Derek Thompson

With an unjustified, unexplained war spreading in the Middle East, with ICE rampaging through various American cities, with tariffs going up and down and up and down depending on the day, Donald Trump's polling has continued to edge downward every week.

And yet the approval rating of the Democratic Party is still stuck near its all-time low, according to Gallup and other surveys.

One interpretation of these polls, one obvious interpretation, is that the deep unpopularity of that letter D at the end of a candidate's name is a huge albatross around Democratic candidates nationwide.

But there's another interpretation that I think is more interesting and perhaps more true.

The fact that the party has no clearly defined leader, no clearly defined brand, to use the dreaded B word, is an opportunity for young Democrats to define it for themselves.

Rather than act like a congregation all singing from the same hymnal, they can experiment, disagree, adapt their message to the electorate.

Today's guest is Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego.

I think Gallego is interesting because he's hard to pin down.

He's deeply critical of the Trump administration on immigration, obviously, but he was also deeply critical of the Biden administration on immigration.

While the concept of abundance, ideas from the book that I co-wrote with Ezra Klein, are often held up in direct opposition to economic populism, Gallego is a proponent of abundance principles who also isn't afraid to talk about taking on corporate power and even breaking up companies.

He's someone who could be plausibly accused of being a moderate, but he questions the very concept of moderation.

Today, we talk about the latest in the Iran war before talking a bit about why the Democratic Party is still so unpopular and why that unpopularity might be a sneaky opportunity for Democrats.

And we end up in an interesting place that I didn't quite anticipate.

Democrats, I think, are very good at talking about affordability at the moment.

They're good at talking about redistribution, too, how to bring people up to an income level that is decent and dignified.

And I agree that Americans need to feel, want to feel like they can get through the day.

But I also believe, as Gallego does, that good politics has to offer something a bit more than problem solving that brings people up to a minimum viable level of comfort.

I think good politics, maybe especially now, has to offer a vision of success in America, a message of aspiration, not just affordability.

And so we end up talking about how Democrats can pull that off, how the party that at times might sound like they mostly want to tax success might also be a party that celebrates it.

I'm Derek Thompson.