Interview Only w/ Adam Brandon - How Independents Can Break The Logjam In D.C.

00:00:00
Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're skeptical of that, as you should be. I get it. I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now over exactly this. Companies that branded themselves as unbiased while allegedly pointing people toward whatever would pay them the most as some sort of broker. So if your default is to distrust everyone in this space, honestly, I get it. I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole reason I want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent Medicare advisors whose entire model is that their advisors are not paid to push any one plan. They're just trying to help. Yes, there's compensation that goes with it. but it's across the board is what they're trying to do. At the end of the day, they're advocating for you. They're not the insurance companies themselves. They're an actual person who actually goes through your doctors, your prescriptions, your needs, and then compares them to every single plan available to find the best one that will work for you and hopefully save you a couple dollars too. And here's the part that sets chapter apart. They don't disappear once you've been in They will keep advocating for you. They're kind of like almost like a concierge service. You're just there. I need help. You're like customer service. You know, the plan, you know, help me navigate this again. So you ever get hit with a wrongful medical bill, they'll help you fight it. They want to stay an advocate for you even after you've done this. So look, I get it. I think there's all sorts of space. You see a lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space. What I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing. The whole point of this is to make this easier and less confusing. OK, so look, take the skepticism you already have in all of this, point it at your own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure. And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. Well, I've made no secret on this podcast that I think one of the bigger problems we have with our politics is there's a lack of choice. And I think voters have been demanding it. And my latest framing that I've been using, whether it's in speeches or whether it's in this podcast or others, is, The voters are begging for the market to meet their needs in politics, but they only have two ways to communicate. And my next guest here is gonna help me walk through it, but they have two ways to communicate and they have been shouting, they've been screaming for this. Their one way to communicate is voting and they have voted out any party that's been in power every single election since 2012, whenever they've gotten the chance to do it. And the second thing they've done is when they've been offered a choice to register with one of the two major parties, They've instead chosen door number three. Whatever the door number three is in their state, it can be independent, no party affiliation, however one brands it. And those are the only two ways voters can express their distaste for the system. The question is, can the system meet voters where they're at, or is there going to continue to be this forced binary conversation? So joining me now to have this conversation is somebody who's in the middle of this independent movement, Adam Brandon, along with Heather Manchin. Yes, that last name should be familiar with you, daughter of the former independent senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin. And they have launched the Independence Center. And he's here now, Adam. Our paths have crossed quite a few times over the years, both in the democracy space and also the regular old journalism and principle space. So, welcome. Good to see you. And tell me what you're up to. Tell me exactly what the goal of this group is and the independence. Give me the full name.
00:04:16
Speaker 2: Sure. So I don't want to. There's a couple organizations, but I'll just start off this way. I came to Washington, I can't believe I'm saying this now, like almost 25 years ago. And the main thing that was motivating me back then was debt and deficits. I'm a fiscal guy, just so everyone is clear on what I came to Washington for was to get our debt and deficit under control. So at the time, I thought the best way forward for me was in Team Red. And because at least Team Red was giving me a lot of like they were talking like they cared about debt and deficits. Now, their actions are a little different than what they say, but at least that's where I was. And then for on the journey I've been on in my old organization, which was one of the one of the original Tea Party organizations, I watched how the base that we worked with, the conservative activist base, moved from being very serious about debt and deficits to I don't know if they really matter anymore. There's other issues we'll deal with. I've stayed the same place. I do think that debt and deficits matter. So I had to rethink for myself, how was the best way to accomplish this? And I saw the rise of independent voters. And when we started to get into trying to understand who these independent voters were, I found that independent voters, they care about debt and deficits. They care about immigration. They care about healthcare. They care about all of these major issues. They just lost faith that either party was gonna be able to do something about it. And then they also liked, hey, Democrats have some good ideas here and Republicans have some good ideas here. Maybe if we can merge these two things together, we could actually get legislation. So part of my journey was, About three years ago, I shut down the organization FreedomWorks, one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. After you spend... You know, 10 years being president, doing everything possible to keep the organization alive to then in one weekend decide.
00:06:04
Speaker 1: FreedomWorks was a was a was connected with the Koch network, right?
00:06:08
Speaker 2: It was not actually. That's a misconception. We were one of the few conservative groups that were not connected to the Koch network. We actually were born in a split away from them, ironically. But we were we were a Tea Party organization. We were really backers of the Freedom Caucus, again, fiscal conservatives. but it ran its course. And I still, but the issue still remains. So it's a long way of saying that my only hope is there's not a Republican or Democrat way to solve our fiscal nightmare. You got to put people together. You got to start having not only conversations of Republicans and Democrats, you have to have retirees and young people having conversations as well of what do we want to do here? So- I sort of set up an organization called the Independent Center with a few colleagues of mine. And then in April of this year, I was getting breakfast with the mansions. And they said, look, your strategy that you guys are talking about running independence, we have decided that this is probably the best path forward for the country. So we temporarily, the Mansions had Americans Together. I had Independence Center. We've created a vehicle for this election called the Independent Leadership Council, which is our merged organizations. But most of our activity is going to be coming out of what's called the Independent PAC. And what is so funny about the Independent PAC is is when the independent PAC, when I went to register it, no one was cyber squatting on it. That's how much people didn't care about independence. I literally went in, signed my name, registered the independent PAC. So there's a couple organizations, but look, what we are doing is we've merged our efforts together to just try and get two. I mean, maybe we get lucky, you get three, but we've got to get some independence elected from outside the system.
00:07:46
Speaker 1: So I want to peel away a bunch of things. Let's start with ILC. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Because there is a, you said, independent leadership council. I'm old enough to remember a different letter as the first letter, but the L and the C. I assume that is not an accident, that the ILC and the old Democratic Leadership Council, which was essentially what I would call the modernization effort inside the Democratic Party that started by Al Frum, popularized by Bill Clinton in the late 80s, early 90s. That is an intentional callback.
00:08:22
Speaker 2: Look, I'm a 90s boy. I graduated high school in 1996. And I when I look back on.
00:08:29
Speaker 1: My listening to a lot of Oasis these days right now, I.
00:08:31
Speaker 2: Actually went just so you know, I went to Buenos Aires with my high school friends for the reunion tour. That's how much Oasis.
00:08:38
Speaker 1: That's how 90s you are. That's how 90s I am. Right.
00:08:41
Speaker 2: But when I think back on American politics, look, you had. Republicans and Democrats fighting, but they were getting stuff done. They were actually legislating. They were actually governing. Yes, you had shutdowns when Gingrich and Clinton were fighting, but stuff got done. Real legislation was getting done. So I think when you look back on when the system worked. It was working in the 90s. We had surpluses. We had people that were fighting, but they were doing it in a way they got stuff done. And so, yeah, I think I look back at the 1990s as an era we can learn from as a society.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I go hot and cold on it because I'm more convinced than ever that The basically 1948 to 2001 is an outlier in American history. And that's my concern in that, look, our natural state is polarization. And if you look, if you separate out that period of time, if you take... Basically, the Cold War and the eight years of peace dividend that we thought we were getting, the end of history. You had ideological diversity in the two parties, by the way. Even in the 90s, what's interesting there, because I concur with all that, but you also had a different, you know, you sort of had two different generations that were meeting each other in the 90s. You had the new Gingrich culture warriors that were coming in, but you still had the old, you know, you had a lot of John Kasich in there. OK, you had a lot of guys that were of the of that old Rockefeller wing, whatever you wanted to call it. I know that sounds like a negative to the conservatives. But also the Democrats still had you had you had quite a few of the blue dogs. You know, that was still there were still a healthy chunk of them. You know, there were still enough of them that in 2010, when they passed health care, they had to do carve outs for the for the handful of pro-life Democrats that still existed. Right. And, you know, so I you know, I go back and forth about whether is that is, you know, did or did our. did our politics just allow for a little bit more of that back then? There was an expectation from it. Have we just nationalized everything and there's just no room, and so now we need a third party? The two parties used to offer room. You could be a pro-choice Republican, you could be a pro-life Democrat, you could be a pro-gay rights in the Republican side, and you were given some space In the era of Trump, there's no space. You're not allowed to- You just talked about my journey right there.
