After the Fall - How the Democratic Party Lost — And How It Can Rebuild

After the Fall - How the Democratic Party Lost — And How It Can Rebuild

[00:00:00]

It is the morning after the 2024 election, the presidential election, the big one, the results are in, and for many Democrats, they're devastating. Another loss, another round of soul searching. We were on a high from the 2020 election, but something had gone terribly wrong. And the question that echoes across union halls, city blocks, and community centers is how did this happen?

This isn't just about one candidate or one misstep. It's about a slow unraveling adrift a party once rooted in the grit of working class struggles, and the fires of civil rights has found itself adrift. Speaking to everyone, yet somehow connecting with no one. Somewhere along the way on the [00:01:00] path, as they say on the way to heaven, the language of the party grew distant from the rhythm of every day life.

On this episode of Ayana Explains it all. I'm digging deep into the Democratic party's long arc from the towering days. Of President Franklin Roosevelt to the fractured coalition of today.

I'll ask the question. How is this party that once dominated the working class and pulled in urban voters now pushing voters away? How did the party win over black voters, and why is it now losing black voters? And more importantly, what will it take to rebuild? What would it look like to forge a Democratic party capable of winning not just elections, but hearts trust and lasting loyalty. A party that doesn't just run campaigns but builds movements. A party that listens, learns and [00:02:00] leads. I've got some explaining to do.

Let's get into it.

 Hey everyone. Welcome back for another episode of Ayana Explains It all. The podcast bridging the gap between current events and human behavior.

I am your host, Ayana. Fakhir, your black Muslim lady lawyer. Coming to you prerecorded from the beautiful state of Ohio I am in northeast Ohio. Ayana explains it all as the podcast bridging the gap between current events and human behavior. You may find us on all major streaming platforms as well as some minor ones, but the flagship is Spotify.

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So once again, Ayana explains it all.com. www.ayanaexplainsitall.com. You can also find ways to support the show. This show ain't cheap. It ain't cheap. These hardware upgrades and software upgrades. Man, listen, the technology world is where I put a lot of my money, unfortunately, but, as I mentioned in the intro, I'm gonna be talking about the Democratic Party.

I have spent some of the last few weeks spending time with the, a lot of Democrats talking about the 2024 election, past elections, past presidencies, [00:05:00] and what Democrats can do to rebuild, essentially rebuild, win back voters. Bill coalitions, A lot of people have just flat out laughed

and that's fine too. That's fine. I spoke to voters, I spoke to non-voters. I spoke to Republican voters, had a lot of debates, a lot of discussions, and I'm just looking for us to find a way forward. And to find a way forward, we have to first look back. We have to look back at the roots of the Democratic Party's strength and the coalition that once held it all together.

Now the Democratic Party has in the United States has a very interesting history. And I've been reading this book called Tyranny of the Minority by see if I can get the author on here. Tyranny of the Minority by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Zizi, blat Blatt. Z-I-B-L-A-T-T. I know I did not pronounce that [00:06:00] correctly.

 And it's giving the history of the Democratic Party in the United States and how it was essentially it was the. Republican party every, a lot of people know about the big switch, but you probably also don't know what in what went into the big switch and you don't know what the Democratic Party was like before the big switch.

It was a party of, as far as black voters were concerned, a party of disenfranchisement. Members of that party did everything they possibly could to prevent a multicultural Pols spear. They did not want multicultural anything.

Multicultural, nothing. They hated the 13th Amendment, the 14th Amendment, the 15th amendment, and they couldn't get rid of them. They couldn't disenfranchise black voters through the Constitution. So what did they do? They instituted all of these different, poll taxes, literacy tests, all of these different devices to disenfranchise blacks.

They would pass local laws to prevent black people from voting any [00:07:00] tricks or tools they could come up with. They implemented them. And it was devastating for black voters. It was very devastating for black voters and this continued on until about FDR when things started to shift.

Now, so we know what happened with the Democratic Party before the big switch. And when I say the big switch, I mean before the Democrat party became the Republican party and the Republican party became the Democratic Party. The Republican party used to be the Democratic party. And they were the ones who wanted multicultural society.

They wanted blacks to have the right to vote. There were, societies where blacks lived and worked and voted and had representatives and government, and they had wealth and they had their own houses of worship in schools and. The book that I'm reading sites to Wilmington, North [00:08:00] Carolina. And of course that was hated by white farmers, white nationalists white people and they essentially overthrew the power structure in Wilmington. I. And just like most of the black societies that blacks in America built during these times, during the late 18 hundreds, the early 19 hundreds, whites were upset. They didn't like seeing black people thriving.

They didn't want black people voting, they didn't want black people in positions of powers, especially holding state government, local government, national government offices. And so they set out to destroy it. And they set out to disenfranchise black people. And if you paid attention to the civil rights era of the United States, how long it took and what it took to get guarantees written into the law for blacks to have the guaranteed right to vote.

You know what it took for women to get that too, but for black people, it took a much longer [00:09:00] and much more involved and successful campaign of protesting and pushing the government to give us something substantial.

 When I talk about the big switch, we're talking about the era of FDR, and during the time of the Great Depression, things were starting to look a little hairy for the United States, of course, things were people were starving, there was famine, there was economic devastation. We were also in and out of a war.

And in the darkest days of the Great Depression, FDR introduced the New Deal and that was an audacious blueprint for recovery from the Great Depression that reimagined the government's role in people's lives. His first 100 days of his first 'cause he had four, remember he had four. He had four terms.

So during the first 100 days of his first term, he was just cranking out. He was doing something that Trump could [00:10:00] obviously not do. He was cranking out legislation, public works projects that created millions of jobs. Social security was born, unemployment insurance was introduced. Banking reform unions were protected.

It wasn't perfect. Especially for black Americans and Southern Americans, but it laid the foundation for a new political identity, one where government could be a partner to the people, and FDR built this powerful coalition that included the white working class voters, especially in the north, urban ethnic immigrants, Irish, Italian, Jewish.

Southern whites. Yes. That included segregationist. And black voters who were gradually shifting from the GOP, the grand old party. Now, winning black voters was something else though, because blacks were still voting with the party of Lincoln. The Democratic Party was the party [00:11:00] of Lincoln. He freed the slaves, gotta thank him forever for that one.

