Faiz Shakir
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
I do.
I appreciate that.
And obviously, it goes back to why we got involved in politics in the first place.
And ideally, it's not for spin or the tactical approaches, but rather some conviction.
Thankfully, the people I've worked for have not gotten frustrated.
Harry Reid was a truth teller in his very kind of classic way, and Bernie Sanders and John Podesta and people like that have generally just appreciated my approach.
But I'm sure that there are many politicians who could potentially get frustrated, who I probably wouldn't work for.
No, I don't believe so.
I mean, the reason that I ran at that time wasn't because I thought I would win, but because I had a case that I wanted to make publicly about the direction of the DNC.
And as I watched Ken Martin try to struggle through what I think were foreseeable, understandable challenges that you have a bureaucracy that you have to...
and if you don't come in like a bull in a China shop to change it, the bureaucracy will capture you.
And I think what I was trying to argue for at the time was that you have to have a clear mandate coming in the door of what you wanna do and have people understand it and vote upon that.
If you don't,
You'll get stuck.
And I think he's a good person stuck in a bad system.
And you can see.
Right.
I mean, the only thing he had really firmly campaigned on was that the state parties would get additional funding, which he has delivered.
But it has also put them in some difficult straits, which I know he's working his butt off to try to fix.
And I think he'd own it and tell you, I mean, we've had some candid conversations between us about, you know, my own desires would be to lay out an agenda for 2026 on the Democratic Party side to say here are four or five things we're actively going to go and campaign on to compel that kind of a conversation.