Neera Tanden: How to Win

The Bulwark Daily

Neera Tanden, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress, joins Tim Miller on The Bulwark Daily to discuss Democratic strategy in

Key takeaways

• Democrats can win in Republican-leaning states by appealing to moderates who are disillusioned with Trump.
• Trump's recent nominations, like Darlene Graham in South Carolina, highlight a shift toward MAGA loyalists that may depress turnout among non-MAGA Republicans.

Main topics

• Democratic strategy in Republican-leaning districts
• Trump's influence on GOP nominations and voter turnout

Notable quotes

She should lead the total no nothing Trump sycophant should be the Senate majority leader, I would think.

Conclusion

Tanden argues that Democrats must embrace moderate candidates and focu

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:12) Welcome to the Bullard Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress. She was domestic policy advisor to Biden. She also served in both the Obama and Clinton administrations. She's in her pearls, which I appreciate. And I have not yet seen her post on X.com so far, which is a little different from how you seem to be spending your days lately. It's near a tandem. Nice Speaker 4 (0:39) to be with you. Speaker 2 (0:41) So good to be with you. Welcome back. Speaker 4 (0:44) Oh, yeah, it's always going to be fun. Speaker 2 (0:47) You're getting sued by the White House and you are tweeting a lot. So we're going to get to both of those things. So you might be getting sued. They're threatening to sue you. We're going to get to those. But first, we Speaker 1 (0:56) had Speaker 2 (0:56) some news last night in South Carolina. Darlene Graham, Lindsey's sister, who apparently knows nothing and doesn't read the news, was nominated by the Republican Party to be the... senator from that state for a six-year term. It's pretty crazy. And she beat Ralph Norman. It was relatively close. Norman had been like one of the key instigators of the insurrection, so not exactly a moderate, but then he did endorse Nikki Haley and that got Trump's ire. Trump spent a bunch of money in that race. In some ways, I find Darlene Graham to be kind of the perfect MAGA senator, but what was your reaction to the result last night? Speaker 4 (1:32) Did you find her to be the perfect mega senator because she seemed to be almost proud of not knowing anything about foreign policy or what the job of senator would be? Speaker 2 (1:43) Because she's an empty vessel for Trump. I just think they should make her Senate majority leader. Like John Thune is not representative of the caucus. OK, John Thune likes to pretend like he has views on things. You know, occasionally he like pretends like he wants to distance himself from Trump. He never actually does it. Like Darlene Graham will just do whatever Mr. Trump says. That's what Trump wants in a senator. That's what MAGA voters want in a senator. And so I just think that. She should lead the total no nothing Trump sycophant should be the Senate majority leader, I would think. Speaker 4 (2:15) Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably more reflective of where the caucus is. I mean, honestly, it shows the natural extension of every single vote they've taken, every way that they're locked up with so much of the cuckoo crazy. That's the natural flow here. I don't think it's easy to win in South Carolina for a Democrat. But I think, you know, hopefully this gives a little bit more to Annie Andrews who's challenging her. Speaker 2 (2:45) Yeah, I was intrigued. Lakshya Jain, who is, you know, not. like a kind of lib hype data analyst. He does some stuff with our friends at The Argument. And, you know, he pointed out that Lindsey Graham actually underperformed the median Republican often in South Carolina because he sort of was in the sour spot where some MAGA people didn't think that he was MAGA enough because of immigration. And then some moderates thought he sucked up to Trump too much, right? And so he'd usually kind of underperform a little bit. And he was saying that if Darlene performed like Lindsey did and the wave... for Democrats was about what they predicted to be right now, that Annie Andrews would only lose by three. I don't know that the Democrats should be like really investing huge amounts of money in a hopeless South Carolina race, but that's, I thought that it was interesting. Nancy LaCour is kind of a moderate. Great candidate. Yeah, she's running in Nancy Macy's old district. I think this could really help her. Because you can just imagine, Trump was booed at Ralph Norman's concession speech last night. Yeah, Speaker 4 (3:46) I saw it. And you can Speaker 2 (3:47) imagine people not being excited to vote for Darlene. It could tamp down turnout and really, I think, help Nancy LaCour in that first district. And who knows? I don't know. Maybe Annie Andrews. What do you think? Speaker 4 (3:58) I mean, this goes to a broader issue, which we might get into later, which is that what's actually happening. in America today, which is, it's really hard for people to see this, but there are people who voted for Trump three times. They voted for him in 2016, in 2020, in 2024, you know, like working class people, particularly working class women who are like getting off the Trump train. And I think you see that in some group of Republicans voting for Tallarico in Texas. And I think Darlene Graham puts a lot of pressure on those Republicans who are not so jazzed up about Donald Trump these days. And they could not vote at all, which would be a big problem for the Republicans. I mean, hopefully they would consider voting for any Andrews. But I think there is a real opportunity around the country here. And I think the challenge for Trump is that he obviously had to get Graham over the finish line. But she also, I think, pressures a lot of non-MAGA Republicans. And that's like a really important distinction that there are MAGA Republicans who are kind of lockstep and they're still the majority of the Republican Party. But there's a sliver of people, your old compatriots per se, who are not MAGA Republicans, who raise questions about Trump and who actually can vote for a rational Democrat. Speaker 2 (5:22) Yeah, I think that's right. Speaker 2 (5:24) You know, I do think there'll be turnout issues for Republicans in some of these places. And then, like you said, I think depending on the types of candidates, we will get into this in a minute. But Nancy LaCour is like that type of candidate. She is not a lefty ideologue. You