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According to my guest this time, the United States is entering a Latino century, and that might be what saves our democracy.
Mike Madrid is a top expert on Latino voting, and in recent years he’s become a national leader in the bipartisan fight to save democracy.
He’s been the political director for the California Republican Party, a senior adviser to both Republicans and Democrats, and a co-founder of the never-Trump Lincoln Project.
Now Mike has a new book, called The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy.
One of his goals for it is to help the Democratic Party win against MAGA authoritarianism.
He’s worried, though, that Democrats have been slow to get the message about Latinos and their crucial role in the nation’s future. And he thinks that helps explain why so many Latinos have been moving towards the Republican Party, a development many Democrats find baffling.
According to Mike, they’re baffled because they don’t understand Latinos or other minorities nearly as well as they think they do. He says too many Democratic candidates, strategists, and pundits think of minorities as theoretical stereotypes instead of as real people with complex lives. That’s why Democrats tend to assume immigration is the top issue for all Latino voters, for example, or that most want to be talked to in Spanish. Both of those assumptions may seem reasonable theoretically, but are often wrong in reality.
Mike argues that now more than ever, Democrats need to get reality right. That’s because first of all, the Latino vote can make the difference in crucial battleground states this year, including ones that may surprise you, like Wisconsin and North Carolina. And he believes that over the long haul, Latino voters can help revive all Americans’ faith in democratic institutions — and democracy itself.
— Spencer
Links
The Latino Century, by Mike Madrid (at Simon & Schuster)
About Mike Madrid
(From GrassrootsLab.com) Mike Madrid is a communications expert and a nationally recognized expert on Latino voting trends. He graduated from the Edmund G. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1997, where he wrote his senior thesis on Latino politics and the perspective that politicization of emerging Latino voter groups in Southwestern states was unique in American history. The work focused largely on a critical assessment of professor Peter Skerry’s work “Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority” and addressed questions surrounding the experience of Mexican American politicization as a choice between the pursuit of an aggrieved racial minority or a more typical assimilative integration into the broader political and social culture of the United States.
The completion of his thesis at Georgetown University in Washington DC on Latino voters became the basis for his pioneering work on Latino communications and outreach strategies in California, Texas, Florida and nationwide. He has served as the press secretary for the California Assembly Republican leader and as the political director for the California Republican Party. In these roles, Madrid played a key role in pioneering Latino outreach and communications strategies.
In 2001 he was named as one of America’s “Most Influential Hispanics” by Hispanic Business Magazine. He is a regular commentator on Latino political issues in statewide and national media publications.
Since 2000, Madrid has also developed an expertise in local governments in California. He served as the public affairs director to the League of California Cities. In that role, he was instrumental in the passage of Proposition 1A (The Local Taxpayer Protection Act), a historic achievement that constitutionally protected local government revenues from state raids. The measure received 84% of the vote—one of the highest percentages in California history.
In 2011, Madrid helped develop the Leadership California Institute, an organization dedicated to educating and training future California leaders.
Madrid is the editor and publisher of California City News, a news site dedicated to “the best politics, policy and practices of local government in California.”
Transcript (Video Version)
00:00:00:05 – 00:00:01:26
Spencer Critchley
Mike, thanks so much for joining me.
00:00:01:29 – 00:00:03:16
Mike Madrid
It’s always great to be with you.
00:00:03:18 – 00:00:08:11
Spencer Critchley
Why did you write this book especially why did you write this book now?
00:00:08:13 – 00:00:41:06
Mike Madrid
Well, that’s a great question. and there’s kind of two answers to it. The first is, you know, this there’s there’s always, I think, been a book inside of me since I was a on this topic, since I was an undergraduate at Georgetown in the early 1990s, kind of looking at and watching the demographic projections of what a what America was going to become over the course of my career, in my lifetime, and wanted to be very engaged in that as a political consultant and answer some big questions that I had about American identity, Latino identity, and bringing these two, concepts together.
00:00:41:09 – 00:01:01:21
Mike Madrid
and watching that unfold has been a real, blessing, I think, in my career, in my adult life, and hitting this point where in eight short years we will be a nonwhite majority country for the first time in America’s history. I’ll be able to spend the latter part of my life, examining what was right, what I was right about, what I was wrong about and why.
00:01:01:21 – 00:01:28:27
Mike Madrid
And hopefully being a bridge to other people of later generations to have that perspective of what America was before and afterwards. but but this moment, the second part of the of the answer is this moment is of particular importance, in large part because of my work with the Lincoln Project. When you and I first met, each other, I was raising alarm bells about the sliding Latino vote and the potential of it moving towards Trump.
00:01:28:29 – 00:01:58:12
Mike Madrid
in a very big way. The, Biden campaign at that time, in 2020 was dismissive of that, saying it’s not happening. It’s not going to happen. It did, in fact, happen at a historic level. as I predicted. And what I realized was I needed to put something out there in a higher profile way to, not only raise the alarm bells, but also provide, a roadmap on how to fix it and what to do to get it done, hopefully in time to, change course.
00:01:58:14 – 00:02:16:14
Mike Madrid
And, unfortunately, well, fortunately, I got the book out in time. Unfortunately, I don’t I don’t see a lot of the adjustments being made that that need to be made, in order to, to keep Trump from getting higher level of Latino support and probably as it’s looking like when, when the white House.
00:02:16:16 – 00:02:39:06
Spencer Critchley
And you really see that as a threat to not just the Democratic Party, but democracy itself, that’s your primary concern, right? You’ve worked for both Democrats and Republicans in your career. And I know from the many conversations we’ve had that your primary concern here is the future of democracy, which is why you’re raising this alarm so urgently. Now.
00:02:39:08 – 00:03:07:23
Mike Madrid
Yeah. And it’s also, we use the term kind of democracy sort of broadly, as we should. it’s certainly American style democracy. That is, I think, being challenged. But it’s really a broader notion, a broader sense of, who America, Americans think we are and believe ourselves to be, and the kind of country and process is and institutions that we support and no longer support, and that the book is, is a bigger thematic about that.
00:03:07:23 – 00:03:25:22
Mike Madrid
It’s very much about the Latino vote, but inside the seeds of the Latino vote, really, I think we begin to answer and address some of these broader, bigger questions about what America is, who she is becoming and how we got here, and if we’re going to make it, at least in the way that we’ve known.
00:03:25:25 – 00:03:44:18
Spencer Critchley
This is one of the things that really strikes me, based on what I’ve read so far in the book, and I will be reading the whole book. I’ve ordered my, signed copy, by the way, which I intend to pick up, at your book talk at, Bookshop Santa Cruz, one of the, bookstores near me.
00:03:44:21 – 00:04:19:27
Spencer Critchley
and this is one of the major themes that really struck me. This is a big book. people hearing that it’s called the Latino Century would, you know, understandably assume you’re focusing on the Latino, electorate, which is true. But in the bigger picture, you see the Latino voting population as really representing the future of the country, not through some, you know, feared takeover of the country by Latinos as, as, the Trumpist right likes to present a bit more as a cohort that could almost save us from ourselves.