But we know that he, how he really felt about black people, he didn't feel like black people were compatible with American life. And if he could have freed black slaves and sent them to the West Indies or back to Africa, he certainly would've. And he did try. He tried. Thomas Jefferson tried. That's why we have Liberia.

But even though he freed the slaves, he didn't care for black people. So there's that. But the new deals, economic benefits reached many black families. And then you had Eleanor or Eleanor Roosevelt she was very outspoken on civil rights and she was endearing the administration to many black Americans.

Black people loved FDR, and Eleanor loved these people. When FDR passed away, I. They the government put his body in the coffin on a train, and the train went throughout the United States so that [00:12:00] people could say their final farewells to him.

So there's a very famous picture of a black soldier playing the accordion as FDRs train goes by and he's crying. And this is how a lot of blacks felt about FDR when he passed away. It was devastating. He had done so much for the American people, but we were also still in a war. We were, it was in the midst of World War II that he passed away. And people were serving, even though the Army, the armed services was segregated under FDR people still loved him again because he rescued the United States from the Great Depression.

Northern working class whites, immigrant communities, urban voters, and even southern segregationists, all held together by shared economic interest, if not shared values. In this coalition that FDR built, this was the New Deal Coalition, and it was [00:13:00] vast. It was a patchwork stitched together, not by identity, but by struggle and survival

for black Americans. The shift was complex. The Republican Party had long been the party of Lincoln, but the new deal relief programs began reaching black communities. Even amid discriminatory implementation. Symbolic acts mattered. They mattered. The. Eleanor Roosevelt famously resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution after they barred black opera singer Marian Anderson from performing at Constitutional Hall, and that moment echoed deeply.

And then later President Harry Truman's decision to desegregate the military in 1948 signaled a slow but meaningful change. And as Ibram X. Kendi points out in the book, "Stamped from The Beginning", although they received disproportionately less than whites, black Americans, especially Northerners. Did receive some [00:14:00] assistance from the New Deal more than they had from any other federal government program. In recent memory, grateful Black Republicans flocked to Roosevelt's Democratic Party. I. And so now today when you argue with Republicans and conservatives about the accomplishments of the Democratic Party, they will remind you that the Democratic Party was once the party of segregation, that it was the Republican party that actually freed the slaves.

And you have to remind them that the names of the parties don't matter. It's the people who made up the party, right? The segregationists, the white conservatives, those who wanted to kick the 15th amendment.

Those were the people who were in the Democratic party. Forget about the name, look at the people, and then compare them to today. Who would you put in yesterday's Democratic party from today? [00:15:00] Republicans. Yeah. You put those people who don't want a multiracial, multicultural society who don't want us focusing on social issues so much who don't want to see many types of people in different positions of power, who rather preserve white power.

You'd put those people in the old Democratic party.

But the civil rights movement further accelerated the shift of blacks from the party of Lincoln. By the time Lyndon b Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Democratic Party had aligned itself with. Racial justice and in doing so, began a painful but necessary transformation. Johnson reportedly said at the time, we've lost the South for a generation. I. He may have underestimated the timeline. Now remember Johnson, we know Johnson was no, no fan of the black, but he did what he had to do. [00:16:00] Lincoln did what he had to do.

Lincoln saw that blacks were determined to be free, and so he was like, okay, I guess we'll free them then. And Johnson saw that blacks were determined to have civil rights, the right, the guaranteed right to vote. And he was like, okay, I guess we'll have to give them a Civil Rights Act.

No coalition lasts forever. As the nation changed, so did the party and the very strengths that once United, it began to fall apart. That transformation came at a cost. The party that once held together, urban immigrants and southern segregationists could no longer straddle that divide. And the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and seventies only widened the cracks.

The South began to turn the. The Republican party saw opportunity and executed the southern strategy, which is a deliberate appeal to white resentment over civil rights gains, which we are seeing now. You wouldn't call it the Southern strategy, but you would call it the Republican [00:17:00] strategy. They're appealing to white resentment over the presence of immigrants, over the presence of certain people who don't look like them.

Having social welfare, having access to social welfare such as public housing, Medicaid, cash benefits, food stamps, like how many times do we have to listen to people complain about those who receive public aid? It's nauseating. But this is what Republicans are appealing to, to further divide the nation, a deliberate appeal to white resentment over certain gains.

And during the seventies, Richard Nixon tapped into the silent majority, and then Ronald Reagan added a charismatic sheen. He was an actor. He added a charismatic sheen turning government skepticism into a moral [00:18:00] cause. Meanwhile, America's industrial heartland was hollowing out. The factories were shuttering.

This is when during Reagan's administration is when the factories started to close down and move overseas. And then it was ramped up under Clinton, but globalization hit hard. It hit the United States hard and unions once. And unions which were, once the Democratic party's backbone saw memberships fall working class voters, particularly white ones, felt left behind as they do today.

They still feel left behind, which is remarkable to me. But they have always been made to feel that way. Like they are being left behind. They are not being left behind, but they are being made to feel that way. It's deliberate. But in this case, their jobs were vanishing, but it wasn't just their jobs that were vanishing.

Black jobs were vanishing too. But because their jobs were [00:19:00] vanishing, because the factories were closing, because they were all mostly working in factories, their faith in the institutions they had trusted was also waning. And the Democratic Party was one of those institutions. They had faithfully supported. The Democratic Party was becoming increasingly associated with college educated professionals, environmental regulation, and cultural liberalism. And this is how people view it today. This is how people view the Democratic Party today. No longer the party of the working class, but the party of these elite college educated professionals.

The Party of Climate Change, the party of cultural liberalism, where people of different backgrounds, gay people, transgender people, blacks, Latinos, Muslims, Jewish people, all of these people are mixing and enjoying social and economic success, and they're being propped up and they're being [00:20:00] guaranteed rights and they're being guaranteed protections under the law.

This is what the Democratic Party is associated with multiculturalism, whereas the Republican party is associated with assimilation. You assimilate under the Republican party, you become one, and that one is a very tone down version of whiteness. The American idea of blue jeans and apple pie and cowboy boy boots and somebody twanging on a guitar.

You become the European version of an American, you're wearing a suit and women are in dresses, right? Dresses in heels, and an apron.

And when we look at who the Republican voter is, people will often cite that it is the non-college educated rural American who mostly votes Republican, non-college educated. [00:21:00] Democrats are seen as the party of the educated voter.

