron DeSantis or Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley or Nikki Haley or name any number of others have, he will control the nomination from the first day.

I think in a lot of ways, because he controls state parties so much, there will be a lot of state parties who just say, we're not having a primary, we're just naming Trump I think Trump winning a second term is extraordinarily dangerous.

I think a Trump Biden rematch is still tough for Trump.

I think if if Joe Biden is not the candidate , there are an awful lot of arguments that that Donald Trump will come in there and the Democrats will try to do a policy chess game and Trump will eat the pieces, as he kind of did in in the Republican primary of 16 and against Hillary in 16, where he the value of being a trans aggressive jerk and fighting a giant media campaign that sucks all the air out of the room.

You know, there's an argument that Donald Trump wins that race This is a divided country.

The Electoral College itself as a as a mechanic of a national race , is a very it's getting to be a higher hill for Democrats to climb.

There are there are a lot of states that have been trending very red for a while, Florida and Ohio being two of them that make the democratic map a lot harder than it used to be, especially if it comes down to a race where Trump can frame it as as the squad like defund the police.

You know, Disney pedophile groomer , you know, the whole culture war bucket gets thrown on the Democrat , and they try to explain their way out of it.

I think it's one of the reasons why you know my group and I still keep working so hard to to to break Trump and to continue to make him poison America's political system.

Because you can't even you don't even want to take the risk of the guy winning the White House again.

I mean, imagine what Trump and the people around him will do when they are unconstrained by re-election It's not a great thought Indeed.

Well, we're going to take some audience questions, but before we do, I want to ask one last question.

I guess I'll start with you, Rick.

And then over to you, Robert.

What makes you optimistic about America in twenty two America is still gifted with some kind of weird, providential, dumb ass look , this is a country that that faces terrible , terrible things and and forces that could divide us in a way that is that I think would have shattered a lot of other countries.

But we do have this weird resilience as Americans We do have this weird situation where we come back together , even when things you know, have have looked darkest and and there are moments where we're like , I said, it almost feels providential.

Sometimes that that , you know, one six being a great example of that.

You know, there were things that day where if Officer Goodman hadn't moved those senators away from the mob or the mob away from those senators, this country could have fallen that day.

I honestly believe it.

And and, you know, we face things like COVID.

We're an extraordinary resilience of our people , is displayed in in very dark times.

We are a strong country with some.

We've got some deep divisions, but we're we're a profoundly strong country at our core.

Robert Yeah, I agree with a lot of what Rick said.

I mean, look, I'm I'm reminded I started off this , you know, talking about the fact that we've all for a long time in our history, we've been divided, right?

We had the fights on on how to set up the Constitution were were divided by big states and small states and whatnot.

I've but I tend to believe that we're we're as rich said.

We're a strong country.

We are resilient people We still have more things that bind us together than push us apart.

Even though it doesn't manifest itself each and every day.

And I'm also reminded, you know, when things get bad right now, people say, you know, we're close to having a civil war.

Well, I mean, obviously, I didn't live through that, but we had a civil war So it's it's been worse.

It's been.

It's been.

It's been a while.

But I think it's important to understand is, as President Obama used to say, you know, change is hard.

Change doesn't always happen.

It rarely happens.

from the top down.

It generally happens from the bottom up And and I, you know, I was counseling my son, who was distraught.

He's in college , distraught at the Supreme Court.

And I said, you know, look, these things have a way of.

They go through cycles, they swing back and forth and whichever way the pendulum swings today, chances are in the not too distant future will swing back the other way.

Yeah, well said.

All right.

Well, let's jump into some audience questions here.

Here's a good one.

I'll go first to Rick and then to Robert.

The question is why are folks leaning more and more into authority organism?

Where did that come from and how do we message against that urge?

First off, it's cognitive easy.

It does not require you to compromise It does not require you to do the hard work.

I mean, democracy is a democracy.

A democratic republic like ours is is the hardest system.

It requires compromise of consensus us and and dealing with fact and not emotion.

And and authoritarianism is easy.

