One of the things that Bernie Sanders has been saying since at least 2014 has been about how the Democratic Party, if it wants to keep these coalitions, needs to talk about bread and butter issues. It needs to talk about politics. A lot of people attacked him for that, saying, well, are you saying [00:00:16] that cultural politics don't matter? That's not what he was saying. He was saying, we need to focus on these things. And Bernie Sanders was absolutely right. If you want evidence of that, well, take a good, hard look at the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, [00:00:31] in which Donald Trump was able to secure a second term with a lot more support from the American electorate. But when you look at the ballot measures that passed in many red states, it's pretty clear that a lot of Republican voters are hyper focused [00:00:49] on the bread and butter issues, much like Democratic voters as well. So let's take a look at what happened in Alaska. Voters approved a ballot measure known as ballot measure one, and that measure in particular, increases the minimum wage in the state to $15 an hour by 2027. [00:01:08] It also provides for paid sick leave, and it protects against employer requirements to attend political or religious meetings that are unrelated to job duties. It passed with 56.5% of the vote. [00:01:23] So, turns out that it isn't, Marxist voters who are the only ones who want an increase in their wages. Look, one thing I really want to drive home to you guys is that you have a lot more in common as working class progressives, [00:01:41] to working class conservatives than you do with wealthy liberals. Just going to keep it real, okay. Because you have similar life experiences, you run into similar issues. You have similar struggles both at the workplace [00:01:56] and in terms of making ends meet. And so it's just something to keep in mind as the political elite continue Continued to attempt to divide us. Go ahead. Jake. - Yeah. - So we often. Well, we try every time to make the distinction, distinction between the voters and the politicians. [00:02:12] So the voters have tons in common. We all want higher wages. We all want to be able to afford a home. We all want health care for our family and our kids, etc.. Right? But the politicians, unfortunately, they're also united, especially in the establishment, and they don't really want us to have any of those things. [00:02:28] That's why even though these are very popular theoretically democratic proposals, you have to get them as ballot measures in order to get them passed, because our politicians will never do it. Now then you turn to the Republican politicians. I debated Dan Crenshaw today on Piers Morgan, and I said, oh, you guys [00:02:46] are pretending to be populists, right? With Trump's win. But what are you going to do? Are you going to lower corporate taxes? Right. The least populous thing you could do. And he said, no, we should get rid of all corporate taxes. Okay. So this is the politician class looking out for the donors, etc.. [00:03:02] But I'll tell you to Anna's point, we'll will show it to you guys on tomorrow's show. Vinny from the Patrick David Show, the guy we had on earlier. Vinny, we had Patrick on. Vinny's one of his co-hosts, and I asked Vinny, I said, hey, you're a right wing populist. [00:03:18] Do you agree with Representative Crenshaw that there is no establishment? We're making it up, and the donors are not in charge. And he was like, no, I agree with you. There are donors. They are in charge, and there is an establishment. So there's a realignment going on here. [00:03:34] We're not going to get hoodwinked and vote for Republican politicians who are just corporate stooges. Right. But we have to find a way to reach each other as voters and be a voting bloc. In fact, that's why at Titcombe, I started the populist voting block. And you'll see six issues, whether you're left wing or right wing [00:03:51] or independent, that you'll love. Let's form a voting block that actually enforces accountability on both parties. Let's talk about some other statewide economic wins for workers in another state that you wouldn't expect this to happen in. [00:04:07] And that's Nebraska. So if you look at Nebraska, the voters there have approved initiative 436 which secures paid sick leave for workers. And guess what, 75%, 75% of the voters voted in favor of this. [00:04:24] And so what does it mean? Under the ballot initiative, employers with fewer than 20 employees must provide up to 40 hours or five days of sick leave annually, and larger employers with 20 or more employees must provide up to 56 hours [00:04:40] or seven days of paid sick leave. Can I give context there? In Europe and so much of the developed world, this is a no brainer. This is a tiny, tiny amount of six sick days, right? So in America, though, it's like, whoa, you're going to give a worker a day off, [00:04:56] five days off in a whole year if they're sick. Yeah, people get sick. Well, and and isn't it amazing that we had to go to a ballot measure to get it passed? - It's not because. - Amazing. - Neither party will do it. - No, it's. Well, neither party will do it. You're right. And so it's not amazing to me that voters increasingly have to rely on [00:05:14] ballot initiatives to get anything done. On a state level, really, because the federal government used to increase the federal minimum wage, they haven't done so since 2009. - The federal minimum. - Wage right now is $7.25. One of the six parts of the populist plank is higher wages. [00:05:31] It's not that complicated. And so the reason why I say, isn't it amazing that we have to do a ballot measure is because if you are a Democratic Party official or a politician, this is the biggest layup in the world. 