 And to some voters, it began to feel like the Democratic Party was a party of lectures rather than livelihoods. And the Reagan Democrats, once the union men and women crossed over, not only for economic reasons, but because they felt culturally alienated and the Reagan Democrats. Reagan Democrats. Yes, Democrats who voted for Reagan.

We have Reagan Democrats. We have. Republican. We have Obama Republicans, right? We have Biden Republicans, we have Trump Democrats. These are people who vote for the president of the opposite party because they are endeared to this person or because they love this person's policies. But at a local level, they will vote along their party lines.

But in this case, Reagan Democrats, once union men and women, they crossed over not only for [00:22:00] economic reasons, but because they felt culturally alienated by the Democratic party. Bill Clinton comes in and he tries to win them back. His policy of third way politics emphasized Centrism. Yes, bill Clinton was a centrist.

Joe Biden was a centrist. Obama was a centrist. In case you did know they were tough on crime. Bill Clinton, particularly, he had the crime bill, which Republicans will remind you of. Oh, Biden signed the crime. Bill Biden didn't sign the crime Bill help write the crime bill. Bill Clinton signed the 94 crime bill into law.

Yes, we know. He wanted to be tough on crime. He had that whole COPS program. He was tough on crime. He wanted welfare reform, got welfare reform. He wanted free trade agreements like NAFTA, got NAFTA. But he was also charismatic, smart, and politically shrewd. He expanded the Democratic Party's appeal in suburban [00:23:00] America.

In a way that today's Democratic party has not been able to do. He did it. Obama did it today. It ain't happening. But these gains came with costs, right? Think mass incarceration, particularly of Black American males. Disinvestment in the social safety net and economic policies that left many vulnerable workers further exposed.

Again, the Democratic coalition was shifting, but the foundation was unstable and open to losing more voters.

Then a new voice emerged, one that promised change, unity, and a future many thought was out of reach, but even the brightest hopes carry shadows. I'm speaking of course of Barack Obama, president Obama.

A moment of hope and historic change came when President Barack Obama was [00:24:00] introduced into our lives. And when he was nominated for the Democratic Party's candidacy for President, and then when he won the presidency in the year 2008, his election was not just a political victory. It was a cultural phenomenon. You saw posters videos, all kinds of marketing material that said hope change, hope we can believe in. He was all over the United States speaking. Being, I don't wanna say praised, but he was looked upon as the hero.

The United States was in the midst of a very unpopular war in Afghanistan and Iraq, which they really wouldn't call a war in Iraq, but whatever. And an unpopular president in George W. Bush. And we were in a recession. Deep recession, honey deep. And then here comes Obama. This very charismatic, very good looking.

By the way, [00:25:00] suave though some would have called him aloof. He was suave and smart. Just so smart, very intelligent, and his candidacy even. Electrified the country. And when he won, oh, people were filled with hope. Yes, brother. Bring it back. Bring our country back. And yeah, he did pull us out of that recession.

He absolutely did it. Some tough changes. I worked for the government at the time. I still worked for the federal government. We had to do some belt tightening. Honey, we didn't get a raise for some years. He made a lot of other changes too. Some that I don't necessarily, I didn't agree with, but he had to engage in austerity.

Things were happening. We were, we needed to save money, we needed to cut costs, and he made it happen. But he also built a new kind of coalition. Remember the coalition that FDR built? Obama built a coalition too. A multiracial, youthful, [00:26:00] urban, and digitally savvy coalition during his presidency. During his candidacy, black voter turnouts soared to historic levels, and Latinos were energized.

Millennials and Gen Z folks felt seen.

Latinos were energized. Generation X folks felt seen, younger voters felt seen. Those in their early twenties. They felt seen. People were excited to vote, they were excited to vote. Obama's campaign mastered community organizing and digi digital engagement in a way that no other candidate had ever done.

He made people believe, again, in the hope and the promise of the American dream. Listen to me, I sound like I'm stumping for him.

But beneath that triumph, deep currents of fragility remained, and we know this. I wanna say it began around the time of Trayvon [00:27:00] Martin's murder. But those cracks were starting to form long before then. But once Trayvon Martin was murdered, and we started to see the act the reality of the not so post-racial America.

That's when things began to change. That's when things began to shift.

But also the economic shift was happening. The economic recovery from the Great Recession was uneven while Wall Street bounced back and the auto manufacturers bounced back. Too many main streets never did too many of these suburbs did not bounce back, and for many working class voters, black, white, and Latino. Life did not get dramatically better. And, by his second run at this, Obama faced unprecedented opposition, including from people in his own party. There were candidates who refused to run with [00:28:00] Obama.

They didn't want his endorsement. They didn't want him making a speech on their behalf. They didn't want him being at their rallies because he was unpopular. He was unpopular even though he had pulled us from the great recession, he was unpopular.

And then we had the rise of the tea party that was fueled by both ideological and racial backlash. And republicans in Congress began their campaign of obstructionism and obstructed Obama, president Obama at every turn. Remember specifically when Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia.

And Mitch McConnell said it's an election year and I ain't got time for that. Because the Supreme Court Justice, all of the federal appointees have to be confirmed by the Senate. And Mitch McConnell was like yeah, we have to confirm, but the Constitution [00:29:00] doesn't say when we have to confirm.

And it's a, an election year. And so we're just not gonna, we're not gonna hold that meeting. We're not gonna hold those hearings. We're not gonna confirm anybody. And Merrick Garland was not, didn't have his day before the Senate. Of course, he later became the Attorney General of the United States, and some would say an ineffective one, but he would have been more than likely a US Supreme Court Justice.

But Mitch McConnell and the Republicans made it very clear that they were going to be the party of no, and they were gonna swat down anything that President Obama and the Democrats brought to the table, brought to the House and the Senate.

And then there was in the background that background noise, that background chatter was starting to build the right wing media machine of Fox News Talk radio. Online blogs was growing louder, angrier, and more sophisticated, and it was reaching more viewers, more listeners.

By 2016, the [00:30:00] cracks in the Obama Coalition were evident. Hillary Clinton's campaign struggled to energize key parts of the Democratic base and then coming down on a golden vessel to announce his presidency. Donald Trump, a billionaire populist, exploited that vacuum.

He offered a cocktail of economic grievance and cultural resentment.

And by 2016, when Obama was in his final months of his presidency, and Hillary Clinton was running for president as the democratic nominee, the cracks in the Obama Coalition were evident. And Hillary Clinton's campaign struggled to energize key parts of the base, struggled to energize key parts of the base, unlike her predecessor Barack Obama, and then coming down on a golden vessel to announce his candidacy.