00:11:17
Speaker 2: Look, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and the area that I grew up in was very, on social issues, was pretty tolerant. Gay marriage and abortion were not the big issues when I was growing up in my area. But the fiscal issues definitely were something that appealed to me. And so when I started working in Washington professionally, I took those values into what I was doing. I've always been known as pretty hardcore on a lot of economic issues. But I'm pretty live and let live when it comes to all the other stuff. I used to have a home within the team red, within the GOP. But at the end, I didn't. It was interesting being a professional, being someone who worked in the industry. When you look at things like the grassroots activism, you look at the fundraising, you There was no room for my for my positions anymore. You either were all in on Team Red and Team Red was by then all MAGA or you're out. One of the two. I couldn't believe I watched it happen. And it did happen. So what I see is the parties have become smaller and smaller and smaller tents. But nature hates a vacuum. So what that's creating is this new big tent in the middle. And that's what independents to me are becoming is this big tent, which, by the way, I hope we get into this. They do believe in things. It's not.
00:12:32
Speaker 1: And I guess this is the question. And I, you know, I've always, you know, these words are not synonyms and we treat them as which is independent centrism and moderate. Yeah. And they get they all get thrown in that somehow if you're not with one of the two parties, you're automatically a moderate.
00:12:49
Speaker 2: Correct.
00:12:49
Speaker 1: If you're not with one of the two parties, you know, and you can't be both a moderate and an independent and a centrist. Right. I think that they are the Venn diagrams can overlap at times. But, you know, for instance, I describe my independence is I'm an incrementalist. It's not that I want to be an incrementalist. I'm an incrementalist because I know the only way to move a country of 340 million people is one step at a time.
00:13:14
Speaker 2: And I'm going to say it's practical, but I'll because it's fine.
00:13:18
Speaker 1: But I don't you know, what I would say is that it doesn't mean I'm afraid of a big idea. It just means that I believe in implementing it the way we implemented Social Security, which is first we'll start with the widows. Then we'll keep, you know, and then you sort of because if you and by the way, I use this with same sex marriage. Civil unions look ridiculous now in hindsight. But I promise you, had we not taken the civil union step in order for us all to see how ridiculous this was, we wouldn't have gotten to same sex marriage as fast as we did. So I could make this, some people say, well, incrementalism sets us back. And I'm like, oh no, I could make a case where incrementalism like civil unions actually accelerated movement because you realized, what the hell is that? What are we fighting about? What is this distinction? This is stupid. And then we realize it and we, as a society, move on. And so I think the hardest part here is, is there a coherent third way? Or is this just a bunch of, you know, center left people and center right people that are kind of got to get in bed together for a while to sort of reform the two major parties.
00:14:32
Speaker 2: Right here, you can't really see this, but this is a most recent polling that we've gotten out of the field that I'm going to be going over on a flight. I've got a five-hour flight tonight that I'm going to be pulling over this. And it's on all of these critical issues. But what is amazing on a lot of the big ones, health care, immigration, debt and spending, what we're seeing is the independent voter actually has a more cohesive vision on where it should go than base Republican and base Democrat.
00:15:00
Speaker 1: Give me an example.
00:15:02
Speaker 2: So immigration, what independent voters are looking for is more like the 2013 bill. They're looking for something similar with Canada has where you have a point system. So it's not a free for all. You kind of target who's coming into the country, but it's pretty robust. It's a pretty aggressive form of bringing in people to the country. And then the other thing that people want is they want a robust guest worker program. So people who are showing up to do construction work or to pick grapes or you know, any of those work in hotels, there's a dignified legal way for there to come in and to leave. And we can start bringing these things above board. And it's not that controversial, right? It's like, this is what majority of Americans want. They want to know who's coming in. They want a secure border, but they also want to have robust levels of immigration that actually help prop up the country and the economy. And also is very humane. I mean, this is an area where independence could absolutely lead on. And because it's like once they kind of plant the flag, like, look, this is where the majority of Americans are, then that could create the opportunity for jailbreaks from Republicans and Democrats who also want to support common sense legislation. To me, immigration is probably the easiest thing for us to solve.
00:16:13
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, my frustration with both the debt and immigration, it's sort of like we don't need new plans. Yeah, right. They're sitting on shelves like, you know, you want you know, you want to start to deal with the debt, you know, the three percent solution. is one that seems pretty easy to begin implementing. 3% spending cuts, 3% tax hikes. We could argue how you implement them each, and you need to have some care about not everybody gets the 3% whack in every direction. Maybe something gets a 6% whack while we do a 1% over a year, whatever it is. But the basic structure, it's sitting on a shelf. The issue is political will, right? And I guess ultimately, What you're trying to do is elect people that can provide the spine or the will. Is that my way of pushing your agenda?
00:17:01
Speaker 2: Yes, but I have learned, look, I have spent my career learning the wrong lessons. or learning the right lessons after seeing the wrong thing. And one thing that I constantly did throughout my career is you get these great young candidates. They would come to Washington. They'd be so excited to get to Washington. And then when a few years, you're like, what the heck happened to this person? I remember that they were like going to solve this problem and fix this. And then I meet up with them later. And it's like their soul had run out of their face. And when I would talk to a lot of people, often it was the deals and getting on a committee. People don't realize that you have.
00:17:36
Speaker 1: To- The House rules in particular are essentially anti-democracy. I don't know how else to put it.
00:17:43
Speaker 2: They really are. Look, what a congressman has been reduced to in our world today, and we wonder why we have this legitimacy deficit now with our elected officials. As an elected official, if Chuck Todd runs for Congress in Cleveland, Ohio, and you get elected, your number one job is going to be either, are you going to vote for the Republican for Speaker or the Democrat for Speaker? And once you do that, you can go on your way.
00:18:05
Speaker 1: Right.
00:18:06
Speaker 2: And people, there's this term we use inside Washington called the four corners, the speaker, the minority leader, the majority leader of the Senate, minority leader of the Senate, those four offices end up controlling all legislation. That's not how the system is supposed to work. So this is why we look at this incredible opportunity. If you could get independents elected outside of the system, like literally Mr. Smith goes to Washington style stuff who come here and be like, look, I'm going to come for a term or two. Notice I say a term or two, and I'm not going to try and get on the committee and last everyone, but I'm going to come and just try and legislate. I think it's just an absolute breakthrough breath of fresh air.
00:18:49
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00:23:02
Speaker 2: Well, I was just talking about committees and how you have to pay to get on committees. When I tell people these committees.
00:23:07
Speaker 1: On the House side, you do. That is not the case on the Senate side. I've learned, I've had some friends who- You know, only in Washington do you develop friends who were former parliamentarians.
00:23:18
Speaker 2: Right, right.
00:23:19
Speaker 1: But like, you know, the beauty of the Senate is if Dan Osborne refuses to caucus, if Brian Bangs refuses to caucus, he gets a committee.
00:23:28
Speaker 2: That is true.
00:23:29
Speaker 1: You do. All senators are guaranteed committee slots and you cannot. So there is actually a lot more power for an independent senator if they choose to use it.
