I'm very pleased today to be joined by the former Democratic Party chairman of the great state of Ohio, David Pepper. He is the author of multiple books, including his latest "Saving Democracy: A User's Manual for Every American." Welcome, David Pepper.
Thank you. It's an honor to be with you, Steve.
David, you were the Democratic Party Chairman of the State of Ohio, which has become a Republican state in recent years. Up through the 2004 Bush election, which I was part of in 2008, it was, however, considered to be the top swing state along with Florida, that decided the election. What, in a nutshell, happened? This was a state that narrowly went to George Bush in 2004, Barack Obama in in 2008, and to Donald Trump by 2016. Coming into 2024, this looks like a Republican state --except for -- and we'll talk about that in a in a minute -- some of the overreach of the party in the election snapback. In a nutshell, for people who are not from Ohio, talk about what happened in Ohio, and then secondly, talk about how corrupt the state has become under the one party rule of the Ohio Republican Party.
What a great question. You bring back some painful memories. You know, I think it's fair to say that Ohio always lean -- has always leaned -- to the right. I don't think it's been quite 50-50 especially for state level elections and governor. So if you're winning Ohio, as a Democrat, you're gonna win the country. But it's not a 50-50 proposition to begin. It's a little bit uphill from there. But again, obviously good candidates like Barack Obama could win it. What's happened, a couple of things. One thing is that we have become a bellwether. Now I'm afraid of how you can use the powers of state government to make a state hard to win if you're a Democrat. The old margins of victory that we had with Barack Obama, for example, enjoyed in '08 and '12 had been made far more difficult by pretty relentless purging of voters in Ohio. That's made the margins harder and harder to achieve. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, both won Cuyahoga County by a greater percentage of registered voters than Barack Obama did. But because there's so many fewer registered voters, thanks to years of purging their actual raw vote, margins were lower significantly than Barack Obama. So the base of Ohio's Democratic side has actually gotten a little smaller. And you could blame Democrats are not firing up the base enough. But we also know that purging is part of that. There's no doubt that Donald Trump also though, really started a fire in parts of the state that weren't turning out as much true rural, but also flipped some areas like the Valley to some degree, and all the way down the Ohio River on the east side of the state that Ted Strickland used to win handily. So our base has gotten smaller through purging and less energized voters. Donald Trump took a part of the state that used to vote for Democrats, and has moved it because he's talked about issues like trade in the way the Democrats there used to talk about it. And you add that up in a state that used to be more swing, and it has gotten harder to win. So you put those two together, it's harder, but it doesn't mean that a Sherrod Brown couldn't win in '24. And it also means that the Tim Ryan people didn't give him and his team enough credit. Tim Ryan lost by six, when the governor candidate lost by 26. That's a massive overperformance. That's a winning effort in a normal year with good turnout. So it's still achievable for Democrats, but it's gotten a lot harder with some of the trends I talked about.
Well, Tim is a good friend of mine, and I was involved in that race. It was as good a political campaign as I've ever been involved in, but you just can't win if the top of the ticket goes down by 26 points. I had a theory about that race, and it was that Mike DeWine, I think was evaluated by Ohio voters as he's been around for a long time, he's not going to do anything to particularly make my life more difficult. He's drama free, but not so long after the election here --we're less than a year after, the governor seems to be on his back heels, and to be severely weakened. The Republican extremists in Ohio have overreached and have been severely rebuked in recent weeks. Talk about the issue, and how you see that, as a party chairman, as the winds are blowing out there that may well be contrary to what we're constantly told is going to happen from Washington, DC.
