Sam Forstag

So their life did not improve materially over the preceding four years.

And you know what, if your life gets worse on a material basis while one party's in power and you vote for the party out of power, that's how democracy works.

And it's a shame that those are the kind of options that we left people with.

So let's give people a better option.

Oh, yeah.

How much time you got, Tim?

Absolutely.

As much as you want.

I mean, a big part of why I got into this is because we've had some nationally momentous leaders in the history of Montana, right?

I mean, John Tester, I got to sit down with last week.

He was somebody who was able to get things done even in the terribly broken confines of the United States Congress and Senate that we've lived with over the last five, 10 years.

Mike Mansfield, John Rankin.

But

What I see when I look at Congress is a Congress where the average member is worth $3 to $4 million, depending on the day and how good the stock market's doing.

Meanwhile, the average Montanan is making $60,000 a year.

What I see when I look at Congress is a place where the average member is worth 15 times the average American, and you look empirically, and working people have fallen behind.

as a matter of material wellbeing and wages, real wages adjusted for cost of living or the last 10, 30 years.

And it does not seem like there's a sense of urgency addressing that grievance, right?

Economic grievances to nearly the extent that there ought to be right.

And what happens when you don't address people's basic material needs, when the market is not meeting those things is they fester and they turn into misdirected grievances.