[00:31:00] Donald Trump, a billionaire populace, began exploiting that vacuum and offered a cocktail of economic grievance and cultural resentment. And suddenly the Make America Great again slogan became the rally cry of the forlorn of the, became the rally cry of the working class forlorn the left out. The ones who felt like they had not received what they were promised under Obama.

And we know what happened after that. A disastrous first presidency for Donald Trump that ended with his failures during the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in a loss of life of over a million people in the United States of America. And people were unhappy with his presidency. And so what did they do? They switched to Joe Biden.

They voted for the [00:32:00] other guy. Joe Biden became the president in the year 2020. And once again, people were energized and filled with hope. He had at the time, received the most votes of any candidate. The most popular votes of any candidate who had ever run for the president of the United States shows you just how unhappy people were with Donald Trump.

And as it often happens when people are unhappy with the current president, when the next election comes around, they're voting overwhelmingly for the other person of the other party. They're voting for the other party. The first George Bush was unpopular and that helped Bill Clinton win. So in 2024, when we know what happened, Biden's running for his second. Biden's running for his second candidacy. He decides it's basically decided for him that he's too old. He is too old to run, he's too old to be president. By the time this presidency will be [00:33:00] over, he'll be 91 years old.

If you see Biden now, you see him in pictures and you see him out and about, just in like ice cream shops and on the train. 'cause he still rides the train. That man looks like he, he has glowed up. He looks like he's reversing in age. I guess that's what being president only for one term does for you.

It doesn't age you too much. It ages you, but not too much. He looks great. The person that I, I saw in a, in this video on a train hugging voters, that person could be president. The person who left office. Maybe not, but we miss you. I do because having a president who can actually govern, who can actually govern.

Now I'm not talking about somebody you like, somebody who can actually govern is important. Having a competent person in charge of the government is important. I've said that many times many times. And people [00:34:00] laugh, oh, ha. We wanna make America great again.

No, you want someone who is competent running your government use silly rabbits.

So we're in 2024, and the warning signs that had been flashing for years, that working class voters across racial lines felt unheard, unseen, and increasingly unmotivated to vote. In critical cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia, where black voter turnout declined and frustration with broken promises and low progress boiled over Democrats were losing voters in urban areas, and they were not winning voters in rural areas whatsoever. Latino voters are richly diverse and growing demographic, grew tired of being treated as a monolith, and in places like Florida and other places throughout the southern United States where they are heavily populated, such as Texas and Nevada and [00:35:00] California, they swung right?

They swung right, right the fuck on to Donald Trump. And the Republicans and the maga, and I've had this discussion with a couple of Republicans, but they say that MAGA is not extreme and that it's not the extreme Republican party and some others will say it's not Republican at all, that it's its own political party.

 I don't really care. I don't care what y'all are. To me, when you have extreme ideas, you are an extreme mis party and this is what many Latino voters swung to and what many of the white Republican voters swung to, they swung right to the maga right wing extreme version of Republican political ideas.

 Some will say that the Republican party no longer exists, and this MAGA is the Republican party. Now there are no more centrist Republicans. There are no more moderate Republicans. There's just maga and [00:36:00] that's it. And you know what? Considering what's going on in Congress and how they're failing to stop Donald Trump from issuing these ridiculous executive orders and violating the Constitution every single day, he's on the job the way they are allowing him to dismantle and destroy a government that has taken a hundred years to build into what it is today, the way they've done absolutely nothing.

You'd be hard pressed to convince me that the Republican party still exists. Because even moderate Republicans would not allow what is happening to happen. Even by now, they would've put a stop to the president violating the Constitution over and over and over.

Once they might give you a pass. But every time you take out your pin, you're violating the constitution. You're usurping the powers of Congress. Congress holds the powers of the purse. Someone stole your purse, honey.

 But [00:37:00] young voters who were once mobilized by climate urgency, gun violence, and racial justice, they felt ignored by the Democratic party student debt, forgiveness, stalled. Although the Biden administration was able to get billions in debt canceled for people who held student loans, it stalled, was challenged in the courts they could be challenged in the courts as unconstitutional. They were challenged in the courts and the court said, Hey, wait a minute, maybe this is unconstitutional.

We're gonna have to throw out your student loan debt forgiveness program. So a lot of people are right now facing mounting interest on student loans that they have to pay back, they have to now pay back, make monthly payments, or the Department of the Treasury is going to come after them and a very sick.

Sick way. Very sick. What is happening to student loan? Borrow. Borrow. What is happening to student loan holders [00:38:00] is sick. I don't know how else to describe it. And then to demonize them because they're unable to make a payment. I don't demonize people who are unable to pay their bills because I've been there.

I know what it's like. I don't demonize these people. Student loans are predatory loans. I held student loans mine. Mine were forgiving under the PSLF, but their predatory loans, high as interest rates. Repayment terms that don't make any sense whatsoever.

Now Donald Trump and his and his wisdom has gotten rid of the income driven and other repayment programs that would make it easier for people to have reasonable repayment terms, monthly repayment terms, make it affordable. So look at what's happening right now. Young voters, listen to me. Look at what?

Look at what's happening right now. The economy is being squeezed by a recession started likely by these tariffs that Donald Trump has placed on other countries, especially China. The cost of goods has [00:39:00] gone up. They have not gone down The goods that you could afford, probably in January, you can no longer afford in April and may.

Your student loan payments are going to be due, and for some people it's going to be a thousand dollars a month. Easy. Your rent has gone up, continues to go up. It has not come down since the increases of the pandemic era,

electricity, the cost of electricity is going up. Interest rates on cars have gone up and haven't come down. Everything is expensive, including food. The cost of food has gone up. Young people, are you looking at what's happening? You're being squeezed middle aged people. Are you looking at what's happening?

Older people. Are you looking at what's happening? You're being squeezed. The very money, the very little monies that you have are being squeezed so tightly that they are disappearing right before your very eyes.

And it now

the government's adding more bills to your [00:40:00] pile on your junk table, on your mail table.

What do you think's gonna happen? What choice do you think people are gonna make between paying a student loan or having food and being able to afford rent? I think they're gonna choose food and rent. I know one thing I would do, I would choose food and rent. I'm not gonna lie to you. I would choose to eat and live.