Yeah, let me just say, Mike DeWine benefited from this longtime image of being an old type of Republican, the more moderate one. He was actually quite responsive, responsible during COVID. And I think, versus Tim, Mike DeWine, did very well in suburbs. He really benefited from a responsible response to COVID. That got him a lot of credit, with more moderate voters, including women. That's all dramatically changed since the second term began. We are now a bellwether, not as to who's gonna win the presidency, we have become a bellwether as to what it looks like when a far-right group of extremists takes over your state through a gerrymandered state house. That's what we now represent. And what I wrote about in my first book called "Laboratories of Autocracy," we are what happens, we are what can happen to a state that has been generally moderate, when it's been hijacked by a gerrymandered extremist group. That's why what we are seeing and living in Ohio is just like Missouri, it's just like Tennessee, and it's a downward spiral. And what was so great, and what we see in states like Ohio is cowardly moderates, who know better, like Mike DeWine, and John Hampstead, and others like Rob Portman before them. They never stand up to it, and so the far right takes over the states and say, "We want to pass things that we know that people who don't agree with because we've gotten away with gerrymandering, because the state Supreme Court is in the same hands of the party that we control in our state house. We know that the only check on us, on our extremism and our lack of accountability, the only check are the people themselves." And these greedy right wingers said, "We're going to get rid of that check too -- we don't want any checks left in the grid." Mike DeWine, like he always does, like with gerrymandering, went along with all of it. And the great news last week is -- and this is really important -- a multi-partisan coalition of people, Democrats, of course, but independents and a whole lot of Republicans and a whole lot of counties that those guys would have been planned on winning in '04 and since when you were running these campaigns, said, "Hell no, we may not agree on everything. But we see this for what it is. It's a power grab by extremists to destroy our democracy. We're not for it, we're voting it down." That's why Kasich was against it. That's why Bob Taft was against it. That's why Democrats were against it. That's why Delaware County voted against it. That's why Portage County, that's why Butler County, a very Republican, large county was against it. They said, "No." So you saw this really broad -- I would say it's sort of a new pro-democracy coalition -- saying, "We see what this is. We may be Republicans, but this is not what democracy is about." And they join hands with independent Democrats, so it was a great day. Mike DeWine allowed himself to be taken in by the far right, like he always does. And people saw it as a far-right attack on democracy. And it was rejected accordingly, which was obviously a great day, not just for Ohio, but across the country.
And what's the fallout? Excuse me -- what's the fallout it sends people? What are the far right politicians who brought this to Ohio voters, who tried to foist it on them are saying what about it?
Again, most of these people have in their entire careers, especially the State house members, never been in a world of democracy. They've been in districts that they cannot lose. So their reaction isn't the behavior you'd expect in a normal democracy. Their reaction is not also what you'd expect them to adopt in a democracy. What would you and I do if we were in anything close to competitive districts? If this happened, we'd say, "The voters have spoken. We've learned our lesson. We're going to eat some humble pie, and we will do things differently." What have they done? People like Franklin Rose, who is a horrible secretary of state -- we're stuck with, or the state senate president who's basically been in gerrymandered districts his whole life. They've been basically repeating all the rhetoric that was called out by the voters. "Well, this is just the left wing taking over the mat." Huffman, the senate president, said, "We're going to do it again." So almost none of the people really in charge of this thing, have learned a lesson and Franklin rose -- and you'll recognize this behavior. He's now at a primary for Senate, so he's tripling down on the rhetoric because he wants to grab as many of those yes voters as he can for his own primary. So they haven't learned a thing. To protect democracy, we can win. We need to win. We need to learn our lesson, even as the other side clearly, stubbornly, in some cases, with a whole lot of whining, failed to learn their lesson, which is you go for broke to attack democracy in a state like Ohio, you're going to lose.
Do you have any sense of Trump deflating at all in Ohio, with normal people, either by fatigue over the accumulation of criminal accusations, fatigue over the constancy of the news coverage, or just fatigue over Trump overall?
Anecdotally, I'd say yes. I mean, I think he will win big in the Republican primary. I think his endorsement in the Senate primary, like it did, you know, saving a JD Vance, who is mired in third or fourth, depending on the day? I think his endorsement in the Republican primary here probably settles that primary. But more broadly, I do think, he's a worse candidate than he was in either '16 or '20, believe it or not, because all he's got now is this set of trials and these crazy statements about retribution or whatever they are. That's not a campaign. I mean, it's just almost bizarre. So I have had real family friends, diehard Republicans who did vote for him in '16 and '20, who now say to me things like, "I can't even watch him on TV anymore. It's too much." Now, does that mean that Biden wins Ohio? Maybe. I think it means it could be closer. I think it means it could be close -- enough that Sherrod wins in a way that Tim Ryan couldn't overcome a 26-point deficit. I think the Biden/Trump margin is close enough that Sherrod can win this race. I think some of his appeal in '16 about "forgotten America" as he would put it in some of his appeal and '20 -- I think now it's really down to just such a bizarre sort of feel for that campaign. The way he talks about it. Everything's backward looking, for example. Yeah, I think there's some fatigue here. And I've heard people express it literally as "I can't even watch my TV anymore."
Do you expect him to be the Republican nominee?
