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How to End Bad Boomer Leadership
In this episode of Narejian Moderates, host Jessica Tarlov speaks with Amanda Lytman, co-founder and president of Run For Something, about the importance of new leadership in the Democratic Party. The...
How to End Bad Boomer Leadership
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Interactive Transcript
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Welcome to Narejian Moderates, I'm Jessica Tarlov, and today I'm joined by someone who
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spent the last few years building the bench for the future of the Democratic Party.
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Now she's written a book for those who are ready to step up and lead.
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She's the co-founder and president of Run For Something and the author of the new book,
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When We're In Charge, the Next Generation's Guide to Leadership, Amanda Lytman, welcome
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to the show.
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Thank you for having me.
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Thank you for being here.
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I want to definitely get into the book, which was awesome, and talk about some of
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the Run For Something candidates who we've been having on the pod recently, and just
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very excited about.
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But the big news is the government shutdown we're talking on day one of this.
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What are your vibes when it comes to the shutdown?
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Who do you think is going to blink first?
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How are you feeling?
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I don't know how this ends, because it doesn't.
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Well, here's what I say.
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I will hope that Democrats don't blink.
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I think that showing some fight right now is the right thing to do for the base.
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I think Chuck Schumer clearly understands this moment is different than in March.
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He cannot back down.
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Senate Democrats cannot back down.
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I'm a little concerned that already three all voted for the initial spending bill,
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which is a little alarming.
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But I am hopeful that Democrats will stay strong because Republicans control the House,
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the Senate, and the White House.
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It is on them to be able to get things to work.
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The job of a politician is to get your opponents to agree with you and to vote with you
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to build coalitions.
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And if they can't do that, they can't do the jobs.
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I don't know how this ends, because I don't see either side back and down easily.
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I don't know.
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What do you think?
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I know that I'm paid to have a good answer or to that question.
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But I'm unsure.
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I've been heartened to see Gillibrand and Gary Peters and Brian Schatz, who all voted
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for the initial, keep the government open in March, basically say, this is different.
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And we didn't know what governing under the Trump administration 2.0 was going to look
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like in the same way in March.
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And you could make the argument that they essentially operate as if the government is
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shut down whether it's open or not.
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You know, their, their, their, their, you know, party rule at this point.
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I'm watching New Hampshire, what, Jean and Hassan do.
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I understand the concerns, you know, Russ vote is scary.
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He's scary dude.
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And this is what he wanted.
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Like if you read Project 2025, which I wish that we had talked about that more in the
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campaign trail past August, I'm like, we kind of gave up that talking point.
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Um, this is a playground, right?
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He's gone to, he's at like six flags at this point.
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So that concerns me, but it does feel like Chuck Schumer got the message, especially
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from the base.
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And that leads us, you know, directly into the work that you do with run for something,
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you know, making politics more responsive to where Americans are and especially younger
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Americans.
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So how is run for something going in Trump 2.0 and you started right after Trump was first
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elected?
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Um, it feels, I mean, it is technically a long time, but it feels like 50 years.
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It feels like 10 lifetimes.
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Yeah.
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So run for something was born of the ashes of the 2016 election.
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We launched on Trump's first inauguration day thinking this would be a small side project.
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We've got a hundred people who want to run like I was going to get to take a real job.
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I was a campaign before that.
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Um, we had a thousand people in the first week.
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As of today, we're up to nearly 250,000 young people who've raised their hands to say they
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want to run nearly 70,000 of them in the last 11 months.
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Amazing.
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So we've had more people sign up since Trump won in 2024 than we did in the entirety of
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his first term.
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It has been a huge moment for candidate recruitment for people looking around both at the Republican
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Party and the Democratic Party and saying, if these guys aren't going to lead, I'm going
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to have to get in myself and run.
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We've endorsed more than 3,000 campaigns.
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We've helped elect more than 1500 millennials and Gen Z to state and local office all across
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the country.
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We've won elections in 49 states.
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We're only missing Idaho.
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And it's a real building box of power.
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It's how you build long term sustainable power.
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And what do you do exactly for your candidates?
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So it starts with recruitment.
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We ask people to sign up at RunForWet.net to look up where they could run.
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Once they do, they get put into an online community that allows them to both interact with
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each other with experts.
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They go through some curriculum and some trainings on how to prepare to run either now or a couple
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of years down the road.
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They get invited to regular calls where we talk about the basics of running for office.
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They also get information about stuff our partners are doing.