00:04:19:27 – 00:04:21:20
Spencer Critchley
Is that about right?
00:04:21:22 – 00:04:50:26
Mike Madrid
Yeah. I don’t think it’s almost safe. I think it is safe. I think that the salvation and the refreshment, the renewal of America will come with this demographic change. And in fact, I think at this moment in time, it is the only thing that will save the American experiment. You know, when I wrapped up my work with the Lincoln Project, as you know, I went to go, at the advice of some, needing help in Ukraine to go help the Zelensky administration and their fight, for, for freedom.
00:04:50:28 – 00:05:13:02
Mike Madrid
I then went to Brazil to fight against Bolsonaro and help there. And I was involved with numerous efforts here and all sorts of different reforms, legal, political, to kind of safeguard democracy, as we’ve called it. And one of the things I realized, Spencer, was there is no Constitution that we can write that can protect itself from a people that don’t want it and don’t want to live by it.
00:05:13:05 – 00:05:41:16
Mike Madrid
It’s just not possible. So that tells us that, these reforms may or may not work. marginally. All of them campaign finance reform, electoral college reform, all of these reforms that you hear so much about the course of the past two years, or at least in recent times, the answer really is cultural is do we have a cultural problem in this country where we are, have gotten so far removed from what the founders envisioned as a as a pluralistic society.
00:05:41:16 – 00:06:33:25
Mike Madrid
And again, we were never truly that. But our mythology set us on the trajectory of, of of continually, generationally seeking progress. Latinos today are the only group that has a markedly positive, optimistic tone, and support levels of trust and confidence in our social institutions broadly, whether it’s the church or whether it’s the government or the university systems, higher education or the media or the military broadly, it is Latinos who support social institutions, where those that are 65 and over in one of the largest voting groups, overwhelmingly white, by the way, a generation of Americans who have been blessed with the largesse of America like no other generation, an extraordinary privilege,
00:06:33:27 – 00:07:11:12
Mike Madrid
of relative peace, you know, under the global hegemony, the United States, during most of their life have the most negative view of the United States of any generation ever pulled with modern polling techniques. And that that’s tells us something we need to listen to about what this is really all about. And what it’s not about. And so I believe very firmly that every day that we wake up, we are closer to we are closer to protecting and preserving, the, the, American experiment, literally our democracy, as, as the natural order of demographic change takes, takes root.
00:07:11:15 – 00:07:42:11
Spencer Critchley
So that you’re saying that because Latinos tend to trust institutions more, although they’re skeptical about the political parties, as you also point out. But in general, they tend to trust the institutions of American democracy more, and they tend to believe deeply in the values of democracy. And that’s why the growth of the Latino population and the relative youth of the Latino, segment of the population bodes well for the future of American democracy, assuming, you know that that’s what you want to see.
00:07:42:16 – 00:08:08:17
Spencer Critchley
And at the same time, though, you say the people who’ve benefited most so far, from American democracy, are the ones who have soured on it the most. I know you are a student of history. going back, you know, not just through the history of the United States, but history generally. And I wonder how you see this in civilizational terms, because it seems to me this is a common pattern with civilizations that, as they reach a peak of security and prosperity, is when the decline starts.
00:08:08:20 – 00:08:35:20
Spencer Critchley
And it’s often led by the people who know. This is not to say all white people in America have been doing great. That’s obviously not true. But in general, the people who have benefited the most are the ones who tend to lose interest in what’s going on. And they, they render the, that country or that civilization, that empire, whatever vulnerable in various ways is do you see that in those terms as well, across the sort of larger scale of history?
00:08:35:23 – 00:09:07:05
Mike Madrid
Yeah. Look, I’m not I’m not ready or willing to say that, you know, America has peaked and it’s on the downslide. I’m not sure I believe that. What I do believe is that, a lot of what ails America at this moment, and there’s a considerable amount of things, is almost all a function of our culture that is coming off of the, luxury of largesse and peace time and global hegemony.
00:09:07:07 – 00:09:43:23
Mike Madrid
One of the ironic things, I suppose, and it’s kind of, I think commonsensical, but maybe ironic to some, is that we are losing the exact, fight and cultural characteristic of our love for democracy and freedom and our systems and our processes, because we have not had to fight for them for a good 30, 40 years. The decline of the Cold War, the victory, if you will, of the American idea, I think set us on a course of, cultural laziness.
00:09:43:25 – 00:10:07:24
Mike Madrid
And it we began to turn on ourselves and a lot of social scientists, you know, had always said this, that the idea of freedom is not enough as a cultural characteristic to unite the people you have. Culture is something that’s very important to human beings. As a species. It’s what keeps us alive. It keeps us, well, in context of our ancestors and the people that come after us.
00:10:07:27 – 00:10:37:10
Mike Madrid
And culture is forged over hundreds, if not thousands of years. America is is 248, 250 year old experiment. And and so we’re so very young. And the idea that you can everybody can come and become Americans if you just leave the cultural baggage, your ethnicity at the shore. And when you get here, quit hyphenated your, your self and just become quote unquote American and let’s nation build internally.
00:10:37:13 – 00:11:00:07
Mike Madrid
That’s proven to be kind of a disaster because there’s not there’s nothing coherent that is keeping us together except for this broad notion of freedom, which means different things to different people. And we don’t really have much of a common purpose or, or and most importantly, a commitment to one another. And that’s what I think is the most dangerous cultural aspect.
00:11:00:07 – 00:11:25:20
Mike Madrid
That has sort of been the result of the past 30 years where this, this freedom, this bastardized notion of freedom has really meant, I don’t care for me and mine. I’m going to get what’s mine. And I don’t care if your kids get sick. I’m not going to take a vaccine. I’m going to, you know, send my kids to private schools rather than invest in or fight for public schools.
00:11:25:22 – 00:11:49:18
Mike Madrid
I’m going to, you know, are wealthy, are more likely to go build a bunker in New Zealand for the end times and to invest and donate, you know, libraries like Andrew Carnegie or or, you know, Central Station like Vanderbilt, the noblesse oblige of our wealthy or gone, the middle class is struggling to figure out what it means to be American in this time of extraordinary change.
00:11:49:20 – 00:12:01:18
Mike Madrid
And so, there’s a lot going well for this country, by the way. A lot. But in terms of our process and our culture and our belief and commitment to one another, that’s really what’s collapsing.
00:12:01:21 – 00:12:32:15
Spencer Critchley
And I often think that this is something that the right, notably the, the MAGA right now understands the, the hunger of human beings for cultural solidarity, but they’re exploiting it in the most malign possible ways by, by exploiting fear of, Latinos, black people, gays, transgender, everybody, you know, every other group they can find and, exploiting fear and using it to generate hatred and resentment.
00:12:32:17 – 00:13:02:06
Spencer Critchley
But the left, for its part, I feel, has made the mistake that dates to the enlightenment of assuming you can have a society based only on a social contract, as if it’s just a rational agreement. And the point of a country is simply to be a service delivery mechanism that hopefully runs efficiently and honestly. And you’re saying that that’s not going to work, and I tend to suspect you’re right, but how do you how do you have a free society that also has a shared culture?
