Graham Platner

Because, I mean, Trump, I have a lot of friends who voted for Donald Trump three times and they hate billionaires.

They think corporate tech folks are like manipulating all of us.

They think that corporate owned agriculture and food systems are exploiting all of us and essentially poisoning us.

They think that hedge funds and private equity are like destroying working people's lives.

I agree with all of this.

One of the reasons they voted for Trump is because Trump came along and he told them the one thing that they knew was true was true, which is that they live in a system that is not built for them and somebody somewhere is robbing them blind.

And once he said that, they were willing to kind of forgive all the other stuff because that's the core thing that people understand, that we live in a political and economic system that does not have their best interests at heart.

When you tell people that something they know in their bones is real,

they're willing to kind of go along with a lot more, I think, afterwards.

And one of the biggest problems we as Democrats have had is that we didn't have a counter to that.

We told folks that we had to protect the status quo.

We told folks that, no, the economic system's actually doing great.

Did you guys not see that Wall Street's doing fine?

GDP looks great.

Unemployment is record low.

Yeah, but everybody works three jobs and they hate them.

So it doesn't matter if unemployment's low.

Working people are working themselves to the bone.

I think that that's why ... I'm utterly convinced that economic populism, going after the oligarchy, that is how we kind of rebuild trust with working people.

I say this ... This is not a radical idea.