I do. I do. I think that he clearly has a lock on the party to -- except for, to their credit, Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson. Pence, let's give Pence credit. I think he's speaking up about January 6, not enough of the others are. You're not going to beat someone who's ahead of you if you just basically give them cover. And so the top people against him are all basically saying, "Yeah, all these trials are nothing but you know, the weaponization of DOJ -- I just think it's a group of very weak candidates. I think that DeSantis especially has shown from the very beginning that. This is not a major league candidate. He's a terrible candidate. As a party chair, you are assessing candidates all the time. This guy reminds me of the worst candidates. He stands in the back of the room, can't talk to anybody, just not comfortable in his skin. You know, I just think that the main candidates are weak. Already. None of them really wants to take him on. And then once you are willing to take them on, I'm glad they are, but I don't think they're really players. So yeah, I expect him through the worst of it. I just don't think even the worst situation in terms of the legal path he's on right now will divert from him winning the primary.
I was talking to my friend Matthew Dowd last week, who's a smarter guy as I've ever met when it comes to American politics. He had a couple of observations about DeSantis and one was basically, "Can you believe how bad he is at this?" And it's shocking as a national candidate who's been falsely lifted on this hot air of assumptions by the national media, absent any merit. But secondly, what he said was, how disconnected the politics in Florida has become from national politics, because if he's their guy, and apparently he might be judging by the by the size of the landslide reelection, it just doesn't fly in the rest of America. I wonder when you look at the Democratic Party, there's something that's not talked about enough, in my view, seven years on, since Trump came down the escalator. Trump is beating who exactly? What is wrong with a party that it could conceivably lose to these people? What is it when you honestly look at the Democratic Party, and I come at it from a perspective as a former Republican, who was always a moderate in my politics, that both of these parties are extremely important institutions in the history of the country, and world history for the advancement of human freedom and democracy. But what is it about the Democratic Party, that it has become so estranged from so many Americans, that this MAGA movement is seen as any type of alternative? At all?
That's a great question. And it goes back to something I really focused on in the book that you mentioned -- Saving Democracy. I think on most of our core issues, we actually are in step with mainstream America -- a middle class-based economics, public education, a woman's right to choose. But I think, in many ways, the way we run doesn't highlight that. Normally, when the question is called on these issues, like in Kansas, we win, or like in Ohio, last week, we win. But one of my biggest passions, if you hear me at all, is we've got to run everywhere. If we don't run everywhere, we're not communicating what we're for. We're letting them communicate who we are without us actually fighting back. And so what's happening and when I say we're not running everywhere, that we're not even making an effort everywhere. It's 50% of the Tennessee Republicans who voted with no opponent, Oklahoma, it's above 60, Texas, in most states, it's in the 30 or 40 percentage. And when we're not in the fight in these areas, we're not holding extremism accountable. Their extremism is a loser, we are seeing it lose all over -- we saw it lose with every election-denying secretary of state candidate in a swing state last November. They lost everywhere. We see it lose again when it's exposed, and they're bringing it out more and more. But if we're not in the fight, exposing it for what it is and then saying a word for they're winning. And they're not only winning, they're defining the terms. I'll say it in this way. So much, I see so much people, so many people are taking credit for the good things that Biden in democratic bills did around infrastructure, CHIPS, in all these red states. In Ohio, the lieutenant governor runs around Ohio, and he takes credit for all of it. And if you're not running it everywhere, you're not even there to raise your hand to say, "Oh, actually, you had nothing to do with this. That was our side doing it. We're the ones that lifted the middle class. We're the ones that invest in infrastructure." And so what did they do when we're not running? They blame us for problems. They miss characterize why those problems happening. The reason that rural schools are suffering in a lot of states isn't because of some caravan from Mexico, it's because the state houses voted to decrease funding for those schools. But if you're not running everywhere, they get to blame it on the people that aren't even in the game. And then we also aren't taking credit for what we're doing. So I think that on core issues, like if you go back to -- and I assume you agree with me -- that Joe Biden's State of the Union was a masterful speech. Almost everything he talked about, whether it's economics or global security, whatever, was very popular. And it was a good speech. The reason they shouted him down was they didn't want people to hear about unpopular positions they have. But when you're not running everywhere, you're not able to give that communication where it needs to be heard. And you end up getting turned upside down all over. So I think that our core messaging and core positions are actually quite strong, but we're not executing in a way that we're having most people in all places you're talking about hear our message. And so I think there's a lot of work to do. And this is what I go through in this book: build an infrastructure that values running everywhere, that says, "We want you stepping up to run even in tough places, we celebrate you as a patriot when you do that, and then when you're in those places, message on the things that they are doing badly those places and all over states, like Ohio that are corrupt." You mentioned the corruption. We have massive corruption in Ohio, the biggest bribery scandal in history, this big former Speaker went to jail a month ago or two months ago. And every time you see a corrupt state, you see terrible outcomes. Ohio public schools were ranked fifth in the nation, 14 years ago. Now we're in the mid-20s, that you see small towns collapsing again, not because of caravans from Mexico, but because of their policies and state houses not working, Democrats not runing everywhere. And then explain to them the reason these things are happening is because of their policies, and we're going to do better. And that's how you have someone like the New Democrat, Laura Kelly, the second term Democratic governor of Kansas, she ran on issues like that. So I think it all starts with a different mindset, be a national party, run everywhere, hold extremists accountable everywhere, and run hard on issues that frustrate everyday people that often are not doing well, because of the policies coming out of these rich state houses.