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We work with more than 200 groups across the country, both local and national, to help
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candidates really understand what does it mean to run for office and how to actually execute
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on it.
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Once they're on the ballot, they can apply for our endorsement.
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And once you're endorsed, which we do about half the people who apply, our regional directors
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will work directly with you.
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It's a one-part coach, one-part consultant, one-part therapist.
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Do you need help getting the state party to answer your emails?
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Great.
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We know them.
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We will shake them down for you.
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You need access to the voter file.
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We can do that.
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You need tools for texting.
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We can do that.
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It is a full service soup to us.
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And then we stick with people post-election day.
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So our alumni community made up of our endorsed candidates.
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We helped them figure out their next steps.
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We stay in relationship with them as they think about running for higher office.
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We make sure that the folks doing recruitment for higher offices know these people are there
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and leading.
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We promote them across our network.
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We're really part of the long-term talent incubation.
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Yeah, you have some very prominent alumni, I would say.
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Yeah.
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And I want to talk about two candidates in particular that are running this cycle for
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Senate, Mallory McMarrow in Michigan, James Chalereco in Texas.
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We've had both of them on the podcast.
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I just saw James Chalereco's fundraising numbers for the first three weeks, $6.2 million.
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Can you talk about them in their journey and how you're working with them and why you think
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they're, that's like, 80 questions.
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But why you think they're resonating at this level?
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So Mallory, we worked with her in her first state Senate race back in 2018.
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We were her first endorser.
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And she often tells, especially when I met the room about how she took our endorsement with her
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two various other state and local groups who took her seriously because she was endorsed
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by run for something.
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She was just a mom wanting to run for office.
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She had Googled how to run for office and found us, found a merge, and got in the race,
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flipped that seat.
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And is now a very competitive candidate of the United States Senate.
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James was a middle school teacher in Texas who decided to run for state-ledged down there
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to flip a seat in the Texas State House.
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People often don't remember that.
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He did flip that seat.
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He held it in 2020.
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Both of them we've been in conversation with since 2018.
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I often describe my work as being the person who sees the band at the small club before
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they go through the arena tours.
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I know the people who are cool before they're cool.
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Both of them having very shared ability to talk like normal people, to so clearly know
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what they believe and to be interesting and normal online.
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I think it's actually a uniquely millennial Gen Z. They know we'll get into that generation
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a little bit.
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But I think because both of them have been online their entire lives.
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They have always had cameras around them.
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They have always thought about what it means to curate a public presence that is who
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they are, but with some boundaries.
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They understand that you have to be a normal, engaging human being.
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You can't be like a robot politician.
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Now, they're not fully aligned ideologically.
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They're not running the same kind of campaign.
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They both do talk about their faith, although for James, it is much more prominent in his
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work.
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They both talk about their family, although Mallory is like a mom of a little foyerold.
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And James is not a parent, not married, I don't believe.
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They both are so in touch for their communities.
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I think that's what makes them really powerful, even as they are very different.
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Yeah.
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I'm glad that you brought up their policies or the ideology of this because I think that
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there's a big misconception that all young candidates have to be like wild progressives.
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And that's not the case at all.
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You just need to be the genuine article.
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To look and talk and seem like you come from the community that you are asking to elect
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you.
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It wouldn't make sense in Texas if we are to have any pipe dream shot of ever flipping
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that seat to blue for you to have the same politics as AOC.
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And I think what they both clearly have is a set of values that they hold strongly.
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They really know who they are and what they believe.
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And that more so than actually the specifics is what comes through.
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Not that they don't also have very specific policies they're advocating for.
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And they vote very clearly.
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Equal line, justice line, the pro-democracy, they talk about it very differently.
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They're prioritizing different policies.
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They are thinking about this as how they can best represent the places they're running.
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And if Democrats are going to win in places both like Michigan, Texas, and also New York
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and California, that's what we need.
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Yeah.
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I'm a big fan of an officer.
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I work in conservative media, so I spend a lot of time with people on the other side of
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the fence, but I hate this rush to do ideological purities has or to jump on someone who's
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won a super competitive race.
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You might not love everything a list of slokken is saying, but could you have won her
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race?
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I don't really know.
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So I wish people would just stand back a little bit.
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I think it also, the ideological purity testing or even the discourse if you must believe
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this or that misses how people consume information.
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The way that James talks about wanting to fight for LGBTQ people versus the way that
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Mallory does versus the way that like Zora Mondani does, each of it sounds a little different.