Before, why I would ever pay a student loan bill. I would choose to eat and live. That's just it. But oh, they're gonna come and take your tax return and garnish your wages. What the fuck do you want me to do? Not eat what you want me to do? Where is a person supposed to find an extra $1,000 a month?

If I find an extra $1,000 a month, you know what I'm doing? I'm saving it. Now. People won't even be able to save money. So you're wiping out people's savings

and there are people who are still just happily supporting Donald Trump and his administration and, oh, things will get better. Just give it time. Ayana give it time. It's only been in one, it's only been a hundred days and a hundred days from now, it'll be 200 days, a hundred days. From that, it'll be [00:41:00] 300 days.

And before, it'll be a whole year and people will still be saying it's only been a year. Give them another year. They move the goalposts because they can't admit that what they've done has royally fucked the country,

Make American green again.

And then there are these international crises, like the war in Gaza that spark disillusionment from certain voters. And people thought, oh, we won't vote for Kamala Harris because of Gaza. We vote third party, you'll vote for Trump.

How'd that work out? How'd that work out? He didn't end it. He didn't end anything. The ceasefire has been broken many times by the way. Hundreds, thousands of people still being bombed, killed. Babies, people burned alive.

But you know what? You had your right to choose who you wanted to vote for. But then the, there are the rural voters. Can't forget about you. You very special category of Americans. You barely have hospitals. Your schools are closing. Your educational and other [00:42:00] opportunities are looking real shaky.

You already felt isolated. And you saw little reason to believe Democrats cared about your lives. So you chose the Republican party, and now you're saying that the Republican party also don't give a shit about you. And now you're seeing that the di the Republican party also does not care about you. Look at what Donald Trump has done to farmers.

Look at what he's done to farmers. We'll just take farmers, right? ' cause that's where, when I talk about rural, that's what I mean. The American heartland, the farmland place where you go and you're driving and all is flat. And you see a couple of cows, some corn, some wheat.

What has Trump done to you? He's devastating the farm industry, but. Because farms, as he said, is the farmers are the backbone of the United States. He's gonna bail you out. He's gonna put you in a bind, right? He's gonna put you in prison and then he's gonna post your bond. Imagine that. Imagine

where they do that at. And then he is gonna put you in [00:43:00] prison again, and then post your bond again. And then he's gonna put you in prison again. Hello? Hello, friend. Are you able to see what I see? He's making your life difficult, but then he's putting a pillow under you. So when you land on the ground, it doesn't hurt as much,

but because you found the Democratic Party's message inconsistent. Cautious and often unconvincing. You went with the Republican party, but the Democrats were busy trying to appeal to moderates while nodding to progressives and satisfying no one. And the result of that, a message that felt more like branding than belief.

And then of course the culture wars, which my God, can y'all just get over this shit? Bans on drag queens reading books to kids book bans, battle over history, curriculums and public schools battle over the word woke. Battle over the word DEI [00:44:00] battle over the legal theory of critical race theory.

Battle over this. Battle over my God. You all are so simple minded. But beneath these wars, the deeper war over identity, who is the real American? What is the real America who gets to define what American is and who gets to define the future of this country? Democrats often respond with legalese or moral indignation, but rarely with the kind of plain spoken values driven storytelling that resonates with most Americans.

Again, we are simple-minded people. You have to speak to us like we're simple-minded people. You just do. Is that insulting? I don't care. It's the truth.

so now that we've had that loss in 2024, that devastating loss, we lost the presidency, we lost the house, we lost our advantage in the Senate. After these losses and the [00:45:00] pain, the questions remain. Is there a path forward for the Democratic party to regain power to regain voters? Let's talk about what it might take to rebuild the what now?

First we have to reconnect with the working class. The party lost ground with non-college educated voters, both white and increasingly Latino and black voters due to economic stagnation, cultural disconnect and a sense of abandonment. So what's the solution? And these are just ideas.

I'm just throwing things out here that's not hard and fast. Obviously there are a lot of different ways to do things. A lot of opinions on what Democrats? A lot of opinions. Okay. A lot. These are just some of my ideas.

We have to advocate for tangible, broad-based economic reforms. Job programs, work. Higher wages for the love of God, [00:46:00] antitrust enforcement, union protections, and affordable housing. Yes. These things mean something. You say affordable housing was one of Harris's plans. People go, oh,

it is because of George W. Bush and his $10,000 first time home buyer loan in 2008 that I was able to buy a home that I have now lived in for 17 years with my children, but also homes were affordable at the time that I bought it because the simply because the market was bottoming out. But the housing prices were low, and I could buy a house that I've been able to afford, and I got a leg up because my government gave me a loan that I finished paying back a no interest loan.

$10,000 that I finished paying back.

Another idea is labor revitalization. Partnering more aggressively with labor unions and workers organizations, [00:47:00] especially in logistics, service and tech sectors. We are moving so far ahead when it comes to technology. We are making strides, particularly in ai. We need to invest more in AI in the United States.

We need to move ahead with training people and how to use artificial intelligence.

And making it more user-friendly for the average person. Remember, we are simple-minded people,

but also in making processors and computer chips and things of that nature. Things that would make it easier for American America to manufacture certain pieces of technology here in our country versus importing them right now we import every effing piece of technology that people use, even for our military.

It's incredible. It's incredible. And Joe Biden, to his credit. I [00:48:00] tried to help build America's technology sector with the Chips and Sciences Act, the tariffs that he put on China,

but whatever. But how has that helped? What has that done for us?

Joe Biden passed this law in 2022 to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors and other high tech fields, and it authorized $280 billion in funding new funding. To boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States. Incredible. It's incredible. It wasn't enough for Democrats to win the election in 2024 though created new projects, it created thousands of new jobs.

However, these projects have faced delays in receiving funding because of bureaucratic hurdles and shortage of skilled workers.

You all [00:49:00] want skilled labor jobs coming back to the United States. You need skilled workers. And then when you say we could have unskilled jobs. People get offended. People get offended. We could have semi-skilled jobs. People get offended. What do you mean I'm only semi-skilled?

