Sam Forstag
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Appearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
That's a damn shame and we should be so pissed about it.
And I think people on both sides are pissed as I'm talking to them.
Imagine what we could do with that energy.
I would say it's twofold.
What this campaign has been based on is two premises.
It's first that the basic function of government is to help people meet their basic material needs when the market is not meeting them.
And right now, the market is not meeting a whole lot of basic needs.
Right now, people are failing to afford a roof over their head.
Right now, people are working two or three jobs at a time in a place like Montana and struggling to afford health care when a marketplace plan is $800 a month for bad health insurance.
or when childcare costs $19,000 a year if you can make it into a childcare program, let alone retirement, where people's social security checks are not keeping up with cost of living.
And those material needs are actually unifying issues.
People who voted for Joe Biden or Harris or Donald Trump
None of them want to see their neighbor's homes bought out from underneath them.
And my basic notion here is that if we can focus on those things first, we can build a coalition and we can get to the other notions of empathy and compassion and the level that we need to extend to our neighbors next because it's a whole lot easier to extend the kind of empathy and compassion that you ought to to your neighbor if you're not having to work three jobs at a time just to fill the damn fridge.
And that's a reasonable expectation.
And the second premise here is that people are tired of being so damn angry.
I am like it does not get us anywhere to have these campaigns where the entire premise of why you should vote for me is that you should hate the other guy more than you hate us.
And that is what it felt like living through the last campaign.
It felt like we had a whole lot of candidates who were saying, look how terrible and atrocious and despicable the other side is.
That's why you should vote for us as Democrats.