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They're talking about different levers that they can pull.
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They're talking about it through a different lens, but because of who they are and their
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stories and the places they're running, it seems real.
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They believe it.
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And that's what matters almost more than anything else.
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Totally.
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You mentioned social media and I want to talk about that because it's, you know, it's
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the blessing and a curse.
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Right.
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We're all overly addicted and it's causing to my mind a tremendous amount of damage also
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in people's lives.
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What are you seeing in terms of how social is being used for politics, both in the good
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and the bad ways in what do you see as like the right sweet spot for how you can run
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a viral campaign and also keep people sane?
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Yeah.
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I think for the campaigns, we've seen candidates use it really well when they come off like
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normal people.
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So they use it the way that they probably would like.
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I think a lot of Chuck Schumer is probably never opened his Instagram account.
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Yeah.
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And I'm actually one of my favorite things to ask older politicians is like, what social
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media do you actually use?
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Like what platform are you on?
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What is your algorithm showing you?
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And if they don't even understand the question, that's usually my first flag.
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Like I want to know that my candidates and my leaders are the right amount of online.
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They need to be like just enough that they understand how they're creating content.
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They understand how people consume it.
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You need to be enough of a consumer to be a producer, but I don't want them to have
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the brain rot or like the world.
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Like I feel like I've got the worms where my brain is like all omelets and and toddler
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content on the internet.
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And it's not good.
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Totally.
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I think that the candidates were getting it right.
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I think Baller is really good.
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I think James is really good.
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I also think there's a good New York City Council member, Chi Oce, who's really, really
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good.
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Christian Menofi who's running for Congress down in Texas.
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Super compelling online.
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Zach Walls is running for Senate in Iowa.
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Super compelling.
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Moosalba Lee was running for mayor of Jersey City.
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Yeah.
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Really, really fun.
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There's like a bunch of really cool candidates who are each doing it a little differently.
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And I think the thing that I really love about them is most of them are not doing like
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memes.
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They're not, you know, pandering to folks.
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They're not jumping on trends.
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I mean, like occasionally they'll do this sort of like music stuff, but mostly they're
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just treating their audiences like adults and they're using their social media platforms.
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Like any other 30 something.
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What do you think about, I mean, you mentioned Chuck Schumer and he's definitely had some of
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the cringiest moments online, I think of anyone, especially being the Senate minority leader.
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But then there are other boomer elected officials like a Mark Warner, for instance, who I think
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has made a very genuine effort to kind of get with the times, right?
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And he does his car videos.
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And he's gotten a little more professionalized about it and run for something is really
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focused on younger people, though.
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So where do you see the gerontocracy battle at this particular moment?
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You know, the gerontocracy is a scourge upon the earth, both in government and basically
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everywhere else.
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And I think we are at a tipping point for how it's going to change.
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There are record numbers of young people running for office this year and into 2026.
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I think we will see more of file.
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There's also, thank God, quite a few older senators who are retiring and making way for
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this exciting bunches.
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There are young leaders jumping into primary these older Democrats.
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I think the challenge is that generally speaking, there are certainly some exceptions here,
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but generally speaking, the older leaders in the Democratic Party have neither the skills
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nor the stomach to fight in this moment.
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Like, it took Chuck Schumer getting basically dragged for months, both online and in person
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and yelled at by donors to get to a point where he was ready to shut down the government
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to fight for our values.
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We've got to get candidates and leaders in there who have a really clear, I'd understand
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of who our opponents are, that the Republican Party at this moment is not interested in
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good faith governance.
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They're not good faith partners negotiating.
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This is not George W. Bush's party or Rob needs or John McCain's, it is Trump all the
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way down.
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And if you came of politics in the last eight years or came up to it, generally speaking,
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you see that really clearly.
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Whereas if you sort of have been in the Senate since the 90s or older, you have a misconception
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of the same way that we like the music, we like when we were 13, politics is stuck in
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the moment when you first engaged in it.
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Yeah, like going out to the sphere to see the backstreet boys, back kind of second
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moment.
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I absolutely do that in a heartbeat.
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A hundred words out in my head.
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My husband was like, let's go see the data.
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I was like, get out of here with, I mean, he's a weird and John Xer.
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But it seems as though there's this emergent theme and hats off to Bernie Sanders and AOC,
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who I feel like have really been pounding us with it.
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But you're seeing, I think some of the most powerful communication around the us versus
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them, not Democrats versus Republicans, right?