00:23:39
Speaker 2: Well, that's actually, now I don't want to get too far off of where, I mean, originally my project was very focused, going to be focused on the House of Representatives.
00:23:46
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's the bigger problem. I think the House is the sickest organ. I look at it as if the democracy, like we've got to fix, no other organ is going to work properly until the House works better.
00:23:57
Speaker 2: Chuck, I'm so glad you're saying that because one of the things that shocked me in Washington is that for years, again, when I was working on the Republican side, one of the things we always complained about was all this power going to the White House.
00:24:09
Speaker 1: Right.
00:24:09
Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden it's like, well, Trump gets elected and everyone is suddenly fine with all this power going to the White House. I have a complete shock to that. I don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat, you need to pull that power back. And yeah, and that's why for me personally, in the long run, independence, we need to take the House of Representatives. And what does that mean? Well, look, in a Washington that is like right now, the majority is two. But I think we're getting into an era where majorities are going to be in the single digits for a while. If you have 10 independents who are not caucusing with either party, all kinds of crazy stuff could start to happen quickly in the House of Representatives. And, of course, my goal is that you make the House really boring. You get someone like a General Petraeus to be the Speaker of the House, whose job is just to make sure the body moves on time and the Speaker is not a political position anymore. And you were talking about individual members' offerings. People forget about the House Freedom Caucus, which has been really which is identified today as like a Trump support group. When the Freedom Caucus was founded in the first moments, it was because David Schweikert, congressman, was struck from his committee for just trying to offer an amendment on spending that he knew he was going to lose. But he wanted to offer an amendment. And then when he got in, the Republican leadership didn't want to embarrass themselves by having a legit spending amendment. And they punished him. Well, that was what the Freedom Caucus was about, is a small group could come together and say, you know what, we're going to force these amendments. And so that is a lesson I learned from that point in my life, which is a small group in the House can come together and actually, if they're serious, start forcing real legislation.
00:25:45
Speaker 1: Well, Adam, and this is something that I think that, you know, it's funny what you just said about the Freedom Caucus, right? What it was trying to be and what it's become are two different things.
00:25:57
Speaker 2: Two different things.
00:25:58
Speaker 1: And it's now the brand is... What we really need in the House right now is, and I don't want to hear the words problem solvers caucus, and I say this, no disrespect to Nancy, who's done a lot of work in this space, but this problem, sometimes the caucuses get too big, and the bigger they are, the less they do. It's clearly, it's just something so you could say you're a part of it, and it feels like it's something you send out in direct mail during campaign time, but you don't actually... there isn't a pack there, but what you really need is a, is a, is a almost like a shadow rules committee that will do everything they can to break the cartel, right? We basically, it's the two party cartel here that has prevented the people's house from react, responding to the people. I mean, it's as simple as that was the founder's intent and we don't have founder's intent.
00:26:57
Speaker 2: No, no. Look, the founders also knew about the great Roman Cincinnatus who came out of retirement, helped save the early Roman Republic and had all this power. And what does he do? He goes back to his farm. It's where we get the name Cincinnati today. But our founders knew about Cincinnatus. That's one of the reasons George Washington, after all that power, he gave it back. And I think that when we look at the problems of where we're heading to in the future, I Maybe we just look back at what our founders kind of thought this country should look like, where you have more citizens who are getting involved in the process, people who get involved in the process who are not necessarily career politicians who really want to get in, serve, go back home. I think that that would strengthen our system. But what we have right now, there's a couple trends that are coming together I find incredibly exciting. And this may be my most controversial take, but I am watching the value of money in politics collapse.
00:27:49
Speaker 1: It's funny you say that. Yeah, it is. It is sort of like, it's sort of like how I feel about NBA salaries. Like when I hear these contracts, you're like, is it even real money anymore? Like everybody's a 50 million, making $ 50 million at some point in their career if they're just an all-star. And suddenly now every race is a, you know, every race is a $ 10 million house race. Every Senate race is a $ 100 million Senate race. Eventually there's real money involved. But it is clear, I'm with you, that- if you're smarter, you can use smarter money, I think. You can moneyball this.
00:28:29
Speaker 2: So exactly. Look, I'm a Cleveland Indians fan or Cleveland Guardians fan. That's how small teams compete, right? You figure out we're not going to be able to go get your 330 hitters and sign them for a long contract. We've got to get young guys and put them together and try and get them to play well. But AI does allow us to do research and data analysis that lowers the cost. Looking at like Seth Bodnar, who's running for Senate as a three way. There's a Republican. There's a Democrat. There's Seth Bodnar in the Montana Senate race. And in all candor, this is a we're getting heavily behind him. Millions and millions of dollars.
00:29:07
Speaker 1: I don't know if the math works, but I hear you.
00:29:10
Speaker 2: I'm really confident on this one, actually, that we can pull this off and I could get through the exact numbers of how it goes. But he needs two hundred and ten thousand votes. Mm hmm. The Senate seat in Montana, 210,000 votes. When you think of it that way, and here's the good news, using some modern technologies, we're able to map out where those 210,000 votes are in groups of 10, 15, 30,000, and then hyper-target our message at them. It takes money. It takes millions of dollars. It just doesn't take tens of millions.
00:29:40
Speaker 1: Of dollars.
00:29:41
Speaker 2: That's what's different.
00:29:45
Speaker 1: At what point do you think, you know, like for me, this independent movement, I view it through two prisms. One is it's an attempt to force the two parties to reform themselves. That was the experience. Our experience with what I would call successful independent periods, whether it was Teddy Roosevelt, George Wallace, or Ross Perot, they all had an impact on the parties. You can debate the individual people were talking about there. I don't want to get into the politics of these individuals, but they had that way. It impacted the two parties. Is that the movement you're building, or do you want to see a permanent structure here that.
00:30:30
Speaker 2: Breaks up the- Honestly, this is a funny question. I'm sitting in donor meetings, and they're like, what is your long-term success? And I give them the worst answer. Honestly, I don't know. But what I do know is this. If you can prove that independents as a group, this political group, can be a political force. That is gonna change everything. If you can prove that you could get elected outside the two-party system, that changes all the incentives overnight. So once you do that, then you start seeing what is possible and what is capable. And I would like to think that once you do that, my lessons, again, my time in Washington, actually, I'll take Peter Meyer, who was a Republican Congressman from Michigan, He told me something that was really he's like, look, Adam, I mean, we were talking about him. He's like, the only way the Democratic Party is ever going to change is if the Republican changes. And if the Republican Party, the only way the Republican Party is going to change, if it's forced to from the outside. And by the way, I'm pretty sure if I was talking to a Democrat member, they would probably say the other way around.
00:31:31
Speaker 1: So by the way, it's true, though. I mean, it's already happened. I always say it this way. I said, look, and I had. Jared Moskowitz, I recently ran into and he goes, you know, when you first said this, I didn't believe you. And now I do. And I said this because I said it before 24. I said the second election of Trump is going to change the Democrats more than the Republicans. And and here we are 18 months later. And it's done exactly that. Right. There's always a moment. Both parties do this. You get to the point of you think, well, they're wrong about this. This will blow up in their face. And then when it doesn't, you're like, well, you can't beat them. Join them. And if they're gonna operate this way, then there's a democratic think tank going, huh, how can we abuse executive power? I'm not kidding. They're like building their own. And I'm like, and their argument is, well, if this is the rules, then we've got to play within the rules that are. And I'm like, All right, well, that's why you're not a reform party. Neither major party will ever be the party of reform because they're too entrenched in grabbing power.