Do you do you view the extremism and the corruption as deeply linked?
Absolutely. Once you have a career --I have these charts I go through in my book. Basically, they're the two interests who love gerrymandered state houses are the extremists -- national, not just in state -- national extremists who know their worldview would lose every time in a fair democracy. If you have a straight up vote on abortion bans, no exceptions that send rape victims to other states, they will lose every time. They know it. So they want to gerrymander state house, but who also wants to gerrymander state house? The special interests because often -- what do the special interests want? They want a piece of the public pie. When they get the public pie, public outcomes disintegrate. Take public school money, give it to for-profit scams. Ohio may recall doing this, so the public schools declined. So extremism and corruption are literally the outgrowth, and ultimately the drivers of gerrymandering, because in a fair democracy, the corruption wouldn't work. The poor outcomes would lead to accountability for the politicians creating those outcomes. Once you gerrymander, they know that they can have terrible schools and worse health outcomes and no infrastructure and still get re-elected. Just like they know they can pass things like abortion bans, no exception references and get re-elected. So both extremism and the corruption are tied to the hip with these broken state houses. And that's why we see what we see in Ohio -- a downward spiral of both corruption and extremism. And the smart ones, they think of you -- you've done this longer than I have -- if you are a politician. And you have dedicated your career to a path of extremism, out of touch with your voters, and corruption for which you can be held accountable. You have all these screwed up incentives, as in one being "keep attacking democracy" because if you ever allowed a fair democracy back into your system, back in your district, the candidate would beat you by pointing out how extreme you are, and how corrupt you are. So once they're on this course of extremism and corruption, they really have this intense incentive to keep gerrymandering. That's why you see these states --people think it can never get worse. They can't keep suppressing, they keep gerrymandering, they have to because they would never survive it in a fair democracy with records as extreme and as honestly corrupt as many of the records are.
There's a couple things that I want to talk to you about. But let me start here. The Trump MAGA faction in this country, what number do you put it at?
I mean, my sense is it always shows up in some level in the 30s.
Right, I'll stipulate to 35% Yeah, I'll say 35% of the country is into this, wants it, likes it, wants a president for life. Now, the danger for the rest of us -- how that group takes power is them, plus enough apathy, to have a temporary majority, where they take power, and are able able to structurally do things from the system that make the practice of democracy very, very difficult. When you think about how to beat them, I'm very concerned right now about something that I see playing out. And I wonder what your reaction to it is. First, the No Labels organization is not getting as much coverage, I think, as it deserves to get. But secondarily, if they are on the level, and that's an if, and by on the level, I mean, if they have the resources to secure ballot access, which is, as you know, will be in all 50 states a cost that is upwards of $100 million in cash. They say they can do it. They say they're raising the money to do it. So I presume that they can do it, to dare that they're not saying that to go out and fall flat on their faces. If they do do it, the Democratic Party, the Biden White House, doesn't get a vote on whether they do it or not. They're in a game, then that's essentially a three-way race. And a three-way race changes the dynamics of the race. One of the ways it changes the dynamics is it breaks the 17-state monopoly where presidential races are decided. It expands the field to at least 35-40 states, bringing down the winning threshold to the high 30s, which is a number within reach of Trump's hardcore base. So my first question, how concerned are you when you hear Washington Democrats talk about the race, to talk about it in terms that discount the possibility that, in fact, the race that's coming doesn't look anything like the race they're talking about?