What do you mean I'm unskilled? Unskilled means that it takes 30 days or less to learn how to do the job. And you don't supervise and manage people. Semi-skilled is you might supervise employees, you might have some program knowledge, you use more sophisticated tools, but when it comes to tech sector jobs, these are skilled jobs that require skilled labor. That means you have to have a two year or a four year engineering or technician degree. So you can't just demand that these jobs come back. You have to have people to fill the positions. They have to be qualified,

but also we could push for plant for place-based investment. [00:50:00] That's supporting rural and small town economies with local job creation, broadband access and healthcare, envir environment and healthcare investment, not just in urban hubs. Create these rural hubs. My son goes to college in a town that's a small town.

It's a series of small towns actually in this county. And I've told this story before about how I was driving him back and forth to school and I was seeing them build in this one particular town. They were building solar panels. The people were not happy. They're not happy about these solar panels.

And the idea came that they would also build wind turbines and the people have been staunchly against these wind turbines, even though the building of it. And I don't know how these things are managed, but I would have to imagine that miles and miles of wind turbines and solar farms require at least a couple hundred people to manage them, clean them off.

I don't know what you do with them, [00:51:00] but at least the building of these things requires hundreds of people to do this. Over some years, I think they had been working on this particular solar panel project for two years. It seems like that takes people, that's job creation. That is job creation, and then the tax revenue that the city gets from having these wind turbines and these solar panels in their city.

Millions of dollars. They could get millions, but people wanna look out on their very their flat land. They wanna see nothing but flat land and they wanna look up at the sky and see the sky. They don't wanna see turbines moving in the wind, creating wind energy. They don't care about wind energy.

They don't care. Solar power, we don't care about that. Especially when it's snowing and there's cloud cover. How you, how are you gonna get sun energy again, simple-minded, and I'm not trying to be insulting, but a lot of American voters are very simple-minded people. [00:52:00] They just are.

I'm sorry. They just are. You would have to be to continue to vote for people who are against you, number one. And number two, you would have to be to continue to vote against your self-interest and not understand what you're voting for.

Again, using plain direct language to connect on these kitchen table issues. Job security, energy costs, rent and education is key, is necessary. Drop the jargon, use the plain language, use very plain language to talk to people. You even might have to use some of these buzzwords as they call it, that really keys into people's psyche.

Republicans know how to do this. They know how to use these boogeyman words like illegals and abortion, trans in the bathroom. They know how to use these phrases. We have to have, Democrats have to have their own phrases and they have to use them and they have to be plain spoken. I know we're the party of the college educated.

1. But we have to learn how to talk [00:53:00] to people, even if they're not college educated, even if they're, homeless person on the street, got 'em, know how to talk to 'em. But also we have to reinvigorate the black youth base, the turnout among, but also we have to reinvigorate the black, Latino, and youth base.

These groups of people were, we hemorrhaged these groups of people in 2024. Not black women so much, but black men, especially young black men, but also young voters, young college voters, Latino voters gone, which. Signals, a disillusionment, an unmet expectation from the Democratic party. We have to deliver real gains on issues that these groups care about.

Real gains now.

Student debt, policing reform, climate change, housing justice, social justice, justice, educational opportunities, making education affordable, [00:54:00] making college education affordable. Not just wiping out student debt, but making college education affordable for most Americans. Make it affordable. Nobody talks about making tuition affordable, decreasing tuition.

Find ways to de decrease tuition versus finding ways to get people money to go to school. No, find ways to decrease college tuition, especially at state schools. This is insane. Now, it should not cost a hundred thousand dollars, $70,000, $60,000 to send a child to college for one year. That's one year.

One year. I think when I went to college, it was $25,000 a year, which was a lot at that time.

Now it's substantially more that a lot of kids are priced out of going to college, particularly the colleges that they want to go to. I have a child who's probably Princeton, Harvard level student, but [00:55:00] her mama don't got Princeton or Harvard level money to send her to college. I don't, I do not.

But we also have to fund and elevate grassroots leaders and organizations in black and Latino communities instead of parachuting and consultants. Democrats are really good at using consultants. Come on, now. We gotta go right into the communities and see who's doing the work and put our energy behind these people.

We have to elevate these grassroots leaders, and we have to stop treating black and Latino voters as a monolith. We have to stop treating them as if all of their needs are the same. Latinos don't just care about immigration, okay? Police stop and blacks don't just care about policing.

 We have common threads. We have a lot of shared values, a lot of shared cultural norms. But black people specifically, we care about a lot of different stuff. And it also depends on where we're living. There are black people living in majority white areas. There are blacks and [00:56:00] Latinos living together.

There are blacks who live in black neighborhoods. There are Latinos who live in Latino. You have to stop looking at these people as being one group. Latino voters. They all have different needs, desires, wants. There are some commonalities within the group, but there are also some things that they don't share alike, especially because Latino could mean, it could mean Dominican Chilean, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and these are all different cultures, Cuban, all different cultures, nationalities.

Some of them are, Hey buddy, I'm just American.

Not that they don't identify with their Latino heritage, but they see themselves as being more American and white, European than Latino. And there are black people who feel the same. Hey, dude I'm not on that Black American identity stuff. I'm just American. I'm just American. They've assimilated.

They fully assimilated and they don't now give a crap about police. We don't care about police. We don't care about that. Why are you talking to me about [00:57:00] police reform? Is it because I'm black?

Democrats have to show up consistently. Where these voters are, not just during elections. You have to show up consistently these town halls that democratic leaders are doing the representatives and the senators and some of the governors are doing these town halls. Fabulous. You're it's 2024 and it's 2025 and that the midterms are in 2026.

There are also hun hundreds of elections this year too. You're trying to win voters where typically voters, when typically voters are ignored and not paid attention to until there's a primary or general election, or the midterms or the presidential election especially, you're doing this right now when it's not popular to do, you're trying to win voters right now.

That's actually a good thing. A OC, Bernie, Tim Walls, Jasmine Crockett my representative, Chantel Brown, does town halls. She does other things too, to engage small businesses and the like. My senators, however, [00:58:00] don't, because they are not popular, they are not from the popular kids group, Bernie Moreno and John Husted. For some reason I. They're afraid to hold town halls.

They're afraid to hold these meetings. They're afraid to engage with voters because they don't wanna be shouted down. They don't wanna be held to account for their non-action in the Senate.

The Dems are putting themselves out there, even when they're being yelled at. Tim Walls gets heckled everywhere he goes. He doesn't care. He still gets himself out there, still talks, Bernie and a OC are getting heckled. They don't care. They're still out there still talking. Anybody can go to a town hall.