00:32:35
Speaker 2: So I had one of the most fascinating things in my new world here in the last couple of years is I've spent more time in the last year talking to Democrats than I have my entire career. Which has been fun. It's been interesting. I've learned a lot. And what's funny is the things I always assumed about them, they always assumed about me. And that's kind of like so funny when you actually sit around.
00:32:54
Speaker 1: And- It's funny that when you sit around and you find out, oh, you're a three-dimensional person? You have feelings? It's funny what talking does.
00:33:03
Speaker 2: But I talked to someone and they actually said this with a straight face. They're like looking at where- Look, a lot of the money coming into Washington comes from blue states. And people make this wrong assumption. Red states actually are getting more federal dollars because their populations are now older and poorer than your typical Democrat base. And so I was talking to a Democratic operative that is like, let's get these Republicans where it hurts and let's keep the money where it's coming from. And we could start stripping money from red areas. And it's like, they're serious about this.
00:33:34
Speaker 1: Well, that's what Trump did. I mean, that's the thing. Right. Trump is punishing blue state universities and trying to reward red state universities.
00:33:44
Speaker 2: I should have been a history professor at some point. But when you go back to ancient Greece, this is how they lost their democracy. When you go back to the fall of the Roman Republic. It was a similar thing that started to happen, the bread and circuses and the power moving from the legislature up to the executive. You go to medieval Europe, you go to medieval Florence, medieval Venice, you then get back to the Americas. You look at what happened to all the republics in South America. It's generally the same things. You see this power moving from the legislator to the executive. And then what do they do? They start stripping the state to reward theirs and punish. And I think we're We're really close to that right now.
00:34:23
Speaker 1: And I think- We're behaving like a Latin American country.
00:34:26
Speaker 2: We really are. I mean, look, we're basically becoming Brazil. And in a lot of ways, when you look at our politics, and Brazil's a great country, but it's not the United States.
00:34:35
Speaker 1: And it's a very flat, by the way, you want to talk about a fragile democracy. I mean, they slipped into an authoritarian regime for a period of time.
00:34:42
Speaker 2: It can happen here. Yeah, it can happen here if we're not. In fact, history says that's what almost inevitable. And that's what our job is, is to prevent that from happening. Look, I got a five and a three year old. I'm very concerned about their country that they're going to be growing up in. And that's why we're doing this project.
00:34:58
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what's realistic this cycle. You've got... You have more independence on the ballot than I can.
00:35:07
Speaker 2: I mean, we're trying to quantify it. You have more serious independence on the ballot right now than any period I could.
00:35:12
Speaker 1: Actually, before I get there, why can't the Libertarian Party be an alternative? Because I say this, you strike me as a libertarian.
00:35:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I am. I mean, look.
00:35:23
Speaker 1: Now, what I always say is, actually... I think our default, I think America's default is libertarianism. Meaning essentially that's how we were built on a foundation of libertarianism, which may explain why the party itself doesn't work. Because frankly, both parties believe in their definition of freedom, but they, but there's other parts where they're, they're not like, you know, they're not a pure libertarian on, you know, their cultural freedom here, but not fiscal freedom and vice versa. Right. And that's always, But what's your diagnosis as to why the Libertarian Party can't become a more serious player?
00:36:01
Speaker 2: So I go back to when I came to college in 1996, one of the first things I scoped out was where's my Browns backer bar here in D.C.? Because I grew up every Sunday was about the I watched the slop on a day on a weekly basis. So we'll get off of that topic. But when I went into the Browns bar, I'm a pretty good Browns fan. I've even been a season's ticket holder. But they had a raffle there. And I didn't know who the fourth round draft pick in 1984 was. And people were ragging on me like I'm not a real fan. So what I learned then about the Libertarian Party is you get into the libertarians. It's like everyone then has to argue, OK, we're all libertarians. But who is the most libertarian in this room?
00:36:41
Speaker 1: I'm not for driver's licenses.
00:36:44
Speaker 2: I think you should be able to own a nuclear missile. I think you should. We should privatize sidewalks. And it's kind of like. This is we have an opportunity. So in my book, I wrote the exhausted majority that came out a week ago. The founder of the Cato Institute, Ed Crane, who was one of my mentors in life, you know, he and I were talking a lot about this. And he even agreed with me that the problem with the Libertarian Party, which he helped found in the 70s, was that it almost doesn't want to win. It wants to be right.
00:37:12
Speaker 1: Right.
00:37:13
Speaker 2: It wants to be pure.
00:37:14
Speaker 1: Well, this goes to my favorite quote I've been over-quoting in the TV show Andor, right? Where he says, do you want to fight or do you want to win? Right. And I think both parties' bases right now want to fight.
00:37:27
Speaker 2: They don't want to win. Well, I see. But for me, the argument that I do to my libertarian fellows is that when America wants a small L libertarian, not big L, because big L is dogmatic. Small L is practical. Mm-hmm. And so I consider myself a small libertarian. I would like the smallest state possible, but I believe there should be a state. I'm not going to say... Like you look at American healthcare, I think the reform is not like just canceling all federal spending on healthcare. I think it's like we should... But there are changes that we can improve the system and have a more limited government system that allows for markets, but still... ensures that we're going to be giving everyone the care that they need. Like that to me is like, so I'll, I'll, I'll deal, do a lot of deals again, going back to this practicality to start getting slices of the loaf to get to a society to me that is prosperous and is in the government is very clear, small, and in its lane. Um, I'm not hiding those, but that also means I'll get in a room with someone who's on the farm. You know, one of my best friends is a Marxist professor. I mean, I still hang out with him. He's one of my best buddies from high school. But we get into arguments over the right size.
00:38:34
Speaker 1: By the way, this shouldn't be a shock anymore. I mean, it really bothers me. I mean, all of my friends in the 90s, you know, I got out of college in 94 and we all had political disagreements.
00:38:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. But it was.
00:38:47
Speaker 1: But it was. It's just normal.
00:38:49
Speaker 2: We've learned from each other.
00:38:50
Speaker 1: Now, I don't know. You know, I always now think, well, I grew up in a pretty bipartisan area and I grew up in a bipartisan family. So maybe, and that's where I start to question myself. Well, okay, I might be an outlier. I happen to grow up in Miami-Dade County, and Miami is one of the more bipartisan urban areas you're going to find in the country. And it certainly helps me understand today's America. That's the beauty of Miami. Miami, tomorrow's problems are today, and Miami used to be our motto. But I do think we went, and I don't know when it happened, but at some point we decided you cannot socialize with people you politically, that you knowingly politically disagree with. And I don't understand where that began. And I don't under, you know, you know, I guess it's social media, right? I mean, we, we, it made it easier to identify people. folks that way. I think social media gets too much blame. I mean, the fact is we were polarized in the 19th century. We didn't have social media. So you can't tell me that social media is the polarizer. Social media maybe amplifies it. But that's something, I don't know how we cure that one.
00:40:04
Speaker 2: So my theory on that is that what I noticed is when politics became entertainment for people, that's one thing. But the other thing that I noticed, and frankly, sometimes I look back at the work I used to do and I ask myself, well, was I a big part of driving some of that? Maybe. I look back, I didn't think I was at the time, but I might have been. Is this existential nature that we're putting into American politics where this every election is the most.
00:40:34
Speaker 1: Important of my- Have you ever voted in one that wasn't important?
00:40:38
Speaker 2: I mean, come on. Like, it's like, this is a little too, and it becomes existential then. And it's like, and I watched in my career where Democrats went from being wrong to the enemy to being fricking evil.
00:40:52
Speaker 1: Un-American, right.