00:13:02:09 – 00:13:21:12
Mike Madrid
Well, I mean, that’s the that’s the real challenge that we’ve never faced as a country before. And that’s why, in large part why I wrote the book and why it is about pluralism, it’s been easy to say that everybody can come and become an American. Like that’s our mythology. Well, that’s just not true. It’s just not true. It’s never been true.
00:13:21:14 – 00:13:49:21
Mike Madrid
And we all, we know the founders, you know, were slavers that were writing these very prescriptive things about the universality of of human rights and human beliefs and what we are all endowed with by our creator. Well, we clearly were not right, like the imperfection of the founding is, in and of itself, a very human story. There’s a hypocrisy there that that at best sets us on this trajectory to continually, generationally improve.
00:13:49:23 – 00:14:16:27
Mike Madrid
What we are finding, though, is that the cohesiveness of whiteness is really what made that glue hold. Once we started to become a nonwhite nation, and again in eight short years, we will be a nonwhite majority country by ethnicity. That’s really going to test our resolve. And for the moment, we’re not doing well with it. And we saw this early in California as we were becoming a nonwhite state.
00:14:16:27 – 00:14:55:01
Mike Madrid
Is the rise of proposition 187 anti-immigrant rhetoric, you know, all these these cultural issues, they’re not economic issues. This was not tax policy. These are all issues that are focused on culture and the the, you know, the the hidden card that substitutes for culture, which is race. And these changes are not comfortable for human beings. now, once you go through it, there are some times in history you can look back to certain centuries in Spain that, you know, did okay with it and, and certain, you know, you know, with Islamic and Christian faiths and, you know, the Spanish culture is very.
00:14:55:01 – 00:15:23:08
Spencer Critchley
You know, oddly and oddly enough, yes. When, when Spain was had been taken over, by Muslims, from the Arab world, there was an Islamic Golden age, you know, a golden age, as you know, of tolerance and multiculturalism and scholarship and science and, you know, many people who, associate Islam these days with Islamic fundamentalism would be shocked to learn that they were setting a standard.
00:15:23:10 – 00:15:44:00
Mike Madrid
that’s the way back. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. So there is a historical precedent for for pluralism not only working, but but, blooming and we that potential exists here at this moment and, but like I said, I think there’s going to have to be a generational change because along with generational change, a cultural change comes.
00:15:44:00 – 00:16:07:23
Mike Madrid
We’re not gonna be able to convince MAGA folks that this is a good thing. And we failed that test. It’s, you know, it’s becoming more radicalized and more extreme as it becomes a smaller part of our demography. And and so there’s going to have to be a natural transition out, I mean, just candidly. And that that I see is ultimately the saving grace if and this is the big qualifier put in the book, if we can last that long.
00:16:07:26 – 00:16:29:11
Mike Madrid
Right. Like got a really important election coming up. Some very important court decisions were just made. Some very significant changes are happening where that may stifle this regardless of the demographic change. So so yeah, that’s the hope that I see is is and like I saying, it’s not a policy, you know, framework. It’s not a philosophical, construct.
00:16:29:11 – 00:16:56:21
Mike Madrid
This is happening. This cultural infusion is literally more true, in my estimation, to what the founders vision was than what we have been for the last 250 years. And that transformation frightens a lot of people, that there’s an older, wider generation that is but doesn’t believe this is really America, which which begs a big question What is America?
00:16:56:23 – 00:17:15:26
Mike Madrid
Is it more blood and soil, which is the way we’re behaving right now, or is it just these founding documents with these kind of, you know, prophetic, beautiful visions of what we could be, which has always been our mythology and we’ve always said that. But the rhetoric is not matching the action at this moment in time.
00:17:15:28 – 00:17:35:08
Spencer Critchley
But in soil, referring, of course, to the ideology that fueled the rise of German ethnic nationalism and then the Nazi party, and which we see replicated now in the MAGA movement. It’s essentially the same idea when you talk about real America, so-called real America, and making that America great again, supposedly, and.
00:17:35:08 – 00:17:39:17
Mike Madrid
Nationalism generally, by the way, it’s what separated us from the Europeans. Yeah.
00:17:39:19 – 00:18:00:24
Spencer Critchley
Yeah. I mean, the French Revolution. Well, we could go, we could go. I could lead us down all kinds of historical rabbit holes. So let me just stop myself right there. Yeah. but, you know, I the way I see it, you know, a lot of a lot of what happened at the founding was, of course, what the founders meant by men when they said all men are created equal.
00:18:00:24 – 00:18:29:14
Spencer Critchley
And and the assumption then was that, well, of course, we’re talking about males. And of course, we’re talking about European males. I mean, that would have just seemed like conventional wisdom to many people back then. But there were the seeds of the pluralism you’re describing, right? Because the moment you say all men are created equal, and that means that it doesn’t matter if they’re rich or poor, it doesn’t matter what their religion is, doesn’t matter what their original nationality was.
00:18:29:14 – 00:18:54:03
Spencer Critchley
That’s the seeds of okay, that means women as well. And that means people of all races, of all origins, you know, of all creeds and faiths, etc.. So that really is America. It’s just that it existed as the seed at the beginning. And one thing I’d like to hear your reaction to this, that I think that because people on the left tend to be descended from the enlightenment tradition of rationalism, and I think they overestimate the power of reason.
00:18:54:03 – 00:19:27:27
Spencer Critchley
It’s definitely critically important, but it doesn’t explain everything is they miss that. That’s actually a very inspiring vision. I mean, that to me works as a culture to to think about American culture being the culture of blues and jazz, for example, and Hollywood and rock and roll and, all of the influences that came from Africa and from the Jewish diaspora, people like George Gershwin, who were incorporating African melodies as well as Jewish, folk melodies in their music.
00:19:28:04 – 00:19:52:03
Spencer Critchley
And then, of course, the influence of the Latinos coming from Cuba and South America and Central America. all of this. There is no American culture without all of these groups. Right. And what comes out of it is a culture that is so exciting that it has influenced the entire world. And I think that from my point of view, we could do a lot better starting there.
00:19:52:06 – 00:20:15:13
Spencer Critchley
And just recognizing that that in itself is inspiring the very, the very differences we see, they don’t have to be fragmentary differences because they are united by this course of the values that while we are all different, we are also all equal and all equally free. How do you see that?
00:20:15:15 – 00:20:49:16
Mike Madrid
I mean, I think it’s an interesting argument. I don’t think I think that the times that we are experiencing at the moment would suggest that whatever cultural remnants that we have, and you clearly point to, some of them are not sufficient to unite us at all, at all. in fact, they’re they’re devolving into points of, fragmentation and disunity and that, I think, is, is what the problem is.
00:20:49:16 – 00:21:15:11
Mike Madrid
I don’t know that I don’t know that there’s a shared set of values. I mean, maybe there have been flashes of it, but I think if that were the case, we would not be at this moment in time, I think we could have, you know, fusions of our food and fusions of our music. I don’t see much in terms of the fusions of our faith or in the confidence in social institutions or belief in them.