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Like the rich and the poor, the big guy and the little guy.
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I just had Dan Osborne on from Nebraska.
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He's running against Pete Ricketts this time.
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John Assof has been really compelling and impressing me with his ability to constantly bring
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the conversation back to corruption.
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And that's Democratic corruption and Republican corruption and that we have to be the antidote
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to that.
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He's a millennial as well.
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I think he's 39 now.
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Is that what you see as like the winning through line for these races and your candidates?
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It's definitely something that's coming up a lot with them.
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I know like really articulating the system isn't working.
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Or I've heard some even put it like the system is working.
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It's just working for them.
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It's not working for you.
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The system is working as is attended for the rich, for the wealthy, for the elite, for
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the people who are buying their way in.
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It is not working for normal people.
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And I think especially for younger voters who feel like what is the American dream anymore?
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How am I ever going to buy a home?
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How am I ever going to afford kids?
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How am I ever going to get out of the student loan debt?
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You told me I had to go to college and now I'm graduating from college.
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I don't have a job prospects and I have hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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I owe like it feels hopeless and it feels like every system has been set up to burn us,
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not support us.
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So I think candidates who can really speak to that sense of suffocation.
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And I think Mamdani, one of the things that he really spoke to very powerfully was his
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thing was like afford to live, afford to dream.
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I think that second half of the sentence is really meaningful for younger people because
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it's like, God, what could you do?
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With your life, if you didn't feel so crushed for finances or by the systems that have
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failed us?
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Yeah, I particularly loved.
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I think he was talking to Aaron Burnett and she asked about like, do you want billionaires
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to exist anymore?
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And he said the real question is, do you think that working people should be allowed to
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exist anymore?
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Mm-hmm.
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Yeah.
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And we both live in New York City and understand that for majority of people here, that's kind
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of what's pulsating through their lives and their conversations on a daily basis.
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I mean, my husband and I talk about it almost every day of like, yeah, if we could afford
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another kid, we'd have one.
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We can't.
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You would have a third.
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I'm a baby.
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Okay, no, I'm just like, because I'm scared.
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Yeah.
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We do it too, because we're like, oh, but we're not going to have a baby again.
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And it's in those little cubes.
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And then I'm like, oh my God, it's also so much work.
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And three in the city is a lot.
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Well, that's two ubers.
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That's anywhere you go, that's two ubers.
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I know.
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And I don't have two uber money.
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That's what it is.
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We're going to take one quick break.
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Stay with us.
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Scott, we're hitting the road, bringing pivot live to the people.
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Seven cities, Toronto, Boston, New York, DC, Chicago, San Francisco, and LA, of course.
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You went to Oasis.
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You went to Beyoncé.
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You saw the remake of Wizard of Oz in the spear, all of those suck compared to the pivot
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tour.
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This is the biggest tour, same people that are organizing our tour, that organized Taylor
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Swift's tour.
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They are much more excited about our tour.
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All right, that's enough, Grandpa.
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It's going to be so good.
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And we're bringing our brand of whatever we do to the people.
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And we're excited to meet our fans.
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We love our fans.
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For tickets, head to pivottour.com.
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See you there.
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Welcome back.
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I want to make sure that we talk about your book, which is very different from a traditional
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leadership book.
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Right?
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That's kind of focused on people who are C-suite or C-suite adjacent.
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Yours is really focused on young people, new people stepping into power.
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Tell us about it.
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So, when we're in charge, this came out in May.
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And it's not about politics at all.
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It's about power.
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It's about work.
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It's about the future of work and about what it means to lead differently in this moment.
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You know, I am 35 years old.
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I've been running this organization for almost a decade.
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And I have to have to do things very differently from thinking about how we create an environment
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that has work-life balance and sustainable work culture to how to take family leave as
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the boss, which when I googled how to do it, I got a lot of how to ask your boss for
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maternity leave and nothing about how to take it if you actually are the boss.
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How to run a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment that is both productive and also
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psychologically safe for folks.
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How to post on Instagram.
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If you're the boss, like my employees follow me on social media.
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What does that mean about how I think about posting and engaging and like faving their
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comments, that kind of stuff.
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It is such a different challenge.
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And for the book, you know, I interviewed more than 130 leaders across a bunch of different
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sectors.
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I talked to lawyers and doctors and faith leaders and teachers.
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And of course, politicians, I talked to people who, you know, haven't speak all the CEO
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of Snapchat for Shasharma, the energy of 15-vogue and Maxwell Frost and a number of members
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of Congress.
