Transcript
Speaker: um Welcome to the perfunctory podcast, a series where candid conversations meet at the crossroads of politics, policy and personal experience. Hosted by Mike Zalewski, the podcast brings together leaders, thinkers and insiders to reflect on the decisions shaping Illinois.
Speaker: All right, we're here with President Pro Tem Bill Cunningham. We're back on perfunctory. We haven't done one in a while. And I read the news of Senator Cunningham's retirement, and I was saddened along with everyone else for a lot of reasons.
Speaker: And I thought you'd be a great podcast partner. So thanks for joining. No, thanks for having me. Told me prior you're not a podcast guy. Yeah, i I was teased for a long time by my colleague, Senator Robert Peters. He would say to me, have you you heard this podcast? if you heard that podcast? I'm like, Robert, I've never listened to a podcast in my life.
Speaker: So he finally sent me a couple. I can't remember what they were, but they were good. They were like history and political. So I think I've listened to two or three podcasts. A colleague of yours who shall remain nameless but is from Little Village and is female chairs the revenue committee. Okay, I think I know who that is. A couple weeks ago she said she sits in close, maybe I'm wrong, but I thought she said she sits in close proximity to you on the floor And can hear you and Robert. Yes, she sits she sits next to Robert. So and during slow times on the floor, Robert and i often engage in idle chit chat. And yes, the senator you are referring to has said to us several times, you guys should do a podcast. And I think it's because of the conversations we have about some of the most obscure topics you could ever come up with, usually related to sports, politics, history, international affairs.
Speaker: and But I kind of feel like Robert and i might be the only people interested in the subject matter. But she's like, no, you guys should do a podcast. ah Well, that's what podcasting is. People you think would be totally bored by what you're talking about end up enjoying a mundane conversation for 45 minutes, especially this one.
Speaker: Yeah. Good place to start because you and Robert Bote went to Mount Carmel. We do origin story yeah and we talk a little bit about how it all started. yeah and i i don't People associate you with the Senate and President Herman's sort of leadership team. and yeah You've always just sort of been here. i think that's the the way this the way the amount of turnovers happened recently. I think that's the the view.
Speaker: And I don't know that people know your background. yeah So talk a little bit about how it all started. Sure. So you know I grew up always interested in government politics. the time I was a little kid, you know once i figured out I probably wasn't going to ever play center field for the White Sox, I...
Speaker: decided i wanted to be ah involved in government politics. So it was always, you know read the newspaper every day, starting from the time i was about 10 or 11 years old, would read the Sun-Times back to front, start with the sports, and then read the rest of it.
Speaker: And went to school and knew I wanted to be in government politics. I went to UIC, was a political science major there, worked on campaigns, various campaigns there. And as you know, Mike, I grew up in a very politically oriented neighborhood. in the 19th Ward on the ah southwest side of Chicago.
Speaker: um So after I graduated from college, I did what any good 19th Ward kid would do who wanted to get involved government politics. I went saw my alderman, who at that time was Mike Sheehan.
Speaker: Mike was, um I actually went and saw his brother Skinny. um Mike was running for cook County Sheriff at the time. um So they hired me at $100 a week to work on his campaign. Have you ever done the math of what $100 a week would be 2020? No, but I do remember I rarely got paid.
Speaker: Like I maybe got paid once every three weeks or so. ah ah So, you know, i was I was living at home, so that didn't really matter much. um And I had, when I was at UIC, I was editor of the student newspaper.
Speaker: So they put me ah in charge of writing press releases and the like and position papers for the campaign. How much did writing, being a good writer early on, matter to your ability to... It mattered completely, 100% to any success I had early on that I could write.
Speaker: um And I could write and could write the way newspapers are written because I started reading newspapers when I was like 10 years old. And so I had that, you know, narrative in my head on how to tell a story, how to write it. And I did think for a while when I was at college about going into journalism because I did like doing that.