Anybody can call these offices. You can email these people. I've gotten the, I've emailed who, Ted and Marine Moreno, and gotten these very generic messages, and then they're followed by appeals for money donations. I go right to that unsubscribe button, click unsubscribe. Just because I emailed you and [00:59:00] asked you what the hell you're doing for me and my neighbors, doesn't mean that I give a fuck about you and your campaign.

'cause I certainly don't. In fact, you should not be in the Senate. It should be Sherrod Brown. Sorry, Sherrod. But here we are.

Also, we have to reclaim the economic narrative again. We lost the working class economic message to Republican populism and culture, wars of deflection. We lost the working class economic message to Republican populism and culture, war deflections. We have to come up with our own new deal.

We have to frame the Democratic party as the party of economic security and collective power. We have to run against big money, big tech, big pharma, wall street, dark, muddy. We have to run against these things. We have to run against monopolistic power. We have to run against these corporations. And I tell you, corporations are the real devil here.

They are the real devil. They are. And they've [01:00:00] managed to convince us that it's either the government or our neighbor that's the problem. It's either the government or our Haitian or Latino neighbor who's the problem. I. Or the neighbor who's on who's in public housing, who's the problem When it's them, they're the problem.

We have to challenge corporate power. We have to make them seem like the devil that they are, but we also have to campaign on closing loopholes for taxing the ultra rich and invest, reinvest, and I say reinvest in schools because Republicans have so far been very successful at taking money out of public education because of their disdain for public schools every year.

It seems since I would say 2016 ish, 2012, maybe they have dragged public schools through the mud and removed more funding year after year, particularly in my state of Ohio. Public schools are so hated and it's the schools in the [01:01:00] wealthiest neighborhoods that have the best educational opportunities.

And it should not be that way. Everyone should have the same access to educational opportunities. It should be distributed equally. That is constitutional. We have to invest in schools transit. We have to invest in transit, high speed rail. Come on. Now. Where is the high-speed rail? For God's sakes and healthcare, we have to lower the cost of healthcare please.

Medications, lower the cost of medications, lower the cost of healthcare, lower the cost of these procedures. Fix the health insurance industry. They are billions, trillions of dollars. They are earning. Meanwhile, denying claims for coverage of things like chemotherapy,

hysterectomies, and let's not even get into abortion. Please for the love of God, but procedures and medications that you need and they're denying your requests. They don't want to cover it. It costs too much. Might co [01:02:00] imagine some, someone that makes a over a billion dollars a year in profit, telling you that this one thing that you need costs them too much money.

We have to address real fears around the prices of goods, the prices of housing, cars, the price to do business interest rates. People are scared to buy things because they don't want it to cost more than they are able to pay. Essentially, people are priced out of buying houses. They're priced outta buying cars.

People are priced out of renting houses, renting apartments, affording food items. When you have to decide between buying eggs and buying a loaf of bread and buying some apples and oranges, you know we have a problem. Those are staples. People shouldn't have to decide which staples they can afford, which food staples they can afford, and which they can't.

And what bill they, they get to pay on this month and which one they can't. They can put a little on the electric and a little on [01:03:00] the gas,

and maybe their kid will be able to get new shoes for school. These are the decisions people are having to make every month, and we need to address the fears that people have, that it's going to get worse and they're not going to be able to provide for themselves and their families.

And because the Democratic party is perceived as elitist and out of touch or too woke in places where cultural norms are more traditional, we have to reframe, we have to reframe things such as social justice and avoid the culture war traps.

We have to root our messaging in universal values like dignity, freedom, and fairness rather than academic language or niche frameworks. And we also have to prevent the right from setting the agenda, from setting the tone. We can't let everything that we do be a reaction to what they've done. We have to focus on unifying narratives rather than reactive posturing,

and we have to celebrate [01:04:00] patriotism and service. I talk about my love for working for the federal government all the time. I'm an American. I love working for my country. I love it. Yes, I'm an American who actually is a Democrat who's actually black and actually Muslim and actually likes working for the federal government.

Can you believe it? There are black people who are Muslim. Who love their country. Do I like what it is all the time? No. Do I like all of its people all of the time? Hell no. Do I like decisions made by the government all the time? Absolutely not. Sometimes I am not a big fan. Sometimes it's a disappointing place to be, a scary place to be a bewildering, confusing place to be.

But I'm still here and I'm still trying to make it the best thing it can be for all people. Trying to make it the best country. The best living environment. The best climate, the best socioeconomic situation it can be for my kids. For your kids. [01:05:00] My neighbor's kids. The best in the best living environment.

It can be for all of us, not just a group of us.

Also, Republicans have built a durable local and state level machinery in most states. You look at the map of the United States, the political map, you see a lot of red. You see a lot of red at the local levels, the mayors, the city councils, the State House of Representatives, the state Senate, the governorship attorney, general lieutenant governor.

 Or you see a supreme court, a state supreme court that's completely red like in my state. It's been disastrous. It's been disastrous. But it just keeps getting redder. Why? Because people are disillusioned with the left. They are disillusioned. People are disillusioned with the Democratic party.

And so these red areas are getting redder and Democrats are losing in the urban areas. They're losing voters in the urban areas. We're not winning enough [01:06:00] voters in the urban areas, and we're certainly not winning over rural voters.

Now our losses are mounting. We cannot just rely on presidential campaigns and national figures to be the face of the Democratic party. We have to win these local and state level governments. We have to rebuild permanent operations in red and purple states, not just during elections. We have to focus on school board, city council judgeships where policy and culture intersect.

We have to create talent pipelines in diverse communities for future leadership. We have to get into these places. We have the access. It's not hard. We have to get into these places where there aren't a lot of Democrats and see who we can use for messaging. See what we can use for messaging, see what areas where people are feeling less engaged aged, and explore how we can help them feel [01:07:00] engaged and how we can build them up.

If you're a Democrat living in a red state or a red city. Run for an office, city council, school board, something. Get your foot in there and bring your friends.

We also have to beef up our online messaging. Now, this is where Democrats lost in 2024. Republicans are very good with the online messaging, right? Donald Trump has also mastered the 24 hour news cycle, so people are talking about this MF for 24 hours a day, especially on TikTok. Oh my God, gimme a break.

My head hurts. Talking about him 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Everything he does is a story. Everything he does has to be a debate. Everything he does has to be some point of contention and discussion and debate, and people arguing back and forth. Nothing is changing. Nothing is happening. He's still winning.