00:40:54
Speaker 2: But look, you mentioned Miami-Dade. I grew up in Cleveland where I remember family picnics. We had the union workers there. We had the people from upper income. You had everyone mixing in my family in Cleveland. And that's one of the reasons I feel very blessed to be from Northeast Ohio is that experience was, I look back on it, you were forced to deal with people who had different views from you. And it made us better and stronger in a stronger community.
00:41:22
Speaker 1: Hey, this episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by Ethos. Look, let me tell you about life insurance. As you know, Ethos is an incredible portal for helping you find the right life insurance policy. I'm a huge believer in life insurance. I wouldn't have gotten to college in Washington, D.C. without life insurance. My father had a policy buried somewhere that we discovered, and it wasn't a lot of money, but it was an important bucket of money at a time that my mother, newly widowed, single mom, Me, I'm 16. It was of enormous, enormous help at that time. And this is why I believe in life insurance. You don't know what could happen to you on any given day. This is literally an insurance policy for that. So let me tell you a little bit about Ethos. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy. It's 100% online. You get a quote in seconds, you apply in minutes, and you can get coverage the same day you begin this process. There's no medical exam. You just answer a few simple health questions. You can get up to $ 3 million in coverage. Some policies are as low as $ 30 a month. And you'll get your lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers. Ethos has gotten 4.9 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot with over 5,500 reviews. So, take 10 minutes to get covered today. Life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash chuck. That is E-T-H-O-S dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary. The rates may vary. That Trustpilot rating was as of August of 2026. Not to go off unattended. This is why I worry about the gutting of America's public school system. Like I understand it's all being done through the prism of, hey, it's all about what's best for your kid. But all of a sudden we are siloing ourselves away from each other even more than ever. And I don't think we understand the unintended consequence of all that.
00:43:17
Speaker 2: That is a great point, especially I will I could talk for. you know, I would not, this is not an official issue. This is not something that I'm working on an independent in my heart for national service. Like you get people to go serve for a couple of years. And a lot of that going back to when I was growing up, I heard so much from my, you know, older people in my family about what the GI bill did for them, what world war two meant for them and how it mixed people up and how it, And I think there's things we can learn from those periods of policy going forward.
00:43:50
Speaker 1: Adam, an obvious, you know, it's funny. I've been obsessed with national service. And I am convinced now that this is going to be, that we actually will have an opportunity for national service. Because I look at, you know, I've got two, I've got one out of college and one in the middle of college. And the job market sucks.
00:44:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:44:10
Speaker 1: But, you know, two or three years of service is, After college, frankly, as a bit of an AI transition as this economy, there is multiple ways that this will be both good for society, good for the country, good for the economy, healthy for young people. I think in this, as our fear of AI job displacement grows, and this is only going to grow.
00:44:35
Speaker 2: It's a real fear. You've got to take it seriously.
00:44:37
Speaker 1: I think you do. And in fact, frankly, that was part of the motivation of the GI Bill. It was like, hey, we got to do something with all these soldiers. They need some skills. We're putting them all back in. They need some skills. Let's give them the GI Bill. Let's basically let them decide what skills they want. Here's a bucket of money for you to do this. You pick your skill. We're not going to tell you what skill to have. This is America. But go get some. We're going to provide you the opportunity to do this. I think that this is what a really good, smart set of political leaders would be running on right now on dealing with AI. It's like, look, we got to manage this.
00:45:15
Speaker 2: Okay, but go back. AI has not been a partisan issue just yet, right? I mean, we know that, you know, we just listen to what Trump is talking about. He's just like, let it all fly. And I'm not really sure what the Democrat position is. And I think there's a position in between the two that is a logical position. I know that, you know, for our kind of close with a lot of the arguments we're going to be making to voters about our independent candidates, it's going to be on AI. But there is a middle path forward that there are certain guardrails that we want. Like, look at all these studies that are coming out about, I was reading one recently from China with 25,000 students that showed the more AI they were exposed to, their scores went down in the classroom. I think we need to readjust. So I think we need to rethink some of these things, which is exciting. It's an opportunity.
00:46:02
Speaker 1: And we get to remodel the public school system, but it's a remodeling that's necessary anyway.
00:46:06
Speaker 2: But there's another point here, too. It's like we're also in this crisis of loneliness. And I'm seeing this with my own parents who are very elderly right now. I mean, they're kind of getting struggled to get out of their cocoon. And then I talk to young people in my family and they're really lonely. And it's like all of these. But what party can deal with that? You got Republicans running around screaming tax cuts. OK, the 90s want their issue back. And then Democrats screaming about DSA like, I don't know, the 60s want their issues back. And it's like, so who's talking about these issues, about the crisis in education that we have right now, the crisis that we have in loneliness? I think these are issues that the, that independence can jump on and explain that these issues of where, where we're going, we need to be addressing these. And these are the issues of the future.
00:46:51
Speaker 1: So realistically on this map, there are more opportunities for independence to get elected to the Senate than there are to Congress. I mean, Kevin Kiley is in, I think is in as good of a place as anybody can be. We'll see, right. What happens there in Cal in California. But again, And let's focus on the House. Finding independents to run the House, is the issue finding good candidates? What's been the issue? Because finding independent candidates to run has been actually pretty successful. Why is the House a struggle?
00:47:24
Speaker 2: Well, I think a lot of that came down to, the other one I would say right now, if I was going to place a bet, who's going to run as an independent, when is Bill Hill in Alaska?
00:47:34
Speaker 1: There's one, right. That's the one where the Democrat took the knee, right?
00:47:38
Speaker 2: Correct. Correct. And so you and then there were some others like I'm looking at Chris Getty and he was in a suburban district in Chicago. Michael Bridgeford, who had a great start running in Iowa's first district. I just think the problem there for a lot of these House candidates is. Frankly, the movement just doesn't have the backbone yet to support a lot of these house races as much as I would like them to. That's one of those hard gut check moments for me is that we still don't have a group of volunteers. The parties have the groups of volunteers. You had to put a lot of effort into signatures and stuff like that. Well, that took a lot of early energy out. So there's a lot of lessons I've learned. And some of these House Senate races, which if you had asked me a year ago, I'd have been like, no, they're not going to come together. Boy, I look dumb now. They really did come together. And I think there was just some natural advantages in some of these districts. Again, I mentioned Bodnar. Todd Achilles is going to get that Idaho Senate district a lot closer than people think. Now, Idaho is still a pro-Trump state. So will that be enough to carry Reich over? I could tell you right now, the big issue for Reich running in that state is he's 83 years old.
00:48:45
Speaker 1: That's right.
00:48:45
Speaker 2: When people find out that he's 83, they all of a sudden start looking at Todd Kelly. It's like, there's weird things happening. But look, my goals for this cycle, I don't care if it's House or Senate. Let's get two people elected. Let's get two independents elected so that when we.
00:48:58
Speaker 1: Get to 2000... Because one can get explained away, two can't.
00:49:02
Speaker 2: That's exactly what I'm saying. By the way, our strategy in my organization is that we want to win one three-way. That's why we picked Montana, Seth Bodnar.
00:49:10
Speaker 1: Oh, to prove that you can win a three-way and not just take a knee strategy.
00:49:14
Speaker 2: Correct. Because I think going forward, if that's the only way we can win, that may open up the movement to a lot of shenanigans by parties to say well I'm an independent you know running in a deep blue or deep red place that's not the goal so in fact we can prove we can fight on the field look I don't want to say this is a George Washington strategy, right? But it's like you got to take all your energy and figure out and like attack the British baggage train and take your victories where you can. So I also what we've learned in this cycle, I think going forward to the next cycle, you're going to see in the West, particularly the Mountain West. I would expect in 28, you're going to have candidates in Arizona. You're going to have candidates in Colorado. You're going to have some of these other mountain West.