00:21:15:14 – 00:21:39:21
Mike Madrid
I don’t believe, for example, that African-Americans have ever really experienced much in terms of equality in in the way our, our social institutions have, interacted with them compared to whites. I don’t I mean, there may be a couple of one offs here or there, but I don’t believe that it has created a cohesive culture that allowed us to be a pluralistic society.
00:21:39:23 – 00:22:10:17
Mike Madrid
now, there’s a lot of reasons for that, too. The black shows the population hasn’t really increased since, really since the Civil War, much about 1920. It’s settled in at around 1,112%. It’s been about 1,112% over 100 years. the rising Latino population is challenging many of these notions of what race means and what identity means and what minority means, especially as Latinos start to behave differently politically than what we’ve come to know.
00:22:10:20 – 00:22:34:06
Mike Madrid
from, from, you know, black voters since they on suffrage or at least since Jim Crow allowed for them to actually attain suffrage in the 50s. Right. So, yeah, I mean, we can point to some instances and say this food is so much better because it blends all of this, or the jazz is this uniquely American music genre because of who we are?
00:22:34:06 – 00:22:58:11
Mike Madrid
That’s absolutely true. is that a blending of values? I don’t I don’t know about that. I’m. I don’t know about that. I think we’d like to say that, but I’m not seeing that much in practice. But I do believe that that may be the promise of what a culturally, racially blended people like Latinos can bring in a very unique way in a very, very, very demonstrable way.
00:22:58:11 – 00:23:26:04
Mike Madrid
For example, we have the highest intermarriage rates amongst all groups. So we have very high end racial marriage rates with whites. We have very high or higher interracial marriage rates with with African-Americans and pretty high interracial marriage rates with Asians. Asians and whites actually have higher interracial marriage rates than Latinos and Asians. But you know, this this blending culture is something that is going to become so obvious skated within a generation.
00:23:26:06 – 00:23:34:04
Mike Madrid
I think that the complexity of trying to disaggregate our uniqueness racially is actually going to be the glue that bonds us together.
00:23:34:09 – 00:23:43:26
Spencer Critchley
How is that different? from the the kinds of fusions that I was describing that you’d think never really came to fruition.
00:23:43:29 – 00:24:10:14
Mike Madrid
I think our institutions have never been equal, and I don’t think we valued it, because if we valued it, then we would have done it. So our, our, our institutions, our social institutions are literally what are required for democracy to work. Social institutions are those things that we commonly agree upon as processes, not the outcomes. So we believe in, government, we believe in higher education, we believe in the military, we believe in the church.
00:24:10:14 – 00:24:39:16
Mike Madrid
We believe in the media. Latinos, by a disproportionate measure, measure, again, have very high levels of confidence and optimism compared to every other group and demographic. But we can’t can we can’t honestly look at ourselves and say African-Americans have been treated the same way by government or higher education or by the media, even by the church community. I mean, the largest Protestant denomination in this country is the Southern Baptist Conference, which was established to justify slavery.
00:24:39:18 – 00:25:03:20
Mike Madrid
I mean, even our faith community can’t do it. Right? So so I don’t know that there’s a shared common values that we’ve always talked about it. And it’s easy when whites are 85 and 90% of the population, once it hits 35, you know, 45%. And the question becomes that, you know, it moves from the abstract to the existential, that’s a different consideration.
00:25:03:23 – 00:25:17:10
Mike Madrid
Like people start to deal with it differently. It’s like affordable housing in Santa Cruz. God bless you. Right? I don’t mean this in a pejorative sense, but we don’t want to build in Santa Cruz, where that brings other people.
00:25:17:12 – 00:25:36:29
Spencer Critchley
Well, I believe I think that that’s a great point. And and we’ve raised that before in the sort of central coast of Santa Cruz County and Monterey County, where I live, incredibly prosperous, incredibly beautiful place to live and very, very progressive politically. and yet try to get affordable housing built.
00:25:37:01 – 00:25:37:17
Mike Madrid
No way.
00:25:37:17 – 00:25:59:21
Spencer Critchley
Try to rectify, you know, the fact that their communities, you know, farmworker communities that haven’t had safe drinking water for decades, yeah, that should be easy with such a progressive community. And yet, when it turns out to be inconvenient to people’s own interests, it turns out to be very difficult.
00:25:59:24 – 00:26:19:15
Mike Madrid
We certainly share values only in so much as they benefit us is what we’re realizing when they don’t. When they don’t, then suddenly that value proposition, you know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t work. And that’s why I’m saying it’s easy when it’s 85% white. Yeah. When it becomes a truly pluralistic society, it becomes a real test of our values in a way we’ve never had to really challenge.
00:26:19:19 – 00:26:43:20
Spencer Critchley
Your values become real when they when it costs you something to have those barriers. Right. Like we see, if I may say, you know, I, I respect you for being somebody who when the your values could cost you something, you stood up for them when Trump came along, you know, and potentially alienated a lot of potential, clients, you know, and money.
00:26:43:20 – 00:27:14:20
Mike Madrid
Money, money, friends, family. I mean, yeah, it came at a great cost. And I’m not saying that because I did anything extraordinary. I think that’s I would hope that, one of the the toughest part. Sorry about this, but this is, you know, deeply personal, one of the toughest parts about doing what I did with the Lincoln Project and working against everything that I had believed in, when it was clearly not losing its integrity, was was not that I felt like I was doing the right thing, it’s just that nobody else was doing the right thing.
00:27:14:28 – 00:27:54:03
Mike Madrid
It was not hard to to know where I stood. It was hard to watch so many others capitulate for so many, what I believed to be cosmetic, superficial reasons. Money. Money is important, but it’s not worth your integrity. You know, power is important, but but not at the cost of your country. And, and and there’s just so many people failed that test and continue to and I again I think that’s a cultural proclivity in a time of extraordinary change, technological, economic and undeniably demographic.
00:27:54:05 – 00:28:23:18
Spencer Critchley
So I want to make sure I understand why you’re optimistic. give him, give him this. Things you’ve just been saying that that, with the growth, because the Latinos, as a segment have rapid population growth and skew younger than the population overall. and because of the values you’ve been describing, and they have this high intermarriage rate, which indicates that you think that, you know, these so-called racial distinctions become, a lot blurrier.
00:28:23:21 – 00:28:45:25
Spencer Critchley
over time. How does that lead to, a point where if things work out well and we don’t end up becoming an authoritarian country? the world’s, you know, most powerful version of Hungary or something. how does that end up working out? Well, can you explain that a little more clear? It seems to me. How does a culture emerge from that?
00:28:45:25 – 00:28:52:24
Spencer Critchley
If it is a culture that solves this lack of cultural cohesion that seems to be fragmenting us right now?
00:28:52:26 – 00:29:16:03
Mike Madrid
Yeah. Well, one that one of the, there’s a there’s a lot of different ways to approach that. But it’s a beautiful question. I’m gonna answer it by going to the last point. And that is this. I’m actually, one of the, one of the peculiar reasons for my optimism. I say peculiar because people are like, that’s a strange reason to be optimistic, but I’m optimistic because of the, conflict and tension at the moment.
