New Democrat voters want as the future of their party. It would be pretty cool, to see Kamala Harris kind of take that role up again. Yeah, I think it's an easy answer to say, Gavin Newsom. But there may be somebody else out there that we're not aware of. Frisco. [00:00:15] Governor of Illinois. I don't think he's afraid of Trump. I do like the approach that people like Andy Beshear in Kentucky have taken, though. Hakeem Jeffries, I guess I just think that he needs to be a little more forceful in his actions. Michelle Obama so, you know, Democrats had a marvelous victory [00:00:32] on on Tuesday, a big victory. But the party is still facing a big question right now as to who their leader is. Some people think it's Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom, but a damning new poll or a poll that we can discuss, whether or not it's damning from Politico, found that many Democratic voters have [00:00:50] absolutely no idea who their leader is. We'll get to the results of that poll in a second. - But first, your $0.02 on this. - Yeah. So I like who came in number one, and it's not a person. [00:01:06] And I'm going to tell you why I like that so much. After Michael gives you the facts about, the rankings. Okay. Well, here are, in fact, those rankings. Jake teased. Number one, this political Politico poll found a total lack of consensus [00:01:21] among 2024 Kamala Harris voters. When asked who they consider to be the leader of the Democratic Party. Don't know is in first place, with 21% Kamala Harris, 16% nobody. I don't know if nobody and don't know are are the same. [00:01:38] But I think nobody is in first place because nobody has a majority here. Chuck Schumer 7.7. Hakeem Jeffries 7.4. Former President Barack Obama, 7.4. And Gavin Newsom at 6.2. The top response was, I don't know, made up of 21%. [00:01:56] And, you know, the when you look at, the people who have the name leader after their names, that's, leader, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Neither of them were able to break 8%. Then we go to the poll continues. [00:02:13] Former President Biden at 4.4. General answers 2.9%. I don't know what that is. Ken Martin, who actually runs the DNC at 2.2? Other name are unclear. Name 2.1 Bernie Sanders, who is actually not a Democrat at 1.9%, [00:02:30] Hillary Clinton 1.2%, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at 1%, or a little over 1%. Here were some of the verbal answers people gave when asked who the Democratic leader was. [00:02:45] No one was a 26 year old white woman in Arizona who voted for Harris. Not sure who it is. Now, that is kind of the problem, says 50 year old white woman in California who voted for Harris. And I do not believe there is a leader right now, says 49 year old white man in Maryland who also voted for former Vice President Harris. [00:03:04] It's not just the voters who feel like the party is in limbo. Even Democratic insiders aren't sure who their leaders are. Lauren Harper, a Democratic strategist and co-founder of Welcome Pack, says this is where we are, guys. The party is divided factionally and ideologically, she said. [00:03:23] I couldn't tell you who the leader of the Democratic Party is either. And I work in Democratic politics, so I think we'll have a lot to discuss here. Yeah, no, I love that. Don't know who's winning. Why is that a problem? I don't know why that's a problem. In fact, I think the reverse is a problem whenever we've had [00:03:41] a clear Democratic leader, not whenever, but certainly recently, in the last 20 years, I would argue it's been a disaster. The clear leader of the party is Joe Biden. So we all have to listen to Joe Biden. But the brothers got dementia and he's falling apart at the seams, and he's intensely selfish. And he says he doesn't want to go. [00:03:57] Doesn't matter. He's the leader. Everybody listen to the leader. Well, he was president at that time, so he was, in fact, the leader. Yeah, I got you, but turned into a disaster. And but more importantly, guys, than Biden is the idea that we all have to listen to the leader. [00:04:12] Okay, so the Democratic leadership generally has been more establishment figures my entire lifetime, and they have demanded complete obedience. And they love to anoint candidates, and they like to announce like, oh, even before anybody won anything. [00:04:28] Hillary Clinton is going to be the new leader of the Democratic Party, but we didn't vote on it yet. No. Why is Bernie Sanders even running? He's ruining unity. Wait wait wait wait wait. You guys are assuming Hillary Clinton's the leader? We haven't voted yet. I kept saying in 20 1516 all the way back to 2013. [00:04:46] Right? So whenever they anoint a leader epic disaster. It's. And and Hillary lost to Trump. Kamala Harris lost to Trump. You can't get a bigger disaster than losing to Trump. The leaders tend to be very selfish, very corrupt. So I don't need some sort of Democratic leader telling me what to. [00:05:06] Think and what to do. And and if that is their job, they're miserable at it. So the last time the Republicans did not have a clear leader was in 2015. How did that turn out for them? Well, they had this mess of a primary. And in that 17 people ran and in that [00:05:24] giant, you know, scrum, a guy emerged, and now we don't like that guy who emerged, but he's won the presidency twice and and he's given the Democrats huge losses. Why? Because they didn't know who their leader was. [00:05:39] And they looked around and decided to use their own judgment to pick the guy they thought that they liked best, or the one that they thought was most likely to win. And again, no one believed the Republican voters. They're like, are you idiots? You're picking Donald Trump. He's definitely not going to win. [00:05:55] Stupid voters. How did that turn out? So I trust the voters There's way more than I trust anyone in politics or media, so I love that the Democrats don't know who their leader is. Good. Let's go find let's. That's our job to go out there, have them run an amazing primary in 2028. [00:06:15] Right. And let's see who the leader actually is. After we vote you guys decide who the leader is. Yeah. This is such a stupid. Poll in my I mean, we're sitting here telling you about it, but I think it doesn't matter. Whenever somebody doesn't