Speaker: um But the idea of, you know. working the night shift in some town in middle nowhere you know chasing around crime stories or something didn't appeal to me I you know was more interested in working in politics so that's what I gravitated towards but I did it in the communications then so um worked on Mike's campaign he got elected sheriff and I went to work with him in the Cook County Sheriff's Office and community relations communications was my first job as a deputy press secretary and I did that for 16 years the whole time ah Mike was sheriff and then when Tom Dart got elected sheriff in 2006 he elevated me to the chief of staff position and i was his chief of staff um until 2010 when our state rep at the time Kevin Joyce decided he was going to run for re-election and
Speaker: I expressed my interest in it, was appointed to the ballot position that he had vacated and got elected to the Statehouse in 2010. Going one look back at the difference between Tom Dart and Mike Sheehan as sheriff, because that job used to be warden, and now it's a mental health yes restorative justice clinician.
Speaker: And did you probably watch that yeah evolve in real time? Yeah, I saw that transition really um start happening when Mike Sheehan was sheriff over time.
Speaker: ah You know, Mike, I think, was very much cut from the cloth that sheriffs have been cut for from and Cook County for ah since Cook County has existed. He was a former Chicago cop.
Speaker: He was an alderman. um He understood law enforcement. um But you're right, what that job became increasingly was um managing a massively overcrowded Cook County Jail and overburdened criminal justice system.
Speaker: And um during that time, you start to see a lot of transition of programs, community-based programs. um that weren't really geared towards keeping people locked up, but having them in the community where they participated in programs and ease their transition back into those into those communities. And then Tom Dart became Sheriff Tom with a much more progressive view, a former state's attorney, but also 10-year state representative here in Springfield.
Speaker: And he had, ah ah he I would say, accelerated that um ah the focus of the office. When you arrived 2010, I wouldn't say the height of mike Madigan era, but certainly still not.
Speaker: toward where it ended up um when you got there coming from a place of like being a flack and like being a pr guy was being a politician everything you thought it would be did the job surprise you with how much you liked it more than you thought or did it disappoint you with like man this is not what i thought it was going to be like no i can't say that i was really all that surprised by how it went you know there were you know like i I learned things about state government that I didn't understand, and that was just because I hadn't worked in state government.
Speaker: But um I didn't really find you know the politics of it. you know I followed it so closely for so long as sort of a spectator or someone working in the lower levels of politics that I can't say that much about the experience surprised me. yeah What early on did helped you...
Speaker: become, I think, an able navigator of the place to the degree that you were able to slowly climb up the ranks. Because i think there is not i think there is not a lot of attention given these days to... i think people come down here these days and they are surprised by how hard that is. That's what I guess I'm trying to say.
Speaker: and Hey Thomas A, welcome to the podcast. no that's bad You're fine, you're fine. Thomas A's great. Plug for Thomas A. She's the best gatekeeper for Senator Cunningham there is.
Speaker: So I think people are surprised by how hard it is to climb the ladder and what was that experience like for you? So, you know, I would say that um I, you know, we talked about my background.
Speaker: um I came up through ah old school political organization um where there was an understanding that you had to wait your turn, that you would work hard and work hard for a long time and start at the bottom and slowly move up.
Speaker: So that was very much the way was. that That was my orientation into politics. That was the only way I knew. That was the way I followed. So I got to Springfield and followed the advice we all hear sometimes. It's not so friendly, which is you know freshmen are meant to be seen and not heard.
Speaker: That's kind of a cruel way of putting it. I will now tell freshmen that you should go to Springfield ready to learn, not to teach. It's maybe a a better way of putting it, but that was very much my approach and that I knew that, you know, I would keep my mouth shut. And, you know, Mike, you sat next to me on the floor my first two years in Springfield.
Speaker: I'd get up and present a bill, but otherwise I didn't. talk about any bills. i didn't ask many questions. If I did, i would go up and talk to the member one-on-one.