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And the themes that I heard echoed across those conversations were all so similar.
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People were struggling to figure out how to manage both their feelings and their staff's
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feelings.
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They were trying to do things differently, but didn't really know what that looked like.
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In the same way that I think, you know, take it back to parenting, but the same way that
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in particular millennial parents are trying to do it differently than our boomer parents
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did for us.
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Millennial and Gen Z bosses are trying to do it differently, but without a playbook, that's
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so, so hard.
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So one more in charge is the playbook for how to do it.
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One of the key lessons, and I see that it's also in your swag, is the We Don't Dream
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of Labor.
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Back there.
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All right.
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It's a good placement.
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I think it's good.
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I hasn't got my book cover framed.
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But can you talk about that and how it relates to how young people can lead and run these
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organizations, you know, not just in politics, obviously, but across the board?
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Yeah.
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We do not dream of labor.
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I sort of, my people say it's James Baldwin, quote, I can find no proof of that on the
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internet.
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But this idea that we don't have dream jobs, we have dream lives.
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I think it's one of the biggest challenges that we are experiencing.
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Honestly, right now, with the gerontocracy, and actually, I submitted as the expert question
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for Keraswisher's interview with Tina Smith last weekend.
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And my question for her was, why is it so hard for some of your colleagues to retire?
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And her answer was, first thing she said, I think for so many of them, their jobs, other
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identities, and they can't figure out what to do beyond that.
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Millennials and Gen Z have seen that our work will not love us back, that we will get laid
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off, that our institutions will crumble, that our companies are not going to be our homes.
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We cannot count on staying somewhere for 20 or 30 years and retiring in our same job we
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started.
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So, how do we build identities beyond our profession?
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Hard for anyone?
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Really hard when you're at the boss.
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Really, really hard when you are at the entrepreneur or the founder or your job is for many young
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people.
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Influencer or content creator, how do you create systems and structures such that allow both
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you and your team to enjoy your work, find dignity in your work, get fairly compensated,
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and good benefits for your work, but also have a life outside of it so that your identity
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isn't totally wrapped up in your career.
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So, I get into all of that in the book and really try to answer the question, you know, what
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does a dream life look like and how can you build a workplace that makes that possible?
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Yeah, I just, I love it.
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It's aspirational, obviously.
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I think in a lot of ways, you know, I have a dream, like I married the right guy and I
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have beautiful kids and I can afford to live here.
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Yeah.
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I'm still complain about it, but I think that the kind of natural feeling is, you hear something
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like that and you think it's all well and good, but that feels like a pipe dream to me.
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This idea that I don't need to be working all the time, you know, it's a fantasy work
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life balance, especially with phones and connectivity, especially when you are the boss
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and especially when so many people have some form of content creator or messenger as part
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of their job description.
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I don't think it means don't work hard.
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Like I work my ass off.
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I wrote a book while pregnant while running an organization like I don't know how you do
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it and think about a third.
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Don't let my mom hear that.
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I don't think that means don't work hard.
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I think that means have an identity that is beyond your work.
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Whether that's it, your relationship to others, as a parent, as a partner, as a friend,
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as a community member, and then create the systems and structures such that you can do
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that.
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So part of the way that I have done this is that run for something has a four day work
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week.
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That means me and all of my staff work Monday through Thursday, 32 hours a week, plus or
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minus, Fridays or weekends.
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I wrote the book on Fridays through 2024.
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I now have fellowships and I see friends and I go to a yoga class and I spend time with
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my partner on Fridays.
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It is what has allowed me to have both the balance that can make more things possible,
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but it also has not touched the organizational efficacy or impact in any way.
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Again, we had our biggest year yet.
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You can do both if and this is why I think it's both aspirational but also quite practical.
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Imagine what happens if thousands or hundreds of thousands of business owners of community
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leaders of company executives decide to make their businesses prioritize work with balance
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and build that in from the top on down and staff in such a way and structure schedules
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in such a way that people could not have to answer emails after five or six o'clock
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that people could leave in the middle of the day to go pick up their kid and then come
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back later that really could be well compensated for their work and also have lives outside
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of it.
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The addition here is like what could be possible for you as an individual, both you specifically
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also your listener, if your job didn't suck you dry at the end of the day.
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How could you show up differently for yourself, for your partner, for your family, for your
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community?
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Would you have more time to volunteer?
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Would you be a better friend?
