Graham Platner

You know, Ohio went from being a blue stronghold of unions to becoming this red stronghold of disenfranchised, angry, working class people who 30 years ago were Democrats.

Because they were all in labor unions.

And then, I mean, it's not like in the 1990s, it's not like the Clinton administration really stood up for labor.

The Democratic Party has a lot of a role to play in the diminishment of labor power, in the free trade projects like NAFTA that really did, in the end, screw a lot of working Americans.

I think that when you put it into the greater context, I think that's what's happened.

And

In this moment, frankly, just because of the material reality that people are living in, it is becoming very clear to a lot of folks, whether they're conservative or liberal or whatever you want, or just in the middle and don't even care about politics.

There's becoming a very clear awareness that they are in fact being taken for a ride by people with immense amounts of power and that those who are willing to stand up to that power, those are the people they're gonna look to and support.

And I think they're willing to sort of not care actually about a lot of the culture war stuff, which in my opinion, and I say this often, I think was all invented to keep us all from having the conversation about taxing billionaire wealth and breaking up corporate monopolies.

I think that's why we have to argue about all these culture war issues that in reality, I mean, it keeps us all divided.

But it doesn't reopen the hospital.

And it doesn't change the fact that your rent continues to go up or that the wages that you've been earning continue to stagnate while the prices of goods and services continue to rise.

All the culture war stuff, there's nothing for that.

And we need to be very clear and cogent and

blunt about how we're gonna change it.

And I think if we do that, I do think that there is an opening to do this.

Totally.

And I think they have taken the bait.

And I'll be entirely honest, I think some of them, some of them don't even take the bait, some of them rise to it on purpose because they don't wanna have the other conversation.

There is an element – I see this all the time of more kind of establishment folks who are like, look, I don't want to talk about this, but they make me talk about it.