Speaker: And um i was just determined that I would keep my head down, work my bills, um establish relationships with people, and not make a lot of waves. And would do that over, ah you know, when I spent two years in the House and then became a senator So now I'm a freshman senator. So I would say my first four to five years in Springfield, I just kept my head down and worked and didn't want to draw a lot of attention to myself. You know, I knew the most important thing I had to do was work hard in the district and did all a lot of that and then just really took the time to learn. And so then when there was an an ability to move up the ladder, I was in a position to do that.
Speaker: And i think it was, and I managed to spend a lot of time here without making a lot of enemies. That always helps um you know climb the ladder through leadership. And I think that all just grew out of this idea that I grew up in, that you have to be patient, you have to learn, you have to pay your dues. And it might take a while and it might be frustrating, but that's really the best way to to get a ahead.
Speaker: I want to go back to what you said about how you've tutored freshmen coming into this building these days. I happen to agree with you that you can get down here, and I've said this like a million times, people are sick of me tanking saying it, but the place has its own oxygen and its own adrenaline.
Speaker: It consumes you very easily, for good and bad. that dig it cuts both ways. I wonder how much you put credence in the idea that these this new wave of lawmakers have pressure on them when they come down here.
Speaker: They're not being sent down here to sit and learn and build a 20-year career in lawmaking. They're being sent down here right now to crack some eggs and make some omelets.
Speaker: And I don't know that that is conducive to good lawmaking in 2025. It's not. I think this is a product of you know our times and and social media. And a lot of people got elected because they – put together a good social media footprint, um and they get down to Springfield and want to do the same.
Speaker: And what's the best way to get a lot of likes and a lot of views? Through confrontation, through being provocative. So that's what happens here. That's what happens throughout politics.
Speaker: i I'm an old timer, so you know people will hear this and kind of roll their eyes. But I think that's what's really broken down political discourse and um why we're not always really good at problem solving.
Speaker: I think we do a better job of it here in Springfield than they do in a lot of other places, a better job than they do in Washington. But yeah, I mean, I am a product of a different era and you know maybe the product of the the last few years of that different era.
Speaker: ah Very few people come to Springfield now with the same ba background I've had. Do you worry a little bit about mission creep of DC's approach to lawmaking the last 10 years has been governed by crisis? And what I mean by that is nothing big gets done until there's a cliff upon which everyone's going to fall off and there's going to be absolute chaos and disaster unless they act.
Speaker: And as a result of that, There's no regular order out there. Maybe there is. Maybe we just don't hear about it. Maybe we don't hear about a farm bill passing or a criminal justice bill passing. it And because of the D.C. is way more conflict driven than we are.
Speaker: However. It does worry, I think, a lot of observers that, to the point you just talked about, some of that can drift down into state houses where nothing's going to get done unless there's absolute mayhem on the other side.
Speaker: And, as that just again, that doesn't breed good policy. And I don't know if you got if you've given any thought to the idea that there should be something that could be done to insulate us from that.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, I think are the perception we have is true that there's not a lot that gets done in Washington. They don't pass many bills. um And, again, i think that, you know, I think things fundamentally changed when we had, you know,
Speaker: 24-hour cable TV, talk radio, and then social media has just completely changed the way we conduct ourselves in a legislature or any kind of elective politics.
Speaker: And I do think that lends itself to not doing anything until you're forced to do something, until there is a crisis. Because there's not a lot of premium in politics You know, you don't get noticed by doing kind of behind-the-scenes, difficult work, working on a bill for three or four years to pass it.
Speaker: You know, that's the way Congress used to operate. They just don't anymore. They operate more for the likes. I do think that bleeds into state legislative politics. We are certainly experiencing that, too.
Speaker: I wish there was a solution to it. I'm just not sure what it is. Do you... look back on anything over the last period of time you've been in office and think there's an issue you wish you would have grabbed onto that you didn't or you thought about and it would have been a good issue and you just missed the boat on it for instance boy that's a good question Mike I like nothing I'm trying to think um and nothing is popping
Speaker: immediately to mind i have found myself and i you know i have to thank president harman for this and uh president colorton too um you know if there was an area i was interested in they were always really good about letting me get involved in it i never saw an issue that you know i really wanted to get involved with and i was told no no no that's for someone else you work on something different so i And I think for that reason, yeah, I have a hard time thinking of something that I wish I got involved in and didn't.