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Would you host dinners more?
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Like, well, it would be possible if you weren't so tired.
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That's what I'm trying to implore folks to not settle for the way things have been done
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yesterday as the way we have to do them tomorrow.
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How are you finding, I guess, I mean, we talked about gyro and gyro and polyshecks, but
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even the generational reaction to your book because I think that a lot of boomers, old
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exers, kind of not and smile about this stuff and they're like, we want to lift you up,
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right?
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We know that the way that we did it doesn't necessarily work for this generation and
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there have been a lot of negative consequences, but like in reality, you're going to have
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to do it exactly the same way.
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Have you found like doors opening or minds opening, I guess, to a new way of thinking about
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this or is it more that if you're 42 and under, we're just going to be building a totally
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different America?
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I have loved hearing from so many of the older folks who've read or listened to the book
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and told me it really helped give them empathy for what their kids or their grandkids or
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their colleagues are working through.
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Like, it really opened their eyes, especially, you know, I write in depth about the internet
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and online communication and virtual workplaces and the emotional labor of leadership in this
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moment.
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I'm like, I didn't really think about that.
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It just like really gives them a language to understand the challenges.
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I gave a talk a couple weeks ago at the University of Albany and there was an older community
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member there, one of the oldest people in the room who came up to me after and said, you
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know, when you said work won't love you back, that hit me right in the gut because you're
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right.
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It didn't.
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And if I had known that earlier, I would have made some different choices.
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Like, that's the whole point here.
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I mean, because what is Gen X?
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I will say the final thing is that I love hearing from Gen Xers to get very mad that
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I don't really talk about Gen X in the book because being mad that you're left out, it's
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so classic Gen X to be mad that you're not talked about, which I just live up to the stereotype
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my dude.
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Yeah, it's funny.
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They get to be invisible when they want to be and then they throw a fit when they feel
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like they have something to contribute or to talk about their music.
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Well, and it's not my fault.
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It's not millennials fault.
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Blame the boomers.
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I've seen this.
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There's a Wall Street Journal story from a better mother's who ago that said that even
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unfortunate 500 companies, you know, these boards are deciding to go from boomers CEO to
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millennial CEO.
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Like, they are looking for the board.
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They're skipping Gen X entirely.
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And I am sorry that not my fault, but I am sorry because that sucks for you.
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It does.
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I don't want to be snarky because I married to a Gen Xer, but yeah, I think we feel the
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same things about this.
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So I was asked, folks, to come on, what's one thing that makes you rage and one thing you
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think we should all calm down about?
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One thing that makes me rage.
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I am deeply irritated by the, you know, we talked about this a little bit earlier by the
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discourse about the ideological purity of the Democratic Party.
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Like recruit a candidate, get him to run for office, then tell me how it works out.
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Unless you are actively recruiting candidates, shut the fuck up.
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Is that productive?
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No, but that's how I feel.
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One thing that makes me happy or calm down about, but happy is good too.
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My toddler is obsessed with Daniel Tiger as all toddlers are and really likes to sing
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the, when you feel so mad that you want to roar, take a deep breath and count to four songs.
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And I find myself singing that in work meetings and after donor meetings quite a bit lately.
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And, you know, in politics as in parenting, I find that very resonant thematically.
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Yeah, it's also, I mean, if we want to put it in the like calm down about thing, I think
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it links very well to writing about what professional environments are now that like people are
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so appreciative of humanity actually.
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When, you know, don't bring all your home stuff to work.
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But a fair dose of it to remind us that like, I'm a pet owner, I'm a parent, you know,
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if someone would say a pet mom, I feel like I don't actually have a pet and all my dog
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friends would be like, you're not an owner, you're like part of a family.
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I'm a dog owner, it's fine.
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Okay.
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But totally, and our Tony box gets a lot of play with the Daniel Tiger orbit over here as
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well.
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Well, and I just, I find it very helpful to remember that when all of this is over,
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my kids and yours and everyone else's, there'll still be little kids.
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Time is long and we've got a long ways to go, but also things can change fast.
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And that's very comforting to me.
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Awesome.
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Well, Amanda, thank you so much for your time.
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It was great to have you.
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Thank you for having me.
Topics Covered
Democratic Party leadership
Run For Something
Amanda Lytman
government shutdown
candidate recruitment
millennial candidates
Gen Z leadership
political engagement
campaign strategies
social media in politics
grassroots movements
local elections
political endorsements
community representation
political activism