00:29:16:03 – 00:29:44:24
Mike Madrid
The struggle. Struggle defines character, but it also forges culture. It is the common trauma of a people that fight for aspirationally, for something that creates a future. I saw this in Ukraine very clearly, and it was in sharp contrast to what I was seeing in my own country in the 2020 election. People are fighting for this mythological America, make America great again, right?
00:29:44:26 – 00:30:03:25
Mike Madrid
And protesting and tyranny is like wearing a mask instead of like, what we did in the 1950s, which is line up for kids to get vaccinated, to take care of everybody’s kids in our community because we’re all in this together like that. That togetherness in America has largely been bred out of us generationally, probably because of our affluence.
00:30:03:28 – 00:30:37:04
Mike Madrid
But my point is, struggle is required. And, for a people to maintain unity and to develop common cause and common culture. And that’s part of what I was saying earlier, is, is part of the downside of winning the Cold War and having 2 or 3 generations without any struggle or conflict has left that fight for freedom muscle that has defined Americanness flaccid to the point where we don’t really know what it is anymore.
00:30:37:04 – 00:31:03:12
Mike Madrid
And so we start to say we turn on each other, but moreover, we bastards freedom to be freedom away from each other. Like I don’t have a commitment to anybody else anymore. That’s not a nation. It’s maybe a country, but it’s not a nation. It’s not a common people. And right now, this generation’s struggle is a fight against authoritarianism.
00:31:03:15 – 00:31:36:18
Mike Madrid
It’s a fight against. Yeah, the, that this hegemonic power which has defined human societies, almost 95% of societies, 99% of societies throughout the course of human history have been monarchies or tribal chieftains or strongmen. Democracy is still such a new thing, and we are still learning and we will teach the next generation. But I think what is become clear for this generation is the recognition that there must be a struggle for it.
00:31:36:18 – 00:32:00:25
Mike Madrid
There has to be a fight for it, because you cannot hand off the value and the passion and the belief in the commitment to it until you fight for it. It’s like an individual is our own individual struggles make us better people, hopefully a better character to people. But you can’t get wisdom without struggle. That’s the main reason.
00:32:00:27 – 00:32:21:22
Spencer Critchley
Right. And so and I and so I think what you’re saying is it’s not like there’s something magical about Latinos and Latino culture in itself. Although I know you’re a fan. yeah. And of course, there are multiple Latino cultures. And this is my view. Another problem is when people assume that they have a theoretical version of of groups, right.
00:32:21:22 – 00:32:25:01
Spencer Critchley
Like there are Latinos as one group, or there are black people or.
00:32:25:01 – 00:32:25:17
Mike Madrid
Whites.
00:32:25:24 – 00:32:27:05
Spencer Critchley
Or whites as one group.
00:32:27:07 – 00:32:32:23
Mike Madrid
And we’re going to start saying that a lot more is, you know, whites are not monolithic. They’re not.
00:32:32:26 – 00:32:55:12
Spencer Critchley
But I think if I understand you right, you’re not so much saying that there’s something magical in Latino culture that’s going to save us. It’s the the conditions that Latinos find themselves in and the trends that are coming together. and the characteristics that are there, as you say, the faith in institutions and the openness to intermarriage, that that will help get us out of this cultural malaise and our fragmentation.
00:32:55:14 – 00:33:02:29
Spencer Critchley
kind of as a stroke of luck, if it works out well, it’ll it’ll end up helping the rest of the country realize what democracy can really be about. Is that about right?
00:33:03:02 – 00:33:30:16
Mike Madrid
I do believe that there are cultural characteristics that help, but largely, yes, I agree with what you just said, and it is fascinating. If you look at human history, how much of this stuff is just luck or looks like luck when it’s really just demographic change and we adjust to those as a species. So I do believe that the blended nature of Latinos, I’m not saying it has like some magical superpower, but what I will say is, if it is, it’s that it is a blended people.
00:33:30:18 – 00:33:57:03
Mike Madrid
It is naturally, by definition, Latino is European and Indigenous. That’s what a Latino as a Hispanic is. And that that is literally a bridge, at this moment in time when we need it, in this time of extraordinary demographic transformation. And so in many ways, I think Latinos can teach us about culturally about a genuine pluralism. And that doesn’t mean that every Latino is, you know, pro pluralism.
00:33:57:05 – 00:34:20:11
Mike Madrid
We’ve got a lot of bad actors in our community, too, sadly. You know, the this issue in Los Angeles, the city council, with some of these horrific racial comments or things that I’d never heard in 30 years of being in backroom strategic meetings with old white Republican dudes. I have never heard language like that, but it’s in a union hall with Latinos talking about, you know, black people and dark skinned.
00:34:20:11 – 00:34:43:09
Mike Madrid
You know, Hopkins I’m not I’m not suggesting that we’re any different. We’re we’re all human beings, right? We’re all we’re all valuable. That way. But what I am saying is the some of the cultural, cultural components of navigating through a blended world, which I try to really bring out in the book through my own experiences navigating through the Democratic Party, through the Republican Party, through the Lincoln Project.
00:34:43:11 – 00:35:20:10
Mike Madrid
It’s all designed to show that there is a, a, a, a way, a manner beyond the black and white paralysis that has defined this nation, this country for 250 years, which we have been stuck in. And both parties are deeply stuck in it. Which is why the premise of the book is that both parties are completely missing it, because they essentially look at nonwhite people as some form of of black variation is or, you know, people of color is a such a terrible term because it negates the experience of everybody.
00:35:20:13 – 00:35:22:08
Spencer Critchley
And it’s really just me. It’s I mean, it just.
00:35:22:10 – 00:35:23:17
Mike Madrid
It just means you’re not white.
00:35:23:17 – 00:35:44:06
Spencer Critchley
And what exactly I, I really agree I mean, think about that. Think about, you know, the population of all the Asian countries, for example. Yeah. You know, great. And then, you know, the Asia Pacific and South Asia, you know, India and Pakistan and Bangladesh and then Africa.
00:35:44:12 – 00:35:46:14
Mike Madrid
And so it’s unbelievable.
00:35:46:14 – 00:35:51:29
Spencer Critchley
I mean, is it really is it really does seem like, well, there’s white people and there’s everybody else.
00:35:52:01 – 00:36:16:02
Mike Madrid
That’s exactly right. And that’s not that’s going to change. And I think it’s going to change for the better. I think right now what we’re watching is, is the white share of the population shrinks. It’s beginning to behave like an aggrieved racial minority. It’s it’s a people very much sensing its own decline. That’s why MAGA is resonant, is I want you to.
00:36:16:08 – 00:36:28:29
Spencer Critchley
Associate this development with decline. Of course, you know which of course, many such people do. But you could see it as exciting as I do. And as no loss as no loss to, you know. Oh, no.
00:36:28:29 – 00:36:30:14
Mike Madrid
I’m sorry. Yeah, I’m talking about white.