He's still getting it. He's still able to do things and we're just talking about it.

But our online messaging often feels chaotic or driven by elite [01:08:00] influencers rather than every day people. People who are out here living, pounding the payment every single day. People who are going to work at these desk jobs every day, or who are still working in factories or who are serving in the military or who are on their feet working at hospitals or, doing construction jobs, or who are teachers or people who are, law enforcement officers, people who work at grocery stores, secretaries, people who serve you at restaurants, people working at car washes, for goodness sakes.

We need these types of people. In order to drive our message to people who are just like them versus these elite influencers like celebrities. I love you Kerry Washington, but come on.

The number of celebrities. We saw Democrats trot out. Just gimme a break. It was this celebrity and this celebrity. And put this on your Facebook, put this on your TikTok, do these TikTok videos. And now we've got people in the House of Representatives [01:09:00] doing tiktoks and it's just dude, come on.

I wanna see your people doing this. I wanna see your fans doing this. I wanna see your supporters, your voters, Jasmine Crockett. I wanna see them making tiktoks about you and about voting and about how you're helping your constituents and their neighborhoods. I don't wanna see you making a TikTok.

I wanna see your people making a TikTok video. We have to craft a simple, emotionally resonant story about what Democrats stand for. And maybe that's it. Maybe we don't know what we stand for. Is it opportunity, justice, dignity? Is it all three? If it is, we have to craft a simple message that resonates with the people that incorporates all of those characteristics.

Civic, pride,

opportunity upward mobility, prosperity. Yeah. We can craft a message about prosperity that doesn't seem like we're leaving out the little person.

We can craft hand up messages lifting as we climb [01:10:00] messages, but we can also empower local influencers and organizers to lead these communications. But most importantly, and I see this a lot on TikTok and Instagram, but building rapid response units to combat misinformation and frame the issues early.

Do not let this misinformation get out there and dangle and become the message before we're able to go, Nope. And swat it back, push back on misinformation right away. Push back on lies and misinformation right away, not just with facts. ' cause facts are not enough. You have to reframe the issue and you have to help people understand how to think about these false narratives, this misinformation and disinformation, so that they know what it looks like so that they are able to dismiss it when they see it.

You have to help people figure out what to believe that is true and what to dismiss as being false. [01:11:00] People are very happy to believe false narratives about anything. They're very happy to believe. Conspiracy theories, they're very happy to believe the worst, and this is on all sides. They're very happy to believe the worst, the absolute worst about people, about government, about society.

Very happy to. It doesn't take much to get someone to believe something negative and frightening and fearful when the truth is often plain and boring. Or sometimes the truth is complex. And because it is complex, people can't, they don't feel like taking the time to understand it. So the much easier lie is more convenient for them to believe.

We have to get ahead of these things.

People need to hear that Democrats have got their back on wages, jobs, and rent. People need to hear that they're being heard and that Democrats are going to deliver on what they're asking for.

People need to hear that they, their children will have a future worth living in the United [01:12:00] States that future is worth fighting for and fighting for with their boat. People need to hear that their areas are gonna be protected, whether it's from economic devastation or environmental devastation. People need to hear that their cities, their towns are going to be protected and thrive.

 People need to hear, because for some reason their, the narrative is that Hollywood and New York City decides the politics of the nation and that the rural voters in their small towns and these flyover states don't matter. Which is not true. It's absolutely not true. But people need to hear that the Democratic Party is not just the party of these celebrity elites in these places like New York City, Los Angeles, Hollywood.

That's when people think of the Democratic Party, they think of Hollywood. For some reason, it's effing ridiculous. There are so many Republicans in California that the narrative that Hollywood runs the Democratic Party is shite honestly. [01:13:00] It just shows you how well people have not been paying attention to the shift in political parties over the last 10 years.

10 years or so, really.

So again, we have to engage these bases. We have to reclaim economic populism. We have to speak to rural and working class community communities every day, not just parachute in every four years. We have to advocate for community hospitals, vocational training, clean water, and public transportation. We have to talk less and listen more.

Those who have had their world rocked by certain social and immigration policies will not be open to any dialogue that favors protection of certain groups. And I'm not saying that you have to feed into their prejudice and their fears, but you have to understand where they are coming from and you have to reframe the narrative

instead of saying these people have a right to be here, you could say I understand that there are issues with the United States immigration [01:14:00] policy, and it has been the same policy that we've had since the 1970s. And what we're doing in the House of Representatives is this, and what we're doing in the Senate is this what we're doing at the local level to ensure that job opportunities are available for Citi citizens living in your town.

Is this. People have to hear, you have to make these people the main character. Okay? You have to make the American voter the main character in every discussion. That's just how this shit works. They have to be made the main character. You can't prop up other people over a particular group that's in your face telling you that they're hurting.

You don't have to feed into their prejudice and their ridiculous racism. There's xenophobia, but you have to make them feel important. You have to make them, and their issues feel important. They are. I don't give a fuck about your prejudice and your racism, but I do care if you say there are no job opportunities where you live at.

I do say if you, I do care if you say there's no clean water and the air is choking you and your asthma's getting worse, and you don't have a [01:15:00] hospital or doctor to visit because you've lived too far from this or that thing, or your, it costs too much. Your inhaler costs too much. I care about that.

But politics is emotion and policy. You have to be inspiring, but you also have to be realistic. You have to use plain language, but you also have to be honest, you have to be genuine. You can't just make people feel good. You have to put the money where your mouth is. You have to put the policy where your mouth is and make people feel like the future of this country is a collective endeavor, that we all must work together to ensure that we have a future worth living for, worth fighting for.

And if this means rebuilding from the ground up, then that is what it means. Because right now the Democratic party stands at a crossroads. It can. Choose to continue chasing fleeting coalitions and short term wins, or it can choose to build something durable, rooted in dignity, solidarity, and courage. And this isn't just about political [01:16:00] strategy, it's about moral clarity.

 It's about offering people a political home, one that doesn't just speak to their minds, but to their hearts. History shows the party has risen from defeat before, but it only did. So by reconnecting with its base, its values and its vision. The path forward is not easy, but the are possible. We can gain back.

What we lost,

and this has been Ayana, explains it all brought to you by facts, figures, and enlightenment. And if this episode resonated with you, I encourage you to share it, talk about it, organize, because if we want a different future, we have to build it together. Take care. [01:17:00]