00:49:54
Speaker 1: It's funny how some States sort of their profile stays the same through generations. Right. So my first cycle covering politics was 92. And it was the, and basically we, I create, We built a beast at the hotline at the time, the electoral scoreboard, we called it. And we would put out a map every week of based on where the polls were, who's leading in the map. And, you know, there was points in time in the summer where Perot was at 300 electoral votes. Just, you know, all that stuff. Basically, before there was real clear, Nate Silver, right? We were the OG on this stuff. Sometimes I think we created a monster. Yeah. But what was interesting is we noted that there was this crescent moon in the country, and essentially everything west of the Mississippi, Perot had real traction. And really outside of, I think Connecticut was the only, and Maine were the only two essentially east of the Mississippi states, and Florida, which was different than almost the other southern states, where the west in particular, Perot's one of his best performing states was Utah, but I think he was over 20 in Montana. I think he was over 20 in a couple of those plain states. There's natural independence out there, isn't it? It's almost like the more of the default.
00:51:21
Speaker 2: Well, let's go back to, and we're actually in the field again. We keep going in the field to test these things. And one of the reasons is that Americans are pretty fickle, move pretty quickly on a lot of issues. There is being very static, but it is interesting to watch how this election is about affordability, and we're starting to see a lot of shifts to this election may be more about AI in the close than it was about affordability in many ways. It's fascinating to me. But I think one of the problems when we look at the voters, we're used to this outdated system that is based on what's called a PVI model, partisan voter index. This district is plus five Republican, plus three Democrat. And that model was literally built in the 1930s when everyone really was falling neatly into these two camps. What I would love to start to see is an evolution where You have because like the real reality is if you take an independence, some of these states you just mentioned, Arizona is not going to be even split between Republicans and Democrats. It's going to be a plus five independent. Colorado is going to be a plus four independent. And if you start thinking of the month of the states in that light, it changes everything.
00:52:31
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny you say that. Like I always say, you know, Virginia is a blue state, but it is not a liberal state. No. Versus and just like Utah, it turns out to be a red state, but it is not a MAGA state.
00:52:44
Speaker 2: It's not nearly as red as people think it is.
00:52:47
Speaker 1: Right. It's light red.
00:52:49
Speaker 2: But it also it's a very different type of red. It's a it's a Rob Portman red. It's a Mike DeWine red. It's not necessarily a MAGA red. And I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of what that looks like. And look, we haven't even gotten into so much of this when I'm looking at who the independent base is. There's this giant line of age 50 in the American population. If you're over 50, it's hard for you to see independent.
00:53:14
Speaker 1: Well, because you see that it's not that you're not, but I wonder if the over 50 crowd, because that's me.
00:53:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm 48, so I'm like right there.
00:53:24
Speaker 1: Looks at the Perot example and say, look, he was the best version of this. And, you know, at the end of the day, people still default to their two parties.
00:53:33
Speaker 2: Chuck, when you went to the supermarket, you had Skip and you had Jiffy Peanut Butter. Those were your choices, okay? My choices when I was growing up. If you're under 50, you are a digital native. You grew up with Amazon. You never went to a travel agency. You just grew up on the internet. You grew up with 50 different types of peanut butter.
00:53:52
Speaker 1: Well, this is why I don't understand why there's not more. I do think that... Well, and this gets at to where do you spend your efforts in this movement, okay? I think the only way we're going to fix our politics is to break up the two parties.
00:54:08
Speaker 2: Yep.
00:54:10
Speaker 1: And I think we'd be better off as a four or five party system. I think I said to you earlier, I'm a Madisonian on this. We've got a problem with factions. Well, the only thing worse than four factions is two factions, right? Like we actually need four factions, five factions so that there is no majority. so that every government is a coalition government. Because ultimately it always has been. We just have had the illusion that we're going back and forth between parties.
00:54:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, very true. I mean, and frankly, I would love to spend all my time working on a political party that's socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Like that's my home. That's where I'd like to be every day. But that's and hopefully I get there someday before the end of my career. But for right now, I like this broad tent that I'm finding in the middle here of these independent voters, which even though it's so much fun, I always say this about it, like the fundraising team I've put together. One of my people from FreedomWorks, Tea Party person and someone who just joined us from Emily's List. Right. Like that is an insane room that works. And we always joke about how crazy it is that it actually works. But what we're seeing and this gets back to, I think, the American strength is like we're stronger when we don't agree all the time. We're stronger when we actually have to argue through things a little bit and we have to actually score points and present a coherent argument. That makes everything, that's the competition that makes things stronger and better.
00:55:38
Speaker 1: And that's what- Is political competition a good issue to push voters for? Because that's the other problem we have is a lack of competition, particularly in the two bases. And one of the interesting strategies that I know my friends at Forward have thought about, I know you guys are thinking about, which is, you know, the uncontested House members. Right. Should they be the ones that that are targeted first with independent candidates. Okay.
00:56:04
Speaker 2: Now that's a, we got to get into primaries when you start talking about that one, because that's where it starts getting harder, but we have begun to see, and this is some of the big lessons that I'm learning right now. I used to think that there was only 25 congressional districts, the districts that were plurality, majority independent. They were the only districts that could support the independent movement. Boy, was I wrong. I actually think you could go into deep red and deep blue districts because of the lack of competition. So remember I said this age 50 line? What we found is that you're a spoiler. Really, we're hearing that from people over age 70. And when you go under 50, it becomes a positive because people are hearing that what you're spoiling is a broken system if you're under 50. And what we're also hearing is that people are telling us, I like competition. So I don't view you as a spoiler. I view you as you're putting in competition. And frankly, I think that is part of those American values. Competition does make things better.
00:57:01
Speaker 1: So if you're that is a way to you think that is a persuasive issue with some independents? Oh, yeah.
00:57:09
Speaker 2: We're especially younger independents. They want choices. Like what we keep hearing when we did our initial surveys and studies on who the independent voter is, what it came back with is the most common two different lanes. On social issues, we heard tolerance. And what tolerance is, live and let it live. We generally think that abortions should be like what Bill Clinton said, safe, legal, and rare. Gay marriage, settled. Now, on some of the other issues, like you start talking about sex to kindergartners, the general reaction to the group is, why are we talking about sex to kindergartners, whether it's gay or straight or trans or whatever? Can we let kids be kids? And maybe we shouldn't even be talking about these things to young children. So you start seeing these nuances on these issues. So it's very live and let live, very... Let's move on. And what I thought was interesting is the word tolerance. It doesn't necessarily mean acceptance. It means like you could be this and I could be that. We could be great neighbors and never have to agree on things.
00:58:09
Speaker 1: It's called pluralism, right? Nobody realizes that pluralism is ultimately what this American experiment is about.
00:58:16
Speaker 2: But isn't it awesome?
00:58:16
Speaker 1: When we govern with people we disagree with. Yeah.
00:58:18
Speaker 2: That's great. And then on the economic issues, what we saw that people really kept saying they wanted is more choices. And they felt that the government and monopolies and others are making choices for them. Like even on an issue like health care, like most people don't have a choice in health care. Look at these Obamacare exchanges. They're often one, you know, you get a choice of one or you get a choice of two. And so people just look around their lives and they're like, I don't get as much choice as I would like. And so we start seeing, well, there's where you start having this mesh of a If we could be socially inclusive and economically work to give people choices because we also see an affordability, that's a choice issue. If I can't choose where I live, you're taking my choices from me. So there is something really. And then when we've seen in all of this, I know there's this talk that young people in America are crazy radical. Well, try this out. You want young people in America want today? they want to retire they want to work and go on vacation they want to buy a house I mean bonkers radical stuff yeah that they want. I mean, what they just want is the same American dream. But why are they voting DSA? Why are they voting for this or that? Well, if you're feeling the system is broken and not listening to you, you're going to pick the hot choice.