00:36:30:19 – 00:36:35:20
Spencer Critchley
Yeah, I know, but no white. You know, white people who see this as decline.
00:36:35:23 – 00:36:36:28
Mike Madrid
Yeah. You know. Yeah.
00:36:37:01 – 00:36:48:10
Spencer Critchley
And you can it’s so easy to just rethink that and realize that. Well, wait a minute. I don’t lose anything, you know, through this battle. And in fact, I stand to gain an enormous amount.
00:36:48:12 – 00:36:56:24
Mike Madrid
And so in the book, I make a distinction between what I call pluralism and tribalism. Do you know what the difference is between those two? Sure.
00:36:56:26 – 00:36:58:07
Spencer Critchley
While you explain.
00:36:58:09 – 00:37:21:16
Mike Madrid
It, it’s just perspective is what you just said. It’s you’re either pessimistic or optimistic about it. If you’re pessimistic, you’re tribalism. If you’re optimistic, you’re pluralist. It’s the same thing. Yeah. And we have half the country. Half whites are very pluralistic and optimistic and look forward and are excited about these changes because of this abundance and this, this blossoming like we saw in and that, you know, the Iberian Peninsula hundreds of years ago, it has happened.
00:37:21:16 – 00:37:43:09
Mike Madrid
It does happen. Or you can be like, you know, we’ve seen this decline. We saw this happen. Social, you know, decay. We saw we saw Russians go through it at the fall of the Cold War. The people, the Germans after World War one, right. A collapse and just just, Aztecs. we saw that when when the Europeans conquered.
00:37:43:16 – 00:38:09:09
Mike Madrid
There’s all sorts of documentation about the people who how they behave when they’re in a moment or sense of decline and and that really, I think, explains so much of what we’re witnessing in this country today. And in fact, let me give you one other example. If you take the demographic profile of California, 40% Latino, 35% white, you know, 11% Asian, and and you transpose it on the Texas, they’re exactly the same numbers.
00:38:09:14 – 00:38:35:12
Mike Madrid
Give them give or take 1 or 2%. Why is one so red and the other so blue? And the answer to this point has been white people. White people in California break 5050 Republican and Democrat, very strong. regional variations. Coastal whites are very progressive. Inland whites are very conservative, educated, college educated whites live on the coast. Non-college-educated vote in Texas.
00:38:35:20 – 00:39:11:06
Mike Madrid
It’s like 70% of whites up until recently were very conservative. And that’s why that’s why the state has been so red. That’s changing as the Sunbelt economy starts to, bring more educated whites. It’s becoming more blue. It’s becoming more purple. But at the same time, California is seeing a shift from the right with Latinos who are basically saying we’re economic voters now because the affordability problems and the segregated nature of California are no longer sustainable, and this party is responsible for it.
00:39:11:08 – 00:39:37:08
Mike Madrid
So California’s elections not as much as Texas, but it’s coming in time, are starting to get more narrow. Brian Donnelly, this candidate who you know, no name candidate, sacrificial lamb that ran against Gavin Newsom for his reelection is the closest. With the exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was the closest gubernatorial race since 1994 90. Maybe 1990 94 was a blowout with Kathleen Brown and and Pete Wilson.
00:39:37:10 – 00:39:58:27
Mike Madrid
So the demographic coalitions of both parties are changing. And there’s a correlation to race, class and education levels that are all three of them are changing from their historical understanding. And we’re becoming a very different people. And the parties are really struggling to deal with what that’s going to look like.
00:39:59:00 – 00:40:14:06
Spencer Critchley
And as you point out, and not just in California, of course, but in the upcoming election, Latinos stand to make a determinative difference across battleground states. Can you.
00:40:14:09 – 00:40:14:24
Mike Madrid
Yeah.
00:40:14:24 – 00:40:16:09
Spencer Critchley
So that’ll that’ll.
00:40:16:12 – 00:40:36:02
Mike Madrid
Yeah. For 30 years I’ve always been asked the question is will Latinos be, you know, the deciding factor in this presidential race? My answer is always been no, because we’ve largely been concentrated in California and Texas, which are not swing states. You know, Arizona’s always a red state. You know, New Mexico was a little bit, you know, Florida was the one swing state.
00:40:36:02 – 00:41:08:16
Mike Madrid
And it was such an outlier with Latinos. It was, you know, overwhelmingly Cuban back back at the time. It no longer is it’s more Puerto Rican than Cuban. But but, you know, at a time when it was a really swing state, it was because Cubans were so Republican. Point being, this year, in every one of the seven main swing states Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, in every one of those Latinos are larger than the margin of victory and in some considerably.
00:41:08:16 – 00:41:30:11
Mike Madrid
Arizona, obviously, Nevada, obviously Wisconsin, there were more Latino voters and black voters and growing and growing rapidly in North Carolina and Georgia. So. So the answer this year is yes, it will undeniably be a big part of it unless one side collapses, one way or the other, there’s a landslide. If it’s going to be a close race, as we expect it will be, Latinos will be the determining factor.
00:41:30:13 – 00:41:59:25
Mike Madrid
The one big question, Spencer, which is really befuddled most people, is why California has been an outlier with this rightward shift. We started seeing this right or shift everywhere but in California. And the question became why? And there are two reasons. The first is California’s Latino population is still significantly more foreign born and foreign born economic emigres overwhelmingly vote with the Democratic Party.
00:42:00:02 – 00:42:33:09
Mike Madrid
Few exceptions, but usually it’s a 70% plus Democratic vote. The other is we have created such limited economic mobility for immigrants that they’re not attaining middle class status, largely because of housing costs and housing prices. So the Democratic Party in California specifically, is a party of very wealthy, home owning, largely college educated white people and renting, non-college educated Latinos.
00:42:33:12 – 00:42:54:00
Mike Madrid
And that coalition has always been a little bit of an unholy alliance, because there’s not much culturally connecting them. There’s now not now, there’s not just not a connection economically. They’re actually at odds. And so you’re starting to see a movement towards, away from the Democratic Party is a better way to say it. Then towards the left, towards the Republican Party.
00:42:54:02 – 00:42:55:11
Mike Madrid
00:42:55:14 – 00:43:26:06
Spencer Critchley
And given that it looks like we are facing a choice between a Democratic win this fall and a crisis in our democracy. It’s critically important for the Democratic Party in particular, to understand a voting bloc that could make the difference in the election. What do you feel the Democratic candidates in the party overall are failing to get about Latinos?
00:43:26:08 – 00:43:45:15
Mike Madrid
Well, the Democratic Party still believes in its heart of hearts. despite all the evidence that they’re a working class party, they’re not. They think they are. They really do believe that. but the working is not. Mike Madrid saying that’s the working class has been saying that for ten years now. They’re moving away and now it’s moving away quite rapidly.
00:43:45:18 – 00:44:05:21
Mike Madrid
And the irony is that the working class that was not whites in America, it’s rapidly becoming nonwhite. So it’s kind of a double whammy for Democrats who are like, well, wait a second. We’ve always talked to you through this sensitive racial lens on issues that we thought were most important to you immigration. You know, you’re Latino, so you care about immigration, right?
