Where Do Democrats Go From Here?

We talk to Mallory McMorrow and Jake Rakov about their dreams for the future of Democratic politics.

We’ve spent a lot of time recently talking about the aging leadership in Washington. Today, we’re looking forward with not one but two compelling voices representing a new generation of leadership.

First, we'll hear from Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow, whose powerful speeches defending inclusive policies have resonated nationwide. Then, we'll sit down with rising star Jake Rakov to explore his vision for progressive governance in practice.

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Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

• Reimagining Citizenship from Pantsuit Politics

• We’re collecting messages and stories to use in our 10th birthday celebrations. Share your birthday message here!

Mallory McMorrow

• McMorrow for Michigan Website

• Mallory McMorrow Instagram

• Mallory McMorrow on X

• Hate Won't Win: Find Your Power and Leave This Place Better Than You Found It | Mallory McMorrow

Jake Rakov

• Jake for Congress Website

• Jake Rakov Instagram

• Jake Rakov (@jake_rakov) on X

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers. You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. And today we are looking ahead. We spent a while together on Tuesday.

Sarah [00:00:17] Quite a while.

Beth [00:00:18] Looking back, testing everyone's patience a little bit, talking about former president Biden, about the aging leadership of the democratic party, about what we've personally gotten wrong in our political analysis, where we have personally felt constrained in our critical analysis. A lot of problem diagnosing. Today, we're thinking about the prescription forward. We want to share two conversations we had with candidates who represent a new future for the Democratic Party. Their visions, their ideas, hooray for ideas, and how they want to go forward. So first we're going to be talking with Michigan State Senate Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow, and then we will introduce you to Jake Rakoff, a candidate in California's 32nd Congressional District. Jake is running against 15 term incumbent. And his former boss, Congressman Brad Sherman. And Jake stuck around for Outside of Politics with us, where we're going to talk about musical theater. So if you need something to hold your attention in this space, I feel like we've got a good contingent out there that's going to be like I am charging ahead to hear Jake's favorite show.

Sarah Now, before we get to that we're dragging ourselves across the finish line here, guys. It's May-Sember. It's tough out there in those streets, but we're here with you, we see you. And that is why we're approaching summer a little differently here at Pantsuit Politics. Usually we take breaks, run a lot of repeats. Not this year, baby, not this year. We're doing it differently. We're going to take some breaks, but we really leaning into the fun here on the show and over on the Spice Cabinet on Substack. We're going to tell you more about our plans on the show for the summer next week, but as you may have heard us mention a couple times over the last few weeks, we have some very exciting plans on Substack for the summer. And for the low, low price of $15 a month, you can get our special summer series, Re-imagining Citizenship and our Pantsuit Politics Film Club. And guess what, guys? It's tariff-free. It's all tariff free.

Beth [00:02:25] No tariffs, no administrative surcharges, no shipping and handling. For that $15 a month, you can start the day with Sarah, for her to break down the day's headlines. On Thursdays, you get all the good news of the week; really meaty, substantive good news, not fluff. Feel great about the direction of the world. On Thursday's, we make a whole other episode, so if you've not gotten enough of us here, Thursday, you really get us unplugged. And then on Mondays and Wednesdays, you can hang out with me when I talk about everything from the Supreme Court to Survivor. We also are not very good at following a plan. So in addition to all the other things that we make occasionally, we're like, you know what? We really want to watch this TV show in community or we really want to talk about this book altogether. So we throw in lots of extras. There is not a test on any of it. You can take what works for you. You can leave the rest. But all of that is yours for $15 a month, plus incredible conversation with other people who are taking it in alongside you.

Sarah [00:03:24] And you make the show possible with that $15 a month, you're paying for salaries and taxes and software and you're telling us what you think and what we dedicate our lives to here at Pantsuit Politics is worthwhile and we appreciate that. So if you have not subscribed yet, please join us on Substack. We are so grateful for everyone who signed up so far and we look to getting more of you over there to enjoy Re-imagining Citizenship with us this summer.

Beth [00:03:52] Now we're going to chat with Mallory McMorrow. You may remember Mallory from a viral speech she gave in the Michigan State House after she was accused of grooming by a colleague and opponent. Mallory has reflected on that experience and everything that she learned from her time serving the state in a new book. And we were delighted to sit down and have a chat with her about that.

Sarah [00:04:30] Mallory, welcome to Pantsuit Politics.

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:04:32] Thank you so much for having me.

Sarah [00:04:34] All right, let's dive in. Every Democratic elected official on planet Earth is chasing virality right now. You achieved it. What advice would you give them?