Speaker: it's it's I can't come up with that just off the top of my head. How surprising has the evolution of issues been as your time down here has grown in terms of how you used to think about law and order, crime and punishment, taxes, ah social issues?
Speaker: you look look back and find yourself as amazed as I think a lot of us do about what a 19th warder has come to have to vote on in 2025 to be considered a regular Democrat versus what a 19th warder when you walked into that ward office all that many years ago what would have been considered a test for a regular Democrat. and It's completely different. I think this is, um again, this is also a national trend where ah the Democratic Party has moved left, the Republican Party has moved right.
Speaker: Now, you know, Trump is starting to blur those lines a little bit. um But, you know, it's certainly true on social and cultural issues. Maybe there's been a blurring of the line on economic issues.
Speaker: But so it is different. You mentioned something there that I talk about a lot that I find really striking that's different from January of 2011 when I became a member now, and that is criminal justice-related bills. And, you know, I remember we used to constantly, you know,
Speaker: Pass new bills cracking down on registered sex offenders and low-hanging fruit. Yeah It was what we gave targets to show that you're doing something. Yeah, there and you know we put layer and layer of regulation on it and I don't think really moved the needle all that much. you know I don't know that we made people all that safer.
Speaker: um In the second half of my career, all the movement's been in the other direction, you know towards criminal justice reform. um I regret that we were, the first half of my career, going 100 miles per hour in one direction, and the second half of my career, we're going 100 miles per hour in the opposite direction.
Speaker: I think that you know there it has to be some middle ground can, you know, we can um you know, do a better job of controlling crime without doing a lot of stupid things like we did in the past.
Speaker: But I also think that, you know, people want to be protected. There's, you know, no accident. Every poll I've ever taken in my district, um and you ask people what the most important issue is from day one till, you know, last poll I saw in my district a year or two ago,
Speaker: ah Public safety is number one issue. um Now, a lot of that's driven by perceptions, media, people thinking crime is is worse than it is, but there's still this, I think, sort of primal instinct that a lot of people have. The first thing they want is their government to protect them.
Speaker: Right. um so And your the government is to blame if the protection fails. That's right. That's right. So, yeah, that's, I guess, one of the things I've regretted or that I've been disappointed by seeing. We went way too far in one direction early in my career, and we've gone very quickly in the opposite direction the the second half of my career. And I feel like there's some sort of middle ground there that we just haven't found.
Speaker: where we always assumed good government equal good good politics good government. Maybe that became less I think Mayor Richard J. Daley used to say that a lot. I think for a long time that was true. I'm not sure that it is. For sure.
Speaker: um And I think that, too, does get you know like this ah politics um are much less now about what you do on your district level than they used to be. i mean And you probably see this more in Congress than you do here, but you see it here, too. um you know Minnesota, um the northern part of Minnesota, used to be a lot like southern Illinois, you know a deep blue area that, for economic reasons, has changed.
Speaker: you know For the longest time, 100 years, if you lived in either one of those areas, the face of the Democratic Party was your local congressman, your local state senator, your local state rep.
Speaker: And they would be focused on issues that were most important to you. So you would pick up your newspaper or you turn on the evening news and you'd see they sponsored some bill on mine safety or they, you know, got a big grant in the budget to build a new bridge or something.
Speaker: you know you You name it. They were focused on issues that were very important to your district. So when you saw that, you're like, okay, my Democratic congressman, my Democratic state senator, my Democratic state representative, they are in tuned to my issues.
Speaker: Well, Today, with social media, 24-hour cable TV news, your local congressman is no longer the face of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party in your district.
Speaker: It's who's ever, you know, you live in southern Illinois or northern Minnesota, AOC is the face of the Democratic Party. poverty For better or worse, it's not your local official anymore.