It lets people have the idea that the other is hurting them, that something external to their lives that they don't have to be responsible for can be pointed to and pointed that And what we've seen, all the historical precedents for authoritarian governments.

They start out by saying, I hear you.

I know how pissed off you are.

Let me do it.

I'll get them I'll take care of this.

And again, it's cognitively easy.

People want to Jonathan.

He's written a bit more than I can ever imagine.

He's forgotten more about it than I can ever write.

But he talks about and Applebaum talks about the temptations of authoritarianism because they're real.

It is.

It is an easy slide.

And when you think about the American system, we have always had a lot of anti-Bush ideas to authoritarianism in our in our in our political culture.

for hundreds of years.

And in the last 30 years, we have seen two developments.

I think that are enormously important and we've got to be honest about them.

The first one is that Fox News, starting in 1996 97 , Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes built a marvelous bubble to tell Republicans they could hide inside that bubble.

They would only hear the things they wanted to hear.

And over time, the rhetoric inside that bubble increasingly became the elites hate you.

The smart people hate you.

The rich people hate you, the coastal elites hate you and we're going to tell you it's OK to hate them right back.

And so they did , and it was enormously profitable and it was enormously powerful.

The second major social force that has led to this moment where authoritarianism is very tempting is, of course, Facebook , because you're, you know, every single person in this event watching this thing right now, I guarantee you has that uncle or cousin or grandfather or grandmother or father or mother on Facebook or who sends you emails saying, Oh my God, is it true that George Soros and Hillary Clinton eat babies under a pizza restaurant?

There they are in a alternate reality shaped by Facebook and the algorithmically driven behaviors on the right increasingly move from Patriotes them to authoritarianism without a beat.

And it's enormously important to understand just how hermetic those two bubbles have that are that surround the thinking of a lot of people on the right in this country.

But how do we fight back against that?

How do we pierce that epistemological bubble?

Well, it's enormously territoriality.

It's enormously difficult.

And part of the thing that has to happen is that that breaking people out of the algorithmic bubble of Facebook That's a legislative and legal challenge.

because Facebook's not going to change.

It is not going to change Zuckerberg's control of the organization is outright an absolute It is not going to alter course unless something happens in DC that alters it or in most markets.

do something, you know, knock wood.

Some day something replaces it It's a very difficult challenge.

Fox is a little more of a solvable problem because, you know, people can pressure their carriers.

And look, Fox doesn't make money.

They don't make their money off advertising revenue in the way that a normal cable network does.

They make it off the carriage fees.

There are ways to hack that problem through activism and through and through you know, the role of the investment folks out in the states ET cetera, to not own cable systems or to pressure cable systems to not carry this stuff without a counterpoint.

And the final part of is, you know, other networks have to improve the quality of their broadcasting because, you know, people do not tune in to just here anymore, to just hear both sides.

They they don't tune in anymore.

Look, the secret of Fox is it is an enormously entertain winning product.

It's terrible, but it's entertaining.

It is not, but not precious, and it talks to a lot of Americans who feel like CNN and MSNBC Look down at them or ignore them or hate them.

It's tough It's it is not an easy problem.

It's a problem.

I think about an awful lot and the growing power of digital media and the proliferation of new outlets I think on net, it's a very good thing.

But none of that scale the way Fox and Facebook do at this point in our history.

And Robert, how can the Democrats message to people who may fall prey to this impulse I mean, Obama spent eight years appealing to our better angels and polarization got more and more toxic as we go into twenty twenty two and twenty twenty four.

How can the Democrats counteract this trend?

Yeah, it's a great question.

I think there's a lot of what Rick said that I won't cover again, but I agree with.

Let me add one more force to to to Rick's list that I think we, as Democrats have had to should have done a better job of managing and that other forces of globalization I think we've , I think the ability for people to to as Rick said, you know that the elites hate you You know that the upper crust of the world hates you I think that manifests itself because I think globalization for a lot of people changed the trajectory of their lives.

And, you know, unfortunately, look, my party has a lot of challenges.