I mean, I'm concerned, partly because of No Labels. And partly more broadly, that when we basically only go into the states that we think matter in the current conception of swing states, we give up so much to the battlefield of democracy to the other side. So I am actually concerned before we even bring them into the conversation. I think that the other side is basically -- their frontline of attacking democracy and advancing extremism -- are the very states will be largely are there and because we're not there, we make it easy for them. So I think we already need to have a much broader strategy. Democracy itself is what's at stake right now. If they're using state houses to make most of their progress, which they are, we should be there anyway. But to your point, yeah, No Labels adds a whole new and dangerous wrinkle. And I go back -- I don't want to claim to be a history professor -- but there's so much parallel in our history to what we're dealing with right now. And the biggest parallel with what you're describing is there was a pretty serious faction for a number of years against allowing white supremacy to retake back over the south. Those white supremacist were dedicated. And I don't know what the number was, but they were a big number in the south. And the reason they end up succeeding is they never gave up their unity. And at some point, the folks that were dedicated to stopping them, like Ulysses Grant, who grew up not far from here, are very proud of what his work was. They divided over other issues. And once they allow their divisions on economic issues and other things to divide up what was a majority that had been standing up to white supremacy, once they allow themselves to divide, then the white supremacist and the South, all of a sudden we had Jim Crow for a century. The same thing could happen here. It's mid-30s. And if we didn't, if we allow the 50s and 60s that don't agree with this guy to divide up in the way that you're talking about, the way that other candidates might divide up, we give away a majority that otherwise would prevail in the history of our country. You let that happen, and you could be living with its consequences for generations.
I wrote about an Ohio man last week, James Garfield, who is not well remembered by the country. When you look at American history, this period of time that you just referred to was profoundly shaped by two murders, two assassinations. Abraham Lincoln in 1865. We talk about Lincoln as America's greatest president. But we forget and don't talk a lot about the fact that he was preceded by the man who, before Trump was the worst president in American history, who's now the second worst, because of Trump. And he was followed by the man who was the second worst, who's now the third worst, Andrew Johnson. So you come to 1880 and Garfield, who only makes it 200 days in office, before he was shot, a combat veteran of the Civil War, committed to civil rights, committed to the protection of Black American civil liberties in the south. His murder sets back civil rights really in this country, as you suggested for 100 years. The fact of the matter is that a devastating defeat and absolute defeat in the Civil War, a few decades later, has twisted into the last myth that there was righteousness in the southern cause. And that myth persists today. And it has not been dealt with in this country, by our American society yet. I want to ask you a political question that 's steeped in what we just talked about. This minority, this 35%, that is hostile to the concept of American democracy, which requires both sides to recognize you may lose the election, and you'll have to try again next time to the concepts of pluralism, equal rights. The ethos of the media, a lot of the opposition in this era, has been to seek understanding of these people. Why do they feel the way that they feel? Why are they aggrieved the way that they are? Why are they angry the way they are? I've never been interested in it. Just like I've never been interested at all in why Trump says the things he says around why he says it. I just take everything he says literally and seriously because, at the end of the day, there were people who followed him around carrying suitcases with the nuclear weapons codes. I just know that 35% -- that no matter what the act of corruption is, what the act of depravity is, what the vandalism towards the country is, what the assault on our democracy is - they will be with him, Trump over country 100% of the time. Seven years on and there's no place to compromise. Politically, a minority faction is going to bring the majority to submission, or the majority in this country who believes in America and American ideals is going to snuff out peacefully at the ballot box. Time is not on the side of the majority any longer. What's your reaction to that?