Speaker: ah That's why i think, you know, this is a whole separate issue. I think it's one of the reasons why we struggle in those areas. But it also gets to the sort of nationalization of politics, which gets to what your your earlier point about us not doing a really good job of solving problems anymore.
Speaker: Well, real quick on that point, I also think... When you do a press release on something you did that was good, 10 years ago you weren't competing with Instagram or X or Threads or Blue Sky to have the person digest take the five minutes to digest that data point and use it to then associate it with your record.
Speaker: You are now up against such ADHD. Yes. they You don't have time to convince them. They've already moved on to the next thing. I don't know how and ah campaign run on accomplishment can work when there's no chance for the memory aspects of our frontal lobe to accept those things. That's how I feel about it. yeah You're right.
Speaker: Everything has to be done in 30 seconds. Yes. you know or or you And I used to say like early on in my— you know i remember Like, for instance, like you know early in my career when we were voting on pension reform. you know And I always used to say that, you know and I took some votes in favor of it that were not very popular in my district.
Speaker: One of the things I found, and I would say this all the time, is that if you can give me five or ten minutes with someone who's angry about my vote, I might not convince them to change their mind, but I could...
Speaker: ah certainly talk them into seeing why I voted the way I did. Right. um You know, but, you know, that takes five or ten minutes, you know. Trust me, I know. And it's preventing you from getting on.
Speaker: That explanation is getting preventing you from getting on to convincing the next person. Yes. That's my feeling about it. So you have to do it now in 30 seconds. Yeah. it's It's a problem, and I know we sound like old-timers complaining about this, but it is really objectively a problem that we have right now that I think gets worse every day because of our reliance on social media. I think that social media is, i think we need to start approaching it like a public health hazard much the way say drinking alcohol is it's okay you know you want to have a couple beers couple of glasses wine that's great just like you want to spend an hour on social media day that's that's fun you can learn something it's enjoyable
Speaker: But, you know, you shouldn't be drinking seven or eight beers a sitting, and you should not be sitting on social media for seven or eight or eight hours a day. Neither one of those things are healthy, particularly if you're a kid.
Speaker: For sure. That's the problem. That's really led to a breakdown in political and social discourse in our society. What we've told our kids is on social media, this is a privilege, not a right.
Speaker: Now, we're parents of 16 and 13 and 11-year-olds, and like we get to make that decision in our house because we're de facto policymakers, but not everyone feels that way. But I do think it has to be, to your point, more than a ah just an availability to them. They have to treat it as something that can be taken away, and I don't know how to do that. i certainly don't think...
Speaker: It can be legislated, in a given what we talked about earlier. You know, one thing i that I think a really important change in our society over length of my life from the time i was, like, probably in my late teens on is views towards drunk driving. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And think... you know i always I tell people this story all the time. remember one time watching the movie Kingpin with my dad. And there's a scene in that movie, at the beginning of the movie, when Bill Murray is with Woody Harrelson, and it's in the 70s, and they're in a...
Speaker: ah ah the bar of a bowling alley and Bill Murray says to the waitress and another scotch and soda sweetheart and keep them coming I got a long drive in front of me and you know we laughed at it my dad said you know <unk>s like you know we used to say stuff like that like man it's a long ride let's get another drink before we go we got a long drive in front of us yeah And ah we've completely turned the narrative around on that you know over the last 30, 40 years. It doesn't mean people don't drive drunk. They do. But I think they've done it ah they do it a fraction as much as they used to because of a very concerted public health campaign.
Speaker: I kind of think we need to do the same thing with social media. How many Kingpin references have you dropped on Peter's?
Speaker: Yes, there are a lot of Farrelly Brothers references. You're right. I want to take one quick moment to lens out to national politics because of because of your upbringing in Beverly, which was similar to mine in Garfield Ridge.
Speaker: And I think one thing the Democratic Party has a real problem with and society has a real problem with based on recent events is connecting with young men. Young men right now feel very lost.