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:04:47] First of all, don't pursue virality.

Beth [00:04:51] I like that. That's not the point.

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:04:53] That's not the point. And I think part of the very dark, weird, strange, ugly place we're at in our politics is because too many elected officials want to go viral. So they're intentionally being trolls, or they're picking fights with their colleagues, or they are doing TikTok dances, or the Gen Z read the script thing. You have a tremendous amount of power, use it. And this was not a moment that I ever wanted, that I every asked for, but it was a moment very authentic to me that just happened to catch fire.

Sarah [00:05:33] And what have you learned from going viral? So don't chase it, but what was the outflow? What did you see happen once you took off like that?

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:05:46] So it was very strange. So this was 2022, a colleague accused me of wanting to groom and sexualize kindergartners and wanting eight-year-olds to believe they were responsible for slavery, as colleagues do, I suppose. And I gave a speech and I will say, just in terms of the mindset, I was in a place where I wasn't sure that I was going to run for re-election. This was my first term. I had flipped a Republican district, and I was ostracized. So this was my third year in office. I had introduced 49 bills on every single issue I ran on. I didn't even get a single hearing. I had been sexually harassed by a colleague. I was regularly kind of attacked. And then this happened. And at the time we had redistricting in Michigan, so I was drawn into a democratic primary with a colleague. And I felt like I had already let everybody down who had donated to me and supported me and helped get me into this position that I couldn't make the change that they had voted for. So mentally, I was in a place of, if I'm going to go down, I might as well go down swinging. And there was a freedom in that that I've learned looking back, we should embody more often.

[00:06:58] But also, when it took off, I posted this video, more than 10 million people viewed it within 24 hours. It's now been viewed probably hundreds of millions of times all over national news, international news. And when we started getting calls for interviews still two weeks later, and it didn't go away, we recognized, okay, we can do something with this moment. So I opened a pack, I built a small team and we built out a media calendar and a fundraising strategy for the rest of the year, not for me, but to raise money for other state Senate candidates in Michigan. To try to flip control of the legislature for the first time since 1984, and we did it. So my message to anybody is these moments are rare. But when they happen, grab ahold of that spotlight and don't let it go and use it for good. You can use it to help make the change that you got into this job to do in the first place. And it shouldn't be about you.

Beth [00:08:01] So we're talking with you in another moment of a lot of attention in your life. Your book, Hate Won’t Win, is coming out. You've been honest that you're considering a run for the open federal Senate seat in Michigan. You have disclosed that you think Chuck Schumer is due for retirement. The party is due for new leadership in the Senate. You've disclosed that you wrote a letter to President Biden after his debate performance, asking him to please step down. So I wonder what you want to do with this attention cycle and what you want to advocate for given the opportunities that you have right now.

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:08:37] Look, we're at a place in this country where we need a new kind of leadership. And we have to recognize this Republican party is no longer even the Republican party. This is a MAGA party. This is Trump's party. And that is a very different thing than the traditional Republicans. Like in my first district, I represented Mitt Romney's hometown. There were a lot of moderate Republicans who didn't see themselves in this party. So, what I hope to do with this moment is shine a light on the fact that the way things have been going isn't working, that there's a reason that even as Donald Trump's approval rating is falling, the Democratic Party's approval rating is not rising. And we have to get out there and present a very clear vision of the future that people want to see themselves in and be a part of. And that is going to look very different and require new people to do that.

Sarah [00:09:36] So you talked about flipping and getting that trifecta in Michigan. And I've heard you in interviews say, like, "We were new. We didn't quite know what we were doing." So how do you make sense of that tension between we need new leadership and also we get in these situations where we need the experience of a Chuck Schumer or a Nancy Pelosi? I think we all can see with the Joe Biden situation, I was sitting there just praying at the altar of Nancy Pelosi, please get it to happen. So how do you make sense of that tension? Where have you seen that you need the experience of people who know how to navigate the processes and also you need new media strategies and a new understanding of the opposition? How do square that circle?

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:10:25] So this is going to sound like some surprising bias, but Michigan, look no further than Michigan. This is a state where over the last few cycles, Debbie Stabenow announced that she would not seek re-election. And now we have Senator Elissa Slotkin who delivered the response to the State of the Union in a way that I think was fresh and real and honest, and a lot of people were attracted to. We now have Gary Peters who announced that he will not seek re-election. And this is an example from our state of part of leadership is not just staying in and holding on to leadership as long as you can. It's bringing the next generation up with you. That requires giving them experience, giving them time. I'm at a place where I've cut my chops in the state legislature for six years. I'm now the first Senate majority whip, the first woman Senate majority whip in state history. And I've learned what it takes during lame-duck where we stayed for 30 hours, the longest session in state history and passed as many bills as we possibly could to deliver for people. And that's intentional in a state like ours. It's recognizing we've got a great bench. We have people who are confident and capable and smart, but they need people to bring them up with them. It's not going to happen by itself.