I generally agree. I mean, both books I've written are literally about that -- I hate to make it even worse for a second, but I do think this goes beyond Trump. I mean, a lot of the work to lock in minority rule started before Trump ran. It started after Obama won, and it's part of a long history of some people being really threatened by a diverse majority getting its way. And that's why some of the worst beginning current precursors of this began in '11, with gerrymandering, and with certain types of voter suppression, directly aimed at the Obama coalition. It's been in place, it's been working all this time, and it began before Trump ran. He's made it worse, he's fueled it, and he's brought up the worst of some people. But I will say, some of the things they're trying to do like if Trump were locked up tomorrow, they'd still try and do it, so he is a threat. And if he wins, we know how it will be worse than ever. But we also have to deal with the fact that there's a deeper effort here that, at the state level, that already was working to lock in minority rule through taking certain instruments of government, including state houses, gerrymandering, courts, et cetera. And so the reason, I mean, I had no plan, I stepped aside as party chair in December of '20. I had no plans to write any books at all, but in about April '21, I had your same alarm bells in my head, like, "Oh, my God, we're not seeing this threat. They are going after democracy itself." We're still living as if they're not. We still are assuming they're gonna play by the same rules as we are, that they're not willing to break the law, which they are clearly willing to do. And so I literally wrote the first book in a matter of months, which says alarm bells. See the battle for what it is, it's not some sort of clean little battle for a few federal swing states. This is an all-out battle for democracy itself. It's been the same battle we've been in for centuries. Those are the stakes. If you're going to win that battle, you've got to fight it very differently than the short cycle mindset of federal battles. So I've been alarmed about it. I've tried to get the word out as best I can. And once you see, though, that it's a long battle for democracy, you also can start to see though how to win it. One, to realize it is a long battle. It's not some short cycle battle. Two, it's a battle you've got to take everywhere, the frontlines in the states. So go start contesting in the states start. This is how Tim Ryan ran his campaign, campaigning in the parts of the states that we haven't been in for too long. Start using far more of your footprint. Don't just give a little money. Don't just do a little volunteering with a few months to go. This is a "as you fight it, as Steve Bannon fights on their side, they don't quit in December." They're not quitting after last week. You've got to fight it all the time. You've got to use everything you have in your network, in your life, to lift the battle to lift democracy. And then of course, we have to focus on Trump. But you also have to start to see, and this is something we haven't seen, it goes beyond Trump. When Biden won in November of '20, and beat Trump, Republicans down the ballot still won the Arizona State House and all those other state houses. Those Republicans, within months, were attacked. As we saw, they were attacking democracy through phony audits, more gerrymandering, depriving voters of water at polls. So don't just have the contrast be let's have Biden beat Trump. You need to make that contrast clear through every State House race. I feel good about a winning streak. Once the people care about democracy, start to see the battle as a statewide, as a state level battle, I'm feeling better. We've won Kansas, we won the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, we won in Ohio. And that shows you the potential of the pro-democracy majority when it's energized, when it sees a risk to democracy right in front of it. We have to wage that battle and make it clear that that's what's on in '24 and this November, by the way, in Virginia as well. And that's why right now recruit everywhere, get candidates on these ballots and all levels everywhere. And gear up not in mid-'24 for November '24, start gearing up now. If we do all that, I think we can win. But if we don't do that, as you're saying, we are in literally the make or break moment for democracy that we and these little kids by me in these photos, they'll spend the rest of their lives digging out from it if we don't succeed in the next couple of years with a real pro- democracy strategy, and not just a "win a few swing states" strategy.
So let me ask you a question about that. Because there's a threshold issue in American politics right now.The country does not want the Trump-Biden rematch. Do you agree with that?
I mean, I think polling would would suggest that, yeah.
Now, the Democratic Party nationally is going to deliver on their side of the equation, in terms of giving to the American people, a candidate they don't want to run against Trump, Now, I'm going to say, the one thing that drives me more nuts than anything that's said by any national Democrat is thi: it's the idea that they want Trump in the general election because he's an easy candidate for Biden to beat. So there's a duality around Trump. There's Trump, the threat, and I think he is a threat. He is a threat to the continuity of the American Republic. And then there is Trump the prop, the boogeyman, Voldemort. Put Trump's name into the email, you raise money, put Trump in the ad, you get ratings, put Trump into the newscast, you get the ratings. At least he used make the numbers go up. I don't want to see Trump come forward into a general election because I don't think there's a more irresponsible position in America, or a more delusional one, which is the idea that he can't win a general election again, because he absolutely can win a general election. Do you take issue with anything I've just said?
He's obviously incredibly dangerous. I think these things are very unpredictable. When I say that, I think he's going to be the candidate it's not because I necessarily want that. I just think that he will. And I don't know, I don't understand that. I agree. I mean, you don't want this man will only one ballot away from being president. And that's a high risk proposition that I think we're all going to be dealing with.
I think that 50 years from now, there's gonna be all sorts of infrastructure in this country. And you're gonna look back, like we did growing up at things that were built during the Depression years. When was that built? It was built in the 1930s. It was built in the 1950s. Now Joe Biden is the infrastructure president, and then some that people have dreamed about for a couple of decades, and his legacy on that front puts him, in my view, on the same plane as Eisenhower. I think that he is the most effective foreign policy president coming out of a big ditch since George Herbert Walker Bush. If you look at the end of the Cold War, the first Gulf War, extremely successful, but I'm gonna challenge you on a Biden proposition and give you a chance to make the Biden case, respond to this argument, which is, none of that matters. Not a thing. He was elected to do one thing. Break the extremist threat to the country, and he's still here. Didn't get the job done. Therefore, maybe it's time for Gavin Newsom. Maybe it's time for Gretchen Whitmer. Because at the end of the day, the defense of democracy has not succeeded thus far against this MAGA threat. In fact, this is someone who has fallen short doing that, while doing all of these other great things.