Speaker: And 20 years ago, if if it were you and me feeling very lost, our parents would send us to the football coach and say, he's got to get toughened up. You've got to put him through a summer practice or two of, you know, getting hit by a ah junior sophomore linebacker, or you've got to send him to a basketball practice or something or a boxing club to put something on him. Whether that was right or wrong, that's how it was handled.
Speaker: And I don't know that in 2025 we're handling young men the right way either. And I'm interested to know if you see it the same way.
Speaker: and know you have daughters, but think they they are around young men. So I'm interested in your view of can we fix that particular problem? Yeah, I think you've you've put your finger on a real problem. I don't have a simple solution to it. I think, you know, I talked earlier about the correction.
Speaker: I say correction like maybe the way an economist would talk about the stock market. But a correction we went on the way we view criminal justice here in Springfield going far in one direction and then in the opposite.
Speaker: I think that as a society, the way we're Men are perceived, treated, i don't even know the right word from it, has gone through a long course correction where, you know, for, um you know, as long as human beings have existed, things pretty much gone men the way of men. You know, men dominated society.
Speaker: um And we corrected that. I think a lot of those course corrections were 100% right, as you mentioned, as a You know father of daughters. I'm happy my daughters have grown up in a world where they can do whatever the hell they want um And i so I think it was really important we did that I think that for a lot of young men now they don't see things being done for them. They don't see Society making a concerted effort to say like okay, you got a problem. We're gonna try to address that so
Speaker: so That's where the alienation comes from. And, you know, this idea that I think we finally come off of for a long time. It's like, hey, you got to go to college. got to get a college degree. And if you don't, you're somehow a failure.
Speaker: People didn't maybe say it that starkly, but that's sort of an impression. You know what I mean? um You have to provide for your family. If you don't, you're a failure. um I think that has sort of...
Speaker: alienated a lot of young men who just feel like every effort is being made to help others and not them. um You know, I think Meanwhile, their device is right there for them. Yes.
Speaker: ChatGPT is telling them, and then so you know, it's reinforcing what they already think instead of giving them a contrarian view of that's how to solve their problem. Everything, the algorithms reinforce your beliefs.
Speaker: And you end up going into this sort of spiral, um again, because of social media. um And I think it's put a lot of people in a bad place. We see, you know,
Speaker: indications of despair, loneliness, um drug use, um you know, opioid addictions, all related to that. um So I think we have to sort of reverse engineer that at real early level, um like when kids are in school. um And, you know,
Speaker: Teach people that is you know it's okay to fail. you you can decide which way you want to go in life. There's no sort of preordained path you're supposed to follow.
Speaker: um I think that's part of the way of of correcting that. um But I think a lot of it, you know, is, you know, like I said, we had it our way for a really long time for millennial, millenniums, if that's a word.
Speaker: And now there's been a course correction, and I think it's just hard for some men to adjust to that. Have you followed national politics in a way to keep an attention to Graham? I think his name is Graham Plattner in Maine. Yeah, Maine. i have yeah who is I have seen a little bit on him who is ah very unconventional campaigner. ah He's a lobster. He's a Maine lobster guy. and um And don't know if you've watched him address crowds.
Speaker: No, I have not. That guy is ah communicator to a degree that, quite frankly, put aside whether he's a Democrat running against an establishment Democrat in primary or he's a Republican.
Speaker: He is a communicator in this age. and he i know this is going to come off awkward and and weird, but it happens to be an observant um data point of his physicality, he looks like a guy you'd wanna have a beer with at the main, yeah after you've fished for lobsters for all eight hours. yeah we're going to we're going to the We're going to the local beer spot and we're gonna talk about how much I can't afford healthcare anymore, how much billionaires are quite frankly making money and I meanwhile I have to work three jobs to be able to get my kid through college.
Speaker: And, you know, I hope that he doesn't get stifled because I think he we need more of those guys in the bloodstream right now. Yeah. No, if you're talking about a ah Democratic electoral success, you're 100 percent right.