Beth [00:11:41] Speaking of Michigan as a bellwether, there were many times during COVID when Sarah and I would say, what is going on in Michigan? Because the anger about COVID restrictions in Michigan really was a harbinger of what would come nationally. And I feel like you saw that again with the protest that sort of foreshadowed January 6th happening in Michigan. So I would love to know today what you're seeing in Michigan, that the rest of us should be paying attention to in terms of public sentiment. Where is the energy politically? What should we be worried about?

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:12:20] So that's exactly right. We had armed protests in our state capital on April 30th, 2020. And there was a photo that went viral of heavily armed gunmen carrying AR-15s in the Senate gallery. And I remember we shared that out. I wrote an op-ed for NBC News at the time. And the reaction was people having the same reaction, dude, like, what the heck is going on in Michigan? And what we were trying to say was we are the canary in the coal mine. We are the microcosm of the entire country. And if it's happening here, it's going to happen in the rest of the country. And then January 6th happened. And those of us in Michigan were not surprised. We viewed that as inevitable because there was no reaction to what we saw in our state capitol. So what we're seeing right now is that people are angry. There is a sense that Donald Trump has vastly overstepped in this supposed mandate that he claims that he has and he doesn't.

[00:13:19] There was just a great focus group in Michigan of trump voters expressing their outrage that they haven't seen their cost of living go down, they haven't seen their lives improve in any way and they are floored that somebody like Elon Musk who was not elected has control of basically all the keys of the government and access to treasury files and to all of these different state departments and the people are being fired at whim with no rhyme or reason. But what I would say to the rest of the country, as another canary in the coal mine for Michigan, is people are showing up in mass at town halls, in democratic districts, republican districts. There was a town hall organized in Lansing for Congressman Tom Barrett who didn't even show up. He was at basketball game 10 minutes down the street. But people want to know from their leaders not only what their leaders are going to do, but what they can do. So that's my kind of advice to Democrats and people around the country, is treat people like they're part of the team. People want to take their own country back. They want to take their communities back and they want to be treated with respect. Not just as another number, whether it's another vote or another potential donor. Don't text them and ask for $5 and say, I'm fighting for you. Sow them, talk to them about what's happening, what's standing in the way, and what we can all do about it to make a new future for all of us.

Beth [00:14:48] I think that's so true about people wanting to be treated as part of the team, and we've talked about that a lot with MAGA, that there is a sense of belonging. I see that in Joe Rogan's podcast. I think people listen because it's easy to feel a sense belonging. Like you're with the group because you're sitting here hanging for this conversation. I wonder what that looks like at scale and with a sense professionalism and competence. Here are complex issues. How do we be part of the team together to discuss them? I'm especially thinking about that in Michigan knowing that the Israel-Gaza issue has really inflamed a lot of districts and voters there. So I'd love to hear you say more about the how of that.

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:15:31] Yeah, that's right. And Ben Rhodes had a great piece in last week's New York Times, where he highlighted exactly what you just highlighted, that in the MAGA movement there is a sense not that people need Donald Trump and MAGA, but that MAGA needs them. And when you feel like you are needed, you're excited. You want to participate. You want to be a part of that team. And I think what that means for us in a place like Michigan is less showing up and talking, and more showing up and listening. You pointed out the Middle East and what we have here in Michigan is some of the largest populations of Jewish Americans and Arab Americans living side by side of anywhere in the entire country. And a friend of mine, Samantha Woll, she'd led a synagogue in Detroit and she was brutally killed, unfortunately, a couple of years ago. Devastating. But she had dedicated her life to interfaith, intercommunity conversations, to have the answers come from the community itself, not being dictated on down to you. And I think that's something that MAGA is doing that we have to learn from is what are people saying? What can we elevate? What can lift up and then share it broader versus just coming in and talking at people. Which I think is the negative perception that people too often have of Democrats, it's you're lecturing me, you're talking down to me, you're elitist. When the answers are in the community from the people who are most directly impacted.

Sarah [00:17:01] So how do you balance that with the distrust of expertise, the distrust of any sort of, I don't know, strategic approach to anything. There's this hunger for people to move quickly and break things, right? Elon Musk, his approval ratings aren't great, but you do see an undercurrent narrative from people that at least they're changing something. I've been told for years you couldn't do it, at least they're doing it. So how do you speak to that? How do you elevate things without giving into the fear-mongering or the social conspiracies or the anti-expertise movement? How do speak to that's something we struggle with, how you speak to the problems without elevating the paranoia?