can't like, you know, stereotype her as some kind of like woke socialist or whatever. She's like a Speaker 4 (5:44) military leader. Yeah, right. Speaker 2 (5:47) Moderate. Good candidate. That's good for that district. Matches the district. Would be a great upgrade from Nancy Mace. It'd be a nice Nancy upgrade from Nancy to Nancy. And that is a seat that I've been flagging for a while that I just think that people are now coming around to the fact that, OK, well, you know, maybe not the South Carolina Senate race, but we'll see how bad things get for Trump. But like some of these seats that are Trump 10, 11, 12, you know, Nancy Mace didn't even have an election, really. I mean, like Nancy Mace's election wasn't that competitive in 2024. And now that seat could be gone. Speaker 4 (6:21) Yes, exactly. I mean, I think this is what's interesting about the map expanding over the last really in August. You've seen more and more races come on, come on sort of that board. Adam Hamilton running in Kansas, great candidate, is running very, very competitive race. I have no idea what to take about what to learn from polls, but independent polls have shown that it's a close race. And, you know, I think there is a kind of given all these elections in the past, there are a lot of Democrats were like. I'm not getting my hopes up about Republican crossover after all of these elections with Trump, but we are seeing some real evidence of it. And I will say it's not just polls. You are seeing in special elections, Democrats winning districts that have been plus 10, plus 15, plus 16 Republican districts. Trump won by. that much in this race just in Pennsylvania the last week, which was a general, ended up being a special election. So there are a lot of people who are crossing over or just a big problem for them is a lot of Republicans are staying home. And I mean, I think a central issue here is not to put up candidates that Republicans are compelled to come out and vote against. Speaker 2 (7:46) I'm going to have some more math talk at the end, but I want to talk about your lawsuit. So essentially what's happening is Trump's personal lawyer threatened a $5 billion defamation lawsuit against the Center for American Progress. Interesting. It was not over something that you said, which is surprising. I would have lost that bet. I would have thought if Cap got sued by the Trump administration, it would have been a near issue, but it wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't in this case. You guys, Cap put out a report about the National Guard. concluded that these deployments had little effect on violent crime rates. It cost taxpayers $1.7 billion, and that hurt Trump's feelings, and so he's suing you. Is that the gist? Speaker 4 (8:25) Yeah, that's pretty much the gist. Essentially, he saw the author of the report, Chandler Hall, who did a great job with this report. Trump saw him on C-SPAN. I didn't realize he had time for C-SPAN viewing. Speaker 2 (8:36) Really? That's really what happened? Speaker 4 (8:38) It's like, you look at his social media posts, his Jewish social posts on this from two weeks ago, and it really does seem like he watched Chandler Hall on C-SPAN. Because the report came out like a month and a half ago, and Chandler was on C-SPAN, and Trump is reacting to C-SPAN, and he didn't like the report. Speaker 2 (8:59) So either the human printer showed him the C-SPAN clip. Speaker 4 (9:02) Yes. Speaker 2 (9:03) Or maybe he got mad at Fox one day and at the club at Mar-a-Lago, he's sitting there eating his well-done hamburger before the golf course or after, and he told them to put on C-SPAN instead. Those are the only two theories I have. Speaker 4 (9:18) Yes. I mean, it's weird. I don't really think of him as watching Washington Journal every morning. Speaker 4 (9:27) But he somehow saw this Chandler talk about the report. And I do want to say, you know, he attacked us early that week, that Friday, August 14th. He was planning, you know, he did a big campaign in Nassau County in New York, basically attacking Democrats on crime, talking about the National Guard deployment. So I do think he thinks this report. is a problem for him and that's why he's attacking us now it you know i mean the report goes through through models it analyzes violent crime gun crime homicide rates the rate of violent crime reduction in the cities with deployments versus without cities that didn't have deployments it's really a factual analysis of how despite spending you know, as much as $1.7 billion on this, on National Guard deployments, we don't have evidence that they are actually reducing crime. And, you know, there's a Reuters story just recently about how in D.C. National Guard have been involved in less 1 % or less than 1 % of actual, you know, arrests. Speaker 4 (10:36) And Pierre has a story out that, you know, talking to National Guard in D.C. saying that they don't think they're doing anything and it's basically a political ploy. So, you know, I mean, I don't think he likes the fact that we are calling out that this could be, you know, real waste of a lot of money. Speaker 2 (10:55) Yeah. And these people's lives, you know, like they have lives in their home states, you know, back to school time. Right. It's like, you know, some of they have other jobs. You know, who is parenting? Like there are a lot Speaker 1 (11:06) of Speaker 2 (11:06) human considerations for these guys just to walk. And I was in D.C. I was blown away when I was in D.C. recently. It's like they're circling DuPont Circle. It's kind of walking around the park. They're like these guys and like a military Humvee outside of LaDroit Park. Yeah. What is the point of this? Exactly. This is just theater. Speaker 4 (11:24) That is an issue we raise. And we basically ask the question, which is, if it's not actually having an impact on crime rates, then why is he spending this money? And just, you know, it's $1.7 billion. It's a lot of money. And you could actually feed people with that or give them health care or not take away so many people's health care. You know, that's like real. real money. Speaker 2 (11:48) Feeding people and getting health care is important. It also really salts the vibes in the French Quarter. I think they're finally leaving the French Quarter, but it's like we don't need dudes in military gear like walking around Bourbon Street. You know, this is we're trying to enjoy ourselves here. Speaker 4 (12:02) Yeah. I can't say it's so great for tourism to have National Guard troops deployed in your next to your