00:44:05:24 – 00:44:34:12
Mike Madrid
And Latinos have been saying, no, we care about the economy, affordability and jobs. And those are not really they’re certainly not the priorities of Democrats in California. And that’s apparent now, like, you know, we’ve been pushing out blue collar industries for a long time, gleefully, just methodically and Latino the Latino workforce is struggling. We’re not building housing, at all.
00:44:34:14 – 00:45:02:02
Mike Madrid
And so we’re creating this caste system in this state. And so there’s this pushback. So what’s going to have to happen is this lack of economic mobility and the fact that California’s Latino population is more immigrant than everywhere else means that they’re going to have to. You’ve got to declare a marshall plan for housing like tomorrow. 1 in 5 Hispanic men, are employed in the residential construction space or related fields.
00:45:02:02 – 00:45:31:26
Mike Madrid
That is an extraordinary number. 20% of our households are Latinos building the infrastructure and the homes in this country. And every year that gets bigger. So and until those workforces in The New York Times will focus on, you know, economic anxiety with white, blue collar workers and diners in West Virginia, that’s not where the problem is. The problems now in Phoenix, Maricopa County and and Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada, Gwinnett to Cobb County in Georgia, Erie, Pennsylvania.
00:45:31:27 – 00:45:45:11
Mike Madrid
Like the those are where the Latinos are huge in numbers and they’re the ones that they should be sitting down attack areas instead of diners and saying, we know what’s on your mind, but our institutions aren’t aren’t prepared for it either.
00:45:45:13 – 00:46:15:03
Spencer Critchley
This strikes me as such an important point. I really want to highlight what you just said. So, you know, the residential construction industry, employing this really large percentage of, male Latinos and knowing something like that is, is the kind that’s the kind of knowledge you get when you actually know the people you’re addressing. Right? As opposed to seeing them as a theoretical construct, as you say, the, you know, having assumptions like, well, you’re Latino.
00:46:15:03 – 00:46:38:05
Spencer Critchley
Therefore, your top issue must be immigration. And especially after people have been here for a few generations, you know, they may very well be fairly tough on immigration. and have some surprising opinions on immigration. Another assumption you highlight is the assumption that Latino voters want to be spoken to in Spanish.
00:46:38:07 – 00:46:57:24
Mike Madrid
Yeah, this is one of the biggest mythologies is, you know, and this is where I think Democrats have made a huge tactical error, is even even the Biden campaign, the Latinos going Biden, you know, it’s still a Spanish themed, you know, 17 pollsters use about seven, a good, credible pollster will use 17% of its interviews in Spanish.
00:46:57:24 – 00:47:24:27
Mike Madrid
17 now, this is a voters, by the way, there’s a difference between voters and members of the population. If it was the populous, it would probably be double that. But it’s not. Voters are overwhelmed, only English speaking. And so this stereotype, when you play down to the stereotype of kicking off your campaign at the Mexican restaurant and folklorico dancing and mariachi music in Spanish language, it’s very patronizing.
00:47:24:27 – 00:47:51:00
Mike Madrid
And I’m not saying that you can’t incorporate some of those themes, but as you know, Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography, you know, I can’t explain it, but I know it when I see it. Like those cultural, those cultural, gestures can very easily tip into what we call sombrero politics, which is this kind of stereotype of like, yeah, you may be third generation, but you like enchiladas and you like mariachi music, right?
00:47:51:00 – 00:48:09:05
Mike Madrid
And you’re worried about kids in cages, and how could you not be worried about deportation? And it’s like that was that was my, my, my family’s history 80 years ago. You know, like we’re not talking about potato famine issues to the Irish anymore. So why why are we doing that? And and that’s both parties. Both parties do that.
00:48:09:05 – 00:48:32:28
Mike Madrid
And again, it’s because there’s a very desperate need to caricature as nonwhite people in a certain stereotype. What is the silver bullet we can do to to stop the problem or to speak to voters where they’re at and the reality is, they’re watching Fox News, hanging out at the softball league and swinging hammers during the day. And the construction site, they’re blue collar workers.
00:48:33:00 – 00:48:49:04
Mike Madrid
There is a more sensitivity towards racial issues, but they also don’t see border, you know, the border as a racial issue. It’s a security issue. And that shouldn’t surprise us because it is until it’s not right.
00:48:49:07 – 00:49:18:24
Spencer Critchley
Yeah. And we see, this with Republicans and Democrats, as you say. I mean, recently Trump talking about black jobs, you know, these immigrants are coming and taking black jobs. I mean, just betraying his picture. Yeah. Of black people or. Yes, assuming that black people will identify with him because he has a mugshot now. So again, you know, there are black people, there are people who have the lowest level jobs in society, and they tend to be criminals.
00:49:18:26 – 00:49:44:21
Spencer Critchley
And and yet on the left, you know, it just drives me nuts when I hear people on the left assuming that black people, first of all, that they all think the same way, that, you know, there is a black perspective on things, and then that they will assume that black people’s concerns about police abuses translate into a sympathy for criminals, which you also see.
00:49:44:24 – 00:49:46:19
Mike Madrid
That defunding the police.
00:49:46:22 – 00:50:14:23
Spencer Critchley
Right. The idea that, yeah, let’s let’s not reform the police, let’s abolish the police and thereby put the lives of low income, black, Latino and every other low income person in a dangerous neighborhood at risk right by just doing away, doing this incredibly reckless experiment. And let’s see what happens if we don’t have any police, which would make virtually no difference in my life, in my safe neighborhood, but could be a matter of life and death in other neighborhoods.
00:50:14:24 – 00:50:29:09
Mike Madrid
It is. It is a matter of life and death. And let’s also remember, like the whole defund the police argument is an attack on institutions that comes from the left. And this is why certain ones have a.
00:50:29:13 – 00:50:40:20
Spencer Critchley
Certain kind of left. I would, you know, and this is something I’d love to say. Mass Moca, it’s a neo liberal left like there’s, there’s a neo liberal, there’s a neo liberal right and an illiberal left, which, you know.
00:50:40:23 – 00:51:01:02
Mike Madrid
And the reason I’m bringing this up for a very important reason. Populism is ascendant on both sides of the aisle, and it’s bigger than we give it credit for. It’s why we’re witnessing the destruction of our institutions. I just wrote a piece on Latino populism that was going to run in the New York Times today, but because of the Biden stuff, it got bombed.
00:51:01:04 – 00:51:32:07
Mike Madrid
Latinos are the only group that really surpassed levels of support for both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. despite the polling. And we have very weak Partizan ties. But there is an increasing what I call political populism, which is a rejection of the two party system. Not that we’re looking for a multi-party system, but just the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are just truly not credible, believable entities to us anymore.
00:51:32:09 – 00:51:58:18
Mike Madrid
And there’s also this economic populism where there’s protectionism and, you know, if you’re increasing early on and working in the energy patch or the construction site or in manufacturing, those workforces are Republican workforces. And as Latinos occupy those wrong rungs on the ladder, they see the Democratic Party as an existential threat to their income, their livelihoods, their ability to support their families.