have the president, there's a question [00:06:30] of who the standard bearer, the leader of the party is. It used to be that a former president would have that position. The most recent former president, President Biden, is not that type of person and likely not in the condition to do that at the moment anyway. So but. [00:06:45] It. Isn't, you know, the notion of a leader at the end of the 90s, the Republicans didn't have a leader. Dan Quayle was thought of as someone who could run for president, President Bush's former vice president because they didn't have a leader. And then George H.W. Bush, George W Bush, showed up and that went that way. [00:07:03] - But but this. - Isn't something that happens. There's no leader because the leader is always the president. And this is a party that it doesn't mean they're in disarray because they don't have a leader in a poll. It just means that they don't know who the leader is because they shouldn't, because there's no leader yet. I agree with you, Jake. [00:07:19] I agree that these sort of things are silly because it makes it sort of attaches an ineptitude to the party over not having leadership. They shouldn't have a leader yet. They don't know what what they're leading. They're in the minority in both houses of Congress. And the presidential election hasn't happened. [00:07:36] And are there leading voices? Yes. I would argue that the leading voice in the party right now, in practical matters, is probably Chuck Schumer and in, esoteric matters is probably Governor Newsom. But they're not the leaders of the party because they haven't been they're not there yet. [00:07:52] So I agree with you, Jake. I don't think these things matter. And I don't think you could have a leader now when you're at a party out of power anyway. Yeah. And so let me expand upon what you're saying. So Gavin Newsom is among the folks that you would consider in the category of potential leader, right. [00:08:08] - A leading voice, certainly. - Yeah. And so how did he get there? Partly because he's the governor of the largest state. That makes sense, right? And partly because he's trying hard in different ways to rise up. Right. So first he went and talked to the right wing, and that didn't work out great. [00:08:23] But it was at least I thought it was a decent effort and not not executed perfectly, but made sense to try to do something right. And now he's fighting Trump harder than anyone else, at least rhetorically, optically, etc.. That's good. [00:08:39] See, that's how you want people to prove themselves. So you know, how we feel about Gavin Newsom overall might be a different question. But in terms of how he's handling this, that makes sense. Then you've got Ro Khanna, who most people in the media would say, oh no, he's a, you know, congressman. [00:08:56] Yeah, he was the co-chair of Bernie Sanders campaign. But and he's going to run for president. He's a legit probably. He's a legit guy, etc. But I don't know about leader, right? I mean, they're not even including him in some of the polls. But the reason why I introduce him in in this conversation is because he's the one [00:09:13] guy that is the most active in Congress, constantly introducing bills, going in media, making the case for Democratic policies, progressive policies. I mean, you see him fighting 24 over seven, finding allies on the right, like Tom Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene on the Epstein files, [00:09:29] finding three, four significant right wingers on lowering drug prices like super active. To me, that's the best way to become a leader. And then you, of course, have the problem that the media almost always skews everything. Just any perspective will skew a conversation, including ours. [00:09:47] Right. But for mainstream media, they love the big names already. They they're just obsessed with the powerful. So that's why Michael's example is right there. Like, okay, Dan Quayle is going to be the leader of the Republican Party. Meanwhile, the whole country is like anybody that was paying attention, like, really? Dan Quayle is an idiot. [00:10:03] So, like, I don't think he's going to survive that primary, but there was talk of like, no Dan Quayle. Then of course, you remember in 2016, Jeb Bush, if it's not Jeb Bush, it's Marco Rubio. I mean, how many times are they going to be wrong before we realize. That's the example that just gave, right? [00:10:18] I mean, it's easy to say, Gavin Newsom now, nobody knows who Ro Khanna is, right? But by the time it comes time to pick a leader, people are going to know who that was. Who was the leader for the mayor's race in New York? Was it Zoran Mamdani? No, it wasn't, but that's who became the leader because time happened. [00:10:35] So if they took a poll two years ago, his name wouldn't be wouldn't have been on it. So that's why these things are silly. Do you think Barack Obama's name would have been on a poll in 2007 of who the leader of the party was cut to a year and a half later, and he's the president and he's twice elected. So it it's all name recognition. It's silly. [00:10:53] And the fact that there nobody thinks there's a leader is more refreshing than if there was one there 100% agree. The last two fun facts when you get all the way to the bottom of the poll. Speaking of Mamdani, he's tied at. They just both have 0.3%. So de minimis. But he's tied with Pete Buttigieg. [00:11:11] We were told that Pete Buttigieg was going to be our leader. And now he's at 0.3% with Mamdani who showed up yesterday. Right, right. Better news, worse news for Buttigieg than it is good news for Mamdani. That's definitely right. But last thing, guys, to Michael's point, when Mamdani started the mayor's race, [00:11:27] he was pulling at 1% when Donald Trump. People forget this. When Donald Trump came down the golden escalators, he was polling at 1%. So you don't know who's going to be the leader until you have a process to pick the leader. And if you don't go through that process, you're almost always going [00:11:44] to get a worse candidate. So nothing wrong with tough, strong primaries where we test people and find out who can lead. So all right, hopefully we'll do that right this time. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true. [00:11:59] But it does keep you updated on our live shows.