00:59:39
Speaker 1: Well, you're going to pick the ones that are, you know, I've always said if my choice is change or status quo, even if I don't like the change, I don't like the status quo. It's like that was the Kamala Harris problem. There was only one change candidate on the ballot because she didn't offer change. She said, no, no, no. You know, she never even gave herself a chance to offer change. Right. She ended up sticking by him. And Trump was in a change in election environment. There was only one candidate for change.
01:00:07
Speaker 2: Well, to see independence can be what's so fun about independence is is you could be the most practical, calm, level-headed. At the same time, it's the most radical thing in American politics today at the same time, which is really exciting. And I kind of juxtapose what we're trying to do to like when Steve Bannon talks about burning the system down. Well, he talks about burning the system down, but then you live in a pile of ashes. What we're talking about doing is, yes, we're pissed off and upset at the current system, but we also want the system to work. We're talking about Congress. The goal of this is Congress is a functioning body again that is actually doing its job on time and actually watching the purse strings and is actually passing legislation and actually going to conference committees and things like that.
01:00:49
Speaker 1: Whoa!
01:00:50
Speaker 2: And so that's the type of change I think that we could bring. And that's exactly what the country needs.
01:00:57
Speaker 1: Two more quick questions. And then I know we got to land this plane. One is, does corruption pop? Yes. As a swing voting issue, you think?
01:01:04
Speaker 2: So this is what I think. And this is what's devastating for me. Because I'm look, I'm a free market guy. Capitalism is really negative. But entrepreneurship is really positive. And so when we've done focus groups, what we see is that younger people look at Wall Street and they look at all the deals and everyone getting ripped on the crypto insider trading rumors and everything else that you see. And so they look at capitalism as rigged right now and not free market. But the reason they love entrepreneurs is that actually they love the competition. So it's interesting if you look at an issue just in the black and white area, it leads you to the wrong conclusions. You got to get down a little bit and you start to see the nuance there. And the nuance is people do want free market.
01:01:47
Speaker 1: They want real capitalism.
01:01:48
Speaker 2: They want real capitalism.
01:01:50
Speaker 1: So the better message here is, look, this is a perversion of capitalism. This isn't what it was supposed to be. They want competition. They want to see that. It's interesting that the better messaging there is sort of, yes, you're right. This system is broken. Right. You know, this... This version of capitalism has been perverted by a bunch of greedy monopolists or whatever it is. But that doesn't mean you have to go to socialism.
01:02:14
Speaker 2: It's an interesting- How ridiculous is it that Team Republican is still talking about a free market in healthcare? Where is this free market exist in American healthcare? It is a completely managed system, completely regulated by the government, and the government's spending all the money. protecting the free market is silly. Let's talk about the reality of the situation and where the money is and how we're spending it. And by the way, I thought this was really interesting. When I worked at FreedomWorks, one of the last things I worked on was a bipartisan debt commission. Democrat Peters out of San Diego, Republican Huizenga out of Michigan. The first group, when we got that thing through committee, never saw a floor vote. The first group to come out and really that I heard that all the offices were calling me, hospitals. That's what I didn't see coming. But look, if you're going to start tinkering with Medicare, Medicaid, that's a lot of hospital money and they don't want you to touch that. So the only way I think you're going to really drive change in America is if you have these independent candidates that are elected. with an independent base that doesn't have the claws and talons of the swamp kind of when all the interest groups kind of sucked into them yet to actually show America here is a new vision forward. And that to me, you were asking earlier, what is victory in all of this? I think if once independence starts showing a big platform forward and how we can lead our way out of some of these problems, it's going to force the two parties to either address the issue or Who knows? Maybe we put one of these two parties out of existence. Maybe the splinters parties. Who knows what success looks like? But when independents make their mark in politics, it's going to change everything.
01:03:48
Speaker 1: So Bodnar's priority one to you? After that, what, Bangs, Osborne, Achilles, Kylie.
01:03:54
Speaker 2: Kylie and Bodner, my work, we're going to be spending a lot of money on Kylie. We've put money in a lot of different races right now. But when I'm looking at the clothes, I know the first two we're really looking at is getting Kylie and getting Bodner across the line. And then we're looking at other races, too. Like there's some other ones we haven't mentioned. Like I really have to give a shout out over. You go to Indiana, the Secretary of State.
01:04:14
Speaker 1: Yes. No, I was just there and I've become pretty friendly with the former mayor. And it's really his campaign manager who made all this happen.
01:04:22
Speaker 2: I mean- I know, right?
01:04:23
Speaker 1: The Republican Party is going to have minor party. They may finish third in this race, which because it's a fascinating little problem in the state constitution.
01:04:32
Speaker 2: And then you go up to Maine, independent running in Maine as an independent for governor, like You may have a couple of people get elected federally. You may have some state people who win. And then what I think quickly starts to happen is then we have to call it. So like if we do get some people elected to the House, you got to support them.
01:04:49
Speaker 1: Right.
01:04:49
Speaker 2: It's like you've got to make sure that you're there with support. So the campaign continues after day one to build that up. And then immediately I'll tell you, like, it is amazing how many people have reached out and like. I found out about this movement. How do I run? I want to run in 2028. And so that's why it's so important to get a couple wins in this cycle to prove the point so that we could start building a whole. And this is where all the outside groups would exist. We're all going to have to get to. I'm already talking to people about some December rendezvous where we could get together and start figuring out, OK, you're going to do grassroots. You're going to do comms. You're going to do this. You start figuring it. You're going to work within the party system. You're going to work outside and figure out what that looks like.
01:05:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, there is this coalition of groups that want to open up primaries, that want to basically break up the duopoly. And I think there's enough in common there where that group can be its own, not an ideology per se, but agree on a set of principles that bring us a different infrastructure.
01:05:48
Speaker 2: Go back to the civil rights movement. When you think of the civil rights movement, you had people like Martin Luther King Jr. basically preaching Gandhi, and then you had Stokely Garmichael showing up with pistols. They were all part of the same movement. And then I think about that stuff that happened before this, because when we study the civil rights movement, all of a sudden it's the freedom riders showing up with buses burning and things like that. All that happened beforehand... you know, at the synagogues and the churches and all of that. That's what's happening right now in the independent movement is the beginning of that organization coming together. And that's why it's so important we get a couple of victories. And if we don't get victories, we at least have to have some really good losses that we can learn from. But frankly, I think this is going to look like a lot of the Mondami race where a week out, he was down and then searched to the end. I think you're going to get a couple independents elected. And once that happens, politics is going to change. It's like, It's not it's it's not going to change overnight. But when you prove you can change the incentives, all of a sudden everything does change. Well, we're always going to replace MAGA as the driving force in American politics, not the essay. It's going to be.
01:07:00
Speaker 1: Well, look, there's this how much of these new independents are just motor voter enrollees and how many of them are doing it as a choice? What do you think that percentage is? Because we see this scallop number of 45%. Now, motor voter puts a lot of people just automatically defaulting as no party or independent, whatever the state is. So what would be your guess? You've done some of this research. Who are the truly passive indies?