00:51:58:18 – 00:52:26:08
Mike Madrid
So there’s both an economic and politically populist growth that is happening as as the two parties try to destroy each each other’s institution. Yes. And is it is it all Republicans or all Democrats? No, of course it’s not. But there are wide swaths, wide swaths where Republicans believe the media is the enemy. The government is the enemy. Higher education is the enemy.
00:52:26:08 – 00:52:59:23
Mike Madrid
And on the left, they believe churches are an enemy. They believe the military is an enemy. They believe that corporations are the enemy. And you can hear that language, on both sides, coming from Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders or Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. And it’s very, very dangerous, toxic rhetoric that is destroying our democracy, because you may not agree with the direction of an institution, but once you believe, it needs to be torn down, now we’re talking about the inability to actually live together.
00:52:59:26 – 00:53:18:02
Spencer Critchley
Yeah, ultimately, I think it’s it comes down to a choice from my point of view of are we going to defend liberalism broadly defined, the liberalism as in liberal democracy, or are we going to just go along with illiberal versions of the right and the left, that see liberalism as something that does need to be torn down?
00:53:18:02 – 00:53:37:02
Spencer Critchley
And unfortunately, liberals are notoriously bad at figuring out what they stand for. And being able to take a clear stand for it is, as Robert Frost once said, a, a liberalism man is too well mannered to take his own side in a corner. All I think is, is, is the way he put it. You mentioned, Joe Biden, and that gets me to something.
00:53:37:02 – 00:53:56:06
Spencer Critchley
I wanted to make sure I ask you about. That’s where I, I run out of time with you. as we record this conversation, Joe Biden’s in a great deal of trouble following his performance at the debate with Donald Trump. And I’d love to get your perspective on what happened and where we are now.
00:53:56:08 – 00:54:37:27
Mike Madrid
Boy, I’m really fascinated by this, and I’m kind of watching it like so many Americans are, because it’s a real crisis point, and I think it’s a crisis for a number of reasons. But the main one that I’m most concerned about is there has been, at least for the moment, a very wide dichotomy between the partizan, instincts of base Democratic voters to stick with Joe Biden, despite the increasing concerns about his age and this panic hysteria that has overtaken the media and a lot of, pundit, the pundit class, and there’s a wide separation that looks a hell of a lot like the Republicans in 2016.
00:54:37:29 – 00:55:02:04
Mike Madrid
In June of 2016, Donald Trump recorded the highest negatives of any presidential candidate. Again in modern polling, two thirds of Americans said he should not be running. That means there was a large swath of Republicans two thirds. Biden, by the way, is nowhere near that. But two thirds are saying he should not run for president. The Republicans base, the voters wanted him.
00:55:02:04 – 00:55:21:11
Mike Madrid
They stuck with him while the Republican media and pundit class were saying, we need to get rid of them. We need to get rid of them. There were editorial calls for him to withdraw that he wasn’t capable or appropriate to fit in the white House, in the Oval Office. and it’s eerily similar to what is happening right now.
00:55:21:14 – 00:55:43:04
Mike Madrid
with one exception is I think that the media really wants Biden to go. And I think that’s going to if he does, if I think the only person that could take his place is Kamala Harris, and if she does take his place, I think that there will be a significant internal battle about what all of that means in the Democratic Party.
00:55:43:07 – 00:56:07:03
Mike Madrid
I think, incidentally, both Biden and Harris and frankly, a doorknob running under the Democratic ticket would be just as competitive because we are so negatively partizan ized in this climate. When people when Donald Trump says I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose any support, that is true. He could get sentencing. There’s a criminal sentencing now.
00:56:07:03 – 00:56:35:05
Mike Madrid
But if you were sentenced and put in jail, he could run without losing any support. The reverse is also true. And the Democrats have exhibited this behavior before. We saw it under Bill Clinton. You know, with the national organization of Women supported him during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Like Partizan, Partizan tribal identity is is as important as your religious or patriotic faith.
00:56:35:06 – 00:57:05:28
Mike Madrid
It is central and core to our identities. And when we’re negatively partizan ized, meaning we are defining ourselves by who we are against more than by what we are for. You don’t see a wide variation in support levels dropping off, no matter how flawed either candidate is. So the variance between how Kamala or Joe Biden does is a delta of maybe one and a half percentage points, maybe in either direction.
00:57:06:01 – 00:57:16:10
Mike Madrid
which means you’re taking on a hell of a lot of risk by removing a guy who probably has more upside than downside from from a mathematical perspective, that’s my opinion.
00:57:16:12 – 00:57:34:00
Spencer Critchley
Yeah, it’s a tough one. And I think where I come down on this is, as I often do, and it can sound naive to people, is start with the truth. And the only people who know the truth really are Joe Biden and the people closest to him in his family and and in the campaign leadership, and then move from there to what’s right.
00:57:34:00 – 00:57:54:08
Spencer Critchley
And as I say, that sounds naive to people. but I actually think it often ends up being strategically the smart thing to do, because trying to spin your way out of a bad situation where the truth is not on your side, just generates more and more entropy, and that you struggle more and more to manage. And, you know, people can look like they’re getting away with it.
00:57:54:08 – 00:58:25:04
Spencer Critchley
Like the Trump Republican Party seems to be getting away with it, but it always collapses. So all that by way of saying, you know, if Biden is capable of doing the job and campaigning effectively, then go for it, you know, commit to it. And if it if it turned out that he’s actually not capable of well, that’s a hard truth that has to be faced, and proceed from there to trying your best to make the right choice and then commit like hell to that choice.
00:58:25:06 – 00:58:59:03
Spencer Critchley
And I would say, either way, Biden on his worst day is orders of magnitude better than Trump on his best day. and as you say, I mean, I would vote for a doorknob instead of a Donald Trump. But as it happens, I believe what I just said about Biden. So whatever the decision is, everybody who’s in the pro-democracy coalition who wants America to continue to be a democracy, I don’t see that there’s any choice but to vote for either Biden or the Democratic candidate.
00:58:59:06 – 00:59:02:13
Mike Madrid
I yeah, I agree, I think that’s exactly right.
00:59:02:16 – 00:59:21:24
Spencer Critchley
Well, my, as always, it’s such a pleasure to talk to you. You’re you’re one of the most insightful, commentators on politics, that I know of, let alone know personally, but just that I know of in general. So I really appreciate it. Anytime you make some time to talk, I wish you all the best with the book.
00:59:21:24 – 00:59:44:23
Spencer Critchley
Which seems not to, need an assistance from my good wishes. It seems to be doing very well on its own. Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me. The book is called The Latino Century and the author is my guest, Mike Madrid. And I heartily recommend, everybody who’s, interested in the current state and future of democracy. Get yourself a copy of this book.
00:59:44:26 – 00:59:49:24
Mike Madrid
A lot of our conversation sponsor love, love spending time with you and and hearing your thoughts. Thank you.
00:59:49:26 – 00:59:50:14
Spencer Critchley
Thank you, Mike.