One of our challenges is we're a head party and not a hard party.

And so we , you know, if the trajectory of your life is changing because your job is now moving to the southern hemisphere or to halfway around the world, you know, we've probably got a 12 point program that's going to take you from being a o of of somebody who works on an assembly line for washing machines and make you a computer programmer that the likelihood of that transition is in inordinately small.

And it ultimately leads to vast income inequality and the life choices that you are able to make become a lot smaller.

And I think we've got to do a better job as a party reaching out to a an economic subset of people that we used to be really, really good at talking to and really aren't good at talking to anymore And we've allowed them to get worried more about , you know, Disney and in what their support of a piece of legislation.

They're more susceptible to that than they are to thinking through a better theory for how economic theory for how their life can operate.

And I think unless and until we start to talk to a greater share of those people , you know, it's not only going to be a complicated 2022 is more complicated 2024 or complicated 2026, because some of those places that Rick mentioned in his previous answer, Ohio , Florida, places like Wisconsin, you know, those are those are places that are, ah, we're we're we're closed off as Democrats to talking to.

And I think if we can give people a better sense of and manage some of those globalization forces provide people with a better set of opportunities.

They're less likely to follow this cult of personality that rages about the fact that you remember what your dad had remember when your granddad had.

Well, let me show you the what what all the people look like that are trying to take that away from you.

And some of them are rich old white people.

But a lot of them are black and brown people, and that all of a sudden starts that.

That's that where that starts.

This polarization , that's really hard to put back together.

The Democrats have a lot of trouble talking these days to rural voters Yeah, they have a lot of trouble talking to two of lower educational attainment white voters.

They have a lot of trouble talking to voters in parts of the South and I there was a very telling focus group that I did in 2016 We were talking to Republican voters and a guy said he said I had to move to Florida.

I used to work in a in a egusi.

You don't know what a wire factory is.

Wire harness factory in in Wisconsin is.

I had to move to Florida because my job after I train, my replacement was outsourced.

And I had to move down here because it was cheaper and I could find a job.

I'm not doing what I want to do, but I am lectured all the time that I'm a racist and that I am, and that I am a, you know, ungrateful to everyone around me.

And that if I worry that if I say the wrong thing, I'll be fired or call somebody by the wrong title, I'll be fired.

And it was this bundle of resentment.

It was this this just this compressed set of resentments And then what was frightening about it is Trump had an instinctive sort of feral intuition about how to push every one of that guy's buttons.

Mm hmm.

And there are a lot of those guys out there in the Democrats.

It's like they've they they can't find the Google Translate to talk to those people anymore because a lot of the things they talk about with those people Honest answer, folks.

They may be important big issues, but that rural white voter doesn't give a shit about climate change.

Excuse me, doesn't give a damn about climate change.

They're the Democrats position on guns.

He just rolls his eyes.

There are a lot of things they just feel like they're that they're being talked down to or insulted by Right?

Well, I think we're almost out of time here.

I'll give the last one to you, Robert, and maybe 30 seconds or less, what would your message be to young Americans who want to try to improve our politics for the better over the next five, 10, 20 years?

We need you And and let me be more specific You have an obligation to be involved And what I mean by that is, is this only works if we have a citizenry that that cares about its outcomes.

And it's easy.

You know, somebody can go to work , get a good job, pays a lot of money and they don't have to care about anybody but themselves.

If we ever get more of those , then then on the other side, that's when the that's a that's an existential threat to America.

So if you're young getting solved, make your voice heard.

If you don't like the way things are going Do something about it, and I guarantee you a lot of older people like me will follow civic duties.

Civic duty is a thing.

Yes.

Well, I think that's a perfect note to end on.

Robert and Rick, I want to thank you both.

I want to thank everyone out there for tuning in.

And I just want to encourage everyone to check out all the other great programming.

That's coming at the Crosscut Festival.

You can find it all at Crosscut.

dot com slash festival.

You can follow Robert and Rick and myself on Twitter.

And we thank you again for coming to political power play Thanks, folks.