01:07:28
Speaker 2: So we found about 25% of the population is what I call the socially tolerant, fiscally responsible. 25%. Not a majority. That's a hell of a lot of Americans right there. And especially since they do tend to congregate in certain districts in certain states, it could be a disproportionately powerful group. But I also when I push down to it, what I'm really seeing is that your base Republican and your base Democrat are each probably around 15 percent of the population. So about 70 percent of the population, I believe, could support an independent candidate. if they feel they're viable, if they see them, that they're real. And if they think that they could actually like, Oh, this person stands free, but it's hard to cut through the clutter. Like we're not just competing against Republicans and Democrats. We're competing against Sunday night football for attention. We're competing against soccer practice for attention. So it takes a lot. And that's why I keep coming back to how we were using, you know, vertical video to really target into the voters. Because I think it's, this is like the, the, the, the emperor has no clothes. The minute that, that, that, Because Americans, one of the biggest challenges is they think they're the only independent out there. They don't realize half the, when the aha moment, like really close to half the population's independent.
01:08:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:08:40
Speaker 2: Then all of a sudden they're like, well, let's do something about it.
01:08:43
Speaker 1: I mean, look, you don't, something's unbelievable until it happens. Nobody thought Trump could win. Nobody thought a MAGA movement could take hold until it did. And, you know, whatever you, whatever folks think of that, good or bad, you know, the point is, is that it is, you know, once you cross that barrier, right, of of it can, you know, the hockey stick moment happens, then you don't know where things go. Right. And it sort of changes the calculus.
01:09:09
Speaker 2: So this is how awesome this is, the 250th anniversary of America this year. And I think we're getting into a rebirth that would make the founders very, very happy because George Washington, when he left, everyone remembers his final speech for don't getting involved in international entanglements.
01:09:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the other important one, yeah.
01:09:28
Speaker 2: It was like he warned against not partisanship, but factionalism. That's what he was warning against.
01:09:32
Speaker 1: Adam, I go a step further. We've only really had two independents as president. Yeah. One is Washington. Yeah. And I think the other one's Eisenhower. And... And what's interesting is the two most important farewell addresses ever delivered to this country that have been incredibly prescient and have turned out to be exactly the right things we should have been listening to at the time. is the military industrial complex. I mean, this Pentagon is running out of munitions. How the hell did this happen? You wanna talk about corrupt process? This is not a money problem. I am really pissed off here as a taxpayer. For 25 years, all we've done is given the Pentagon more tools because, hey, we're fearful of another 9-11. We're fearful of all of these people coming to get us. And we can't even, we can't number one, have enough troops to provide relief. to sailors on the USS Lincoln? And number two, we can't even give them bullets? Are you kidding me? Where's this money going? You want to talk about, you know, so the fact is Washington and Eisenhower, they could be North Stars to this movement.
01:10:43
Speaker 2: Let me throw in a third because I'm going to throw in a third because I, after some podcasts, got a long letter from someone and I went and checked it out. Do you know Abraham Lincoln ran that in a unity ticket for his reelection? He ran first as a Republican when he got elected.
01:10:57
Speaker 1: But it was a fusion. Yeah. Well, right. He was right. It was a fusion ticket. Yeah.
01:11:01
Speaker 2: So that's so cool when you see that in the past, this stuff has happened. And guess what? It's up to us to do it again.
01:11:06
Speaker 1: And like now he ended up with the wrong vice president, as it turns out.
01:11:10
Speaker 2: Well, fair enough.
01:11:11
Speaker 1: That is that was that was a it was it was a part of the plan, though. You know, it was important to get elected. He needed to get reelected, you know, and it was important to send that message that, hey, there was going to be you know, this was going to be a there's no doubt. Right.
01:11:24
Speaker 2: But.
01:11:25
Speaker 1: It did produce perhaps our worst president. Yes.
01:11:28
Speaker 2: Well, no, I'm not going to get into that one because I don't want to get, I don't want to stick my foot in something by getting.
01:11:34
Speaker 1: No, I mean, the debate, Andrew Johnson debate is one that you can get, you know, when you're having the battle of who's the worst, you know, there's a few competitors.
01:11:43
Speaker 2: Now you are a nineties guy because you did sit around, because I did sit around my college dorm drinking cheap beer, having that argument, right?
01:11:50
Speaker 1: Like Well, I think, you know, I always said, well, James Buchanan always has to be one, because if you've lost the year, if secession happened on your watch, you lose.
01:12:00
Speaker 2: Right.
01:12:00
Speaker 1: Like, you know, that used to be my argument. But I'm now, you know, Johnson did more to damage things than I think we.
01:12:08
Speaker 2: I just think it's important for Americans to realize this is a really difficult situation and you should be alarmed.
01:12:13
Speaker 1: Right.
01:12:13
Speaker 2: You should be alarmed at everything you're seeing in the news today. But we've gone through 1968. We've gone through the 1930s. We've gone through a civil war. We've gone through some really hard stuff. This isn't the first time as a culture in a country we've gone through really hard stuff. And I think we have this myth that our democracy is so strong nothing could ever happen to it. No, it is incredibly fragile. That's why it's so precious. And that's why people need to get involved. This is my other big lesson. This is a fight at Thanksgiving with my parents-in-law. They're like, politicians don't listen to us. I'm like, you'd be shocked at how much they do. If you call your congressman, but if you ever got off your butt and went and visited your congressman's office and told him, the congressman will hear about that. They are scared of their voters. And that is something we still have with all of AI, with all of this.
01:13:08
Speaker 1: No, they are. They just need a better, right now, they're only scared of their primary voters.
01:13:12
Speaker 2: Well, now we got to blow them up and scare them with other stuff.
01:13:14
Speaker 1: If you scare them with the middle, it's amazing what they'll do.
01:13:17
Speaker 2: And once they do that, they will react. And then I think we'll look back and be like, man, that was a weird era in American culture. And I'll tell my kids about it. But it's like, look, we're stronger. And look at what this country we have today. We regenerated ourself. That is the strength. When we stop regenerating ourself, that's when we're all going to, that's when the culture goes.
01:13:34
Speaker 1: Adam, I got to land the plane here, but- Come on, let's keep playing.
01:13:36
Speaker 2: This is fun. Like we didn't even get into 90s baseball and all that other kind of fun stuff. You want to hear about my Browns a little bit?
01:13:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear you. I mean, you know, you could talk about that great coaching staff that was in the Cleveland Browns Super Bowl victory in 2000, right? Oh, my God. Is that Ravens team, the Ozzie Newsome team?
01:13:55
Speaker 2: I have a poster, not a poster, I have a Bernie Kosar jersey, you know, kind of throwing to my Ozzie Newsome jersey. And all my Baltimore friends are like, Ozzie Newsome? I'm like, just It's a dangerous ground you're on now.
01:14:07
Speaker 1: It really is. Well, Bernie's a friend being a hurricane. Oh, that's right.
01:14:12
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:14:14
Speaker 1: You want to talk about one optimistic man. That guy always every day wakes up with a smile on his face, no matter how bad things get for him.
01:14:20
Speaker 2: And they are pretty hard. And he is just a wonderful human being. So that would a great place to see. We agree on that. That's something we can agree on all day long.
01:14:26
Speaker 1: There you go. And get rid of Deshaun Watson as the starting quarterback. Anyway, Adam, this is terrific. Independent working people, if they want to support what you're doing.
01:14:36
Speaker 2: Independentcenter.org. Independentcenter.org. IndependentPAC.org. for our political activities and for the things we're doing with Joe Manchin and his incredible family, which the more I get to know them, the more amazing they are. The Independent Leadership Council.
01:14:52
Speaker 1: Sounds good. All right, brother. Good to see you.
01:14:53
Speaker 2: Thanks very much.