Speaker: You know, The ability to communicate is a really important, but somehow, an often overlooked skill in politics. you know And i mean I would look at Mondami in New York as kind of the same way. you know For sure.
Speaker: People are, i think that a lot of his boosters are, you know they're like, oh, look at this super progressive message works. Well, of course it works in New York City. you know um But I think what gets overlooked is how good he is at communicating. He's a very likable person who has succeeded in chopping down talking points to 30-second sound bites and comes across as really smart and really likable um That's really important in politics. And everything they've done to make him unlikable has backfired to reinforce that they want this. There's something about the establishment that's trying to make him unlikable that makes me think we need him now. yeah yeah it's It's backfiring. Yep.
Speaker: there's There's no doubt about that. you know Candidates being able to communicate and create some sort of connection with voters is really important. You know you and I are are in this business. We think a lot about politics and policy. Most people don't.
Speaker: Overwhelming majority of people just don't do that. They you know seek to make sort of connections. Think like, oh, does this person really care ah about me? this person Is this person looking out for me?
Speaker: You know, was a lot of talk though last ah the presidential race about, you know, the famous attack ad on Harris that brought up issues related to you know, her support for transgendered rights.
Speaker: And I think would people lose sight of the reason why that was such an effective ad was at the end. when, I forget the exact tagline, but it was something she's looking out for them saying. For them, he's for you. Trump is looking out for you. yeah um That's what people want to feel, that someone is looking out for them.
Speaker: And if they connect with you on a personal level as a candidate, you're going to be able to project that, hey, ah you know you know I am looking out for you. I understand your problems.
Speaker: I've lived your problems. I'm speaking to your problems. Not having a candidate that's able to do that has been, i think, a real problem for us. And this gets to like Trump who you know is just not interested in policy, no you know famously never reads anything, is all gut,
Speaker: That's way a lot of people are, you know, and they connect to that. And they like the idea that he's flipping off the system. And it's there's no ideological no grounding to it whatsoever. um and But that's a lot of politicians, or not a lot. A few have been really successful, I should say, doing that.
Speaker: He's one of them. I think we probably need some Democratic versions of that if we're going to win some campaigns. I said it when I talked to Drie in the spring, Drie from Ask Me. felt, oh, for a long time, and i grant the Plattern thing it is the way out of it, is the Democratic Party is a club you need to ticket into.
Speaker: Trump is a religion, and he takes converts, he or he'll forgive your sins But you get in no matter what as long as you swear fidelity to him. Now, that's not i mean it's not a reflection on the policies themselves or the damage he's wrought.
Speaker: But the from the basic viewpoint of how they treat um the masses, to me, it's it's it's based in reality. Yeah, I think there's no doubt about that. You've seen him recalibrate on issues, too. You know, he... you know He ran away, not ran away, but he distanced himself. He saw what happened after the Dobbs decision. And, you know, he started making statements about how he was for the referendum in Florida that that lessened restrictions on abortion.
Speaker: He, you know, he's all for Social Security and and and Medicaid and Medicare, the traditional things that Republicans have always wanted to cut. So he can be very fluid on issues and make connections. And you're right, he will accept you if Look at his cabinet's full of people. His vice president you know compared him to Nazis, and he brings him back in.
Speaker: So if you're willing to sign up, and and now for him, it's you know he's a megalomaniac and a narcissist, and it's more about personal worship, that that's how he brings you back into the fold.
Speaker: But there's something to be said for not having litmus tests and for welcoming people in the tent if you only agree with them on five or ten issues. um I feel like he's kind of willing to do that more than we're willing to do it as Democrats.
Speaker: um Well, Senator, i I appreciate your time. I want to get you on with your day. It's it's Wednesday, first week of veto session. You've got a lot going on, so we want to set you forth. But I think I speak for a lot of people that are going to miss your leadership down here and your common sense approach to lawmaking, and we're going to wish you good luck in whatever you decide to do. But we know your time is valuable, and we appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Mike. It was fun.
Speaker: All right, sir. right.