75% of the voters approved to it. And that's not a surprise. That's what all the polling shows, right? [00:05:46] So why wouldn't you want to increase your own status and fame by going, I'm going to fight for you guys to have paid sick leave and you'd get a lot of Republican voters, Democrat, you get all the Democratic voters, etc. But none of them will do it because they're all in the pockets of the donors. It's amazing how corrupt our politicians are. [00:06:03] Let's go to another red state. Missouri voters in Missouri have voted in favor of proposition A, which increases the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026. It also provides paid sick leave, which will go into effect on May 1st, [00:06:21] 2025, and businesses will be required to provide one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, up to five days per year for small businesses and seven days per year for larger businesses, small businesses or those with fewer than 15 employees. [00:06:38] And that was approved by a pretty significant margin as well. 58% voted in favor, only 42% voted against it. But I want to end on something that is near and dear to Genk's heart. And that's the issue of campaign finance reform, because there was an incredibly [00:06:56] important ballot initiative in Maine. And while Maine is not a red state, it is worth discussing this big win as more perfect Union had posted a Maine ballot measure that fights back against Citizens United and places limits on donations to super PACs has passed. [00:07:14] It's set a nationwide precedent and help get dark money out of our elections. Now, Professor Larry Lessig was behind this. I'm going to go to you in a second, Jake. But just to give you a little bit more information, the citizen referendum, [00:07:29] which received 74% of voter support, with 62% of votes counted as of 2:20 a.m. Wednesday morning, asked, do you want to set a $5,000 limit for giving to political action committees that spend money independently to support [00:07:48] or defeat candidates for office? That Maine ballot initiative. Our viewers and our members do a thing called operation Hope. Together. We phone banked for that. And when we did, oh my God, I've never phone banked for anything so positive in my life. Republican voters, Democratic voters, independent voters are all like, yes, yes, [00:08:07] get money out of politics. Yes. So that was one's super important, not just because of that ballot initiative, but Professor Lessig is going to use it to challenge the, the Citizens United case in the Supreme Court. So, so thank you to everybody in operation Hope that helped with that. Look at the difference that you made. That's what I'm talking about. [00:08:24] We try to drive positive change on this show and we are relentless. No matter what happens Trump wins. Doesn't matter. We're going for positive change. So if you want to be part of that crew, go to tight.com slash. Hope you'll get the populist plank on tight comm overall. But I want to go back to the Missouri one too okay. [00:08:40] Because so this is as we talked about last night in our election coverage. And check out the show every day Monday through Friday, 6 to 8 p.m.. Right. We do this. We cover all the stories. So yesterday, as we're doing election, analysis, this issue came up [00:08:55] and there was this the second minimum wage validation for Missouri. The earlier one was in 2018 that one passed 62 to 37, a giant 25 point win. Claire McCaskill was on the ballot against Josh Hawley in that election, [00:09:11] and she was incumbent. She raised way more money than him. She had all the advantages of incumbency. She had the media, she had all of these things. But she refused to run on minimum wage. She lost by six. So that's a perfect example of a Democratic politician not doing Democratic policies. [00:09:28] Losing by six when she could have won by 25. Now, look, I don't know that she would have won by 25 overall in Missouri. But if she campaigned on this enormously popular policy, she would have certainly had a much, much better chance of winning. So that's why we get frustrated at all the politicians who never serve us. [00:09:44] So let's all unite together, make sure we do a populist movement that actually brings the voters back into the spotlight as the people that the politicians should be serving instead of their donors. Hey, thanks for watching the video. 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