Let me respond. There have been moments I've been frustrated about the intensity of the battle for democracy. I think early on when I don't think there was enough attention to it or sensitivity to it. But my bigger response out of the side, from moments of frustration is, this is not a conventional political battle. This is a much longer-term battle. And I don't think it is the kind of battle you win immediately, or even in one term. This is long. This is the arc of our country. And so I would say, again, I'm not here to represent Joe Biden, but I would say that he did articulate late in November, late in '22, the threat and we start to see some counter-cyclical results in terms of some of the underpinnings of why we've been losing democracy. When we elected those, when we did defeat every election-denier running for secretary of state that in a normal off year, off of your midterm, that extremism was exposed. We picked up the Pennsylvania State House and more to what it was at double digit seats we picked up in a midterm. So we've won these these special elections again, normally, you wouldn't win these when we had the White House. So in the long arc, in the battle for democracy, Trump, it remains the threat that he is we have to defeat him next November. But what I liked that we're starting to see, and I'm an optimist, in the end, despite the dark topics in my book, which is that democracy is under attack and a threat, we're starting to see some pickup in the awareness of how we protect democracy. We're starting to gain some wins, like we did in Ohio last week. And in the long arc, I'm feeling a little better than I was two years ago, because two years ago, we didn't even see these things seem to matter. But I think that there are some voters who are thinking, "I thought voting rights would be more protected over the last four years. I thought gerrymandering might see an end, but it hasn't. I'm sure there's some frustration, but I also would say the battle for democracy is a longer term battle. And I think, as you said, and 50 years from now, we'll be able to see where the years '21, '22, '23 and '24. Together, the moment where people saw Trump, saw the state level attack, geared up in a way that defeated over the coming years that followed this moment, awareness or not, I think it's a little soon to say, "Well, someone had a couple of years to solve it, and didn't." I just don't think the broader battle for democracy is determined on that timeframe, even though as we're both saying, we're at the inflection point of that battle right now through the next couple of years.
Here's the thing that I fundamentally feel disoriented about, and I can't get a handle on and it's how much of this is all completely illusory, Oz behind the curtain. And let me ask this to you this way. I'm looking at your kids behind you. I'm a girl dad, and I took my 10 year old to the Taylor Swift concert. And I'm talking about it afterwards. I saw it in Los Angeles -- must have been 90,000 people, sold out six nights in a row. I said to my wife, I have never been anywhere with that many women in my life. Not even close. I'm guessing that 90% of the crowd was female, little girls wearing their friendship bracelets, women in their 30s in their 20s. People are handing out their friendship bracelets to each other. Now, I have a good sense of how the media covers Trump and the ubiquity with which they cover him. And the attention that the Trump rally gets as crazy as they are, as small as they've become. Now, I suspect if Donald Trump was selling out stadiums, with 85-90,000 people all over America, going full MAGA, we would be being freaked out about that. He's still covered like that even though his world has become pretty small in terms of the places he goes, and the crowds, he attracts. And in essence, certainly, the media doesn't cover the world through the prism of the 90,000-person nightly gathering where the friendship bracelets are being handed out. They're both real. They're both happening. Violence isn't breaking out all around us everywhere all the time in America. Normal people don't, and never have liked having politics in their face 24/7. All of the pollsters have basically been wrong for seven years. Everything that you're saying, anecdotally, when you look out in the country, when the test comes, you get this quiet result. And over and over and over again. Americans are saying no. And to me, what you can never know was what was the sense of urgency to danger in 1939? In 1938, what did it feel like for the people who were urgently alarmed, who turned out to be correct? What did the zeitgeist in the culture fear, you really can't get a handle on it except to say that you know that, in democracies, people rally towards facing danger very, very late, or they move late. But when they face it, historically, at least in this country, they've done so very, very decisively. So I wonder if you think about that and wonder how much of what we perceive as the threat in front of us, has already largely dissipated. The prognosticators in Washington just haven't gotten caught up to it, as it works its way out. And they just don't pay attention to the actual election results, where these things are worked out already in places like Ohio.
Yeah, I think you're right. I think the other side has done a very good job of hiding their extremism and how it impacts everyday people for a long time. I mean that they know it, they know that if fully exposed, it will cost them elections. And what's happened, especially since Dobbs, but Trump did it, Marjorie Taylor Greene does it every day, people are seeing it now in a way they weren't. And when they see it, they clearly are reacting to vote against it, either because they're tired of it, or they're scared of it. And that's why, again, we should take it seriously, we should run knowing that if they ever win, the danger of that is horrible. It's not just that they see a threat to democracy. They're starting to see through things like Dobbs, but other issues, while the reason they're attacking democracy is to inflict things on my life that not only do I not agree with, but that will make my life a lot worse. And once they see the connection between the attack on democracy, this flirting with authoritarianism, and the everyday issue, like post-Dobbs that will change their life because a minority is going to rule over them on issues they care about -- that combination is really dangerous for their side. And as you see when people who may not want to engage in the 30,000 foot level conversation on democracy or gerrymandering, see the result of that issue is my own choices in my life where I live in Ohio. It's that 10 year old rape victim in Indiana. That combination is very dangerous for them. And if we do a good job I'm making clear that that's why they're talking democracy. That's what Donald Trump will do in your state, in your community. That's what that state house will do in your community. That's what I think we pile together some wins. The reason, going back to your point about No Labels, the reason I still worry about them is because that will interfere, I believe, with the potential of a majority coming together next year and saying, "We're done with all this." The danger they're bringing is a disruption of something and I hope, I think if we all do everything right, that we can finally say, "You know, the hell with this Trump stuff, and the hell with this extremism." And so with some momentum, and a little winning streak that's building in more quiet elections, they can really come through in a big election -- that's a threat to them. And that's why I agree with you about the threat that is to what otherwise could be a nice winning streak for democracy that we're building and seeing happening right now.
That coalition which which you're referencing is a coalition and its component parts -- its largest part will be Democrats; its second largest element will be independents. And its third largest element and a very important one -- will be disaffected Republicans, who you need to be part of the coalition. We're running out of time here. Let me give you the last pitch here. Make the pitch that you would like to see made out of the White House, out of the national Democratic Party to Americans, that tells them to come together into a coalition. I mean, the one thing that we have not heard in seven years is basically someone from the Democratic Party very directly saying, "I don't care. You're a Democrat, you're an independent, you're a Republican. I'm talking to you today as an American."
What I would say, I'll do my best: I think one side has clearly lost its way. It is caught up in a very fringe approach to almost everything in American society that most people just do not agree with. They sometimes hide it well, but we see it playing out in Florida, we see it play out with an Ohio rape victim being sent to Indiana because they pass something here that only 10% of you or fewer Ohioans agree with, and that side understands that it's viewpoint is actually deeply unpopular. And the reason we keep running into things like gerrymandering is because they're trying to keep in place policies that would never sustain the broad majority consensus of Republicans, independents and Democrats in Ohio. And so I think what Democrats need to pitch on is going to bat for a middle class, a middle class-based economics, economics that lift people all over states like Ohio, not the narrow one, we see from the other side, of belief in certain public institutions like public schools. I don't care if you're rural or you're an urban Ohioan, these are the centers of our communities, let's lift them so that there's a broad common agreement on most of where America needs to go. One side doesn't agree with that viewpoint. That's why they're trying to suppress democracy. And the other side, I think, needs to do a much better job of bringing everyone together around those issues, remove a lot of the crazy stuff. I think that Joe Biden, as you said, has done a very good job on most of those issues. I think his State of the Union speech actually weaved them together very well. And I think in the coming year, the assignment is to take those elements of that fabric of what we want to get done, and to make sure we're talking about it in all parts of this country, and we're exposing it the other side. And most of that agenda on the other side is something that at best 35% agree on, and in many cases, far less. The reason why we see them always rigging the rules of democracy is because they know that, and they know they would lose if we have a straight up vote on what we want to do versus what they want to do.
Well, we'll leave it there. David Pepper, thank you very, very much for taking the time this afternoon. Wise words and great council for everybody listening. American democracy is under threat. It is not self-sustaining. We're approaching the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It's a momentous achievement, one that will require this generation of Americans to recommit to a sense of duty, obligation and responsibility. And also common sense. You know, I tell my kids this, someone will always be in charge. And in the case of a state like Ohio, if you give away the right to write your future, the people who take it may not have your best interests at heart. Rest assured, somebody will take it. You show indifference towards who's running things, people take advantage of it every time. That is one of the central lessons of history, and one of the real dangers in a democracy.