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:17:54] Yeah, that's a great question. And something that I've been talking a lot about recently is I'm a millennial. By and large, we are the first generation, writ large, to do worse than our parents, where you can do everything right. You worked hard in school. You got a certificate, or you went to college, and you still can't get ahead and that it's not working. That you can't afford a house, you can afford to start a family. That you're not living the life that you dreamed of. You're not the same life that your parents had. So number one, I think we have to acknowledge and validate people's anger at the fact that systems and institutions, as they are, the status quo, they're not working. And you see Ezra Klein picking up a lot of steam with his new book, Abundance, on this exact idea that it's not enough just to have massively expensive policies if those policies aren't actually delivering for people. If we're not actually putting rural broadband in place where no matter where you live in Michigan you have access to high speed internet. If we don't have robust transportation systems, if we are not building enough housing.

[00:19:02] The basics of we do not have enough supply shows, yeah, the status quo isn't working, but there's an opportunity right now because people are feeling incredibly angry that the Musk approach of just move fast and break things also isn't the right approach. It's not just slash and burn everything. It's we have to maybe break down these systems and rebuild them in a way that works, but also isn't about stealing your tax dollars, robbing Medicare, robbing Medicaid, cutting your school aid funding to give another tax break to Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. They don't need it, and it's never going to come back down to us. So we have to present a counter vision that says, yes, the way things have been going, it doesn't work. But we have a better vision for you that actually delivers for you so that you can have the American dream that you always wanted, not to hope that maybe Donald Trump and Elon Musk will view you as good enough to get one of these tax breaks, which are only for billionaires. And excuse my language, that's a pretty shitty vision.

Beth [00:20:09] So I want to talk about a vision for the American dream. I saw this tweet that I keep thinking about from Jordan Wiseman, who writes for Yahoo Finance. He was talking about Scott Bessent being on television saying, we don't need cheap goods. The American dream is not about flat screen TVs. And Jordan Wisemen said, yeah, I think it maybe is. So can I read his post to you and get your reaction? He said, "Here's what I would describe as the American Dream. Roughly since the 90s, a big suburban, not ex-urban house, with two cars and a living room capable of housing a monstrous television, a backyard with a nice grill set up, a decent school district and a secure job that makes sure you can still afford all that even if your spouse is only working part-time because the kids aren't in kindergarten yet." My husband and I were talking about that and we would add a vacation a year. If you have a nice house and you can take a vacation a year and a good school district, that sounds like the American dream to us. I wonder what sounds like the American Dream to you, especially as we consider this group of millennials here that our kids are growing up more conservative than us. And I wonder what that future of the American dream looks like.

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:21:16] I think that's a great start. I think it is a version of the house that I dreamed of growing up, that we can choose the careers that we want, whether it's both of us work or one of us works part time or one stays home, and that we could have a place up north in a place like Michigan. That was the dream for so many people's parents that just is not attainable right. The cabin up north on the lake in the summer that you can go to, that you can watch the sunsets, that you can spend time on the water, and that you have time. I think that is a luxury that we don't believe we can have anymore. We are a generation that works a full-time job. We're in the gig economy. We're picking up a side hustle. And when you do all that just to get by, you can't even afford to have a kid and when you do, you're not spending any time with your kid. So that time, time is freedom. And I would add that to the version of the American dream that Michiganders wants.

Sarah [00:22:15] Another thread I feel throughout this moment inside the Democratic Party, and I know there are some, governors working on initiatives around this issue, including Governor Westmore in Maryland, is the gender component. You talked about being sexually harassed, as it takes Senator, that there is this massive gender gap between young men and young women when it comes to their politics. There is a growing conversation around the manosphere in the media and boys and young men falling behind in school. We've all got it supercharged right now by the Netflix series Adolescents that people are texting about approximately every other day. So I'm wondering, based on your experience as a woman inside the halls of power, as a mom, how are you thinking about this moment and where we can rise to meet it and speak to it because it's clearly something? If we're listening to people, they're saying it. This is not a creation of the media. There is a lot of this conversation in my life. Some of our most popular shows have been about how boys and young men are being left behind. So how are you thinking about that, especially with the media moment and the manosphere and all of that?

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:23:39] I think that's real. And this is something I've been listening to Scott Galloway talk about this for years, that we have not created enough aspirational male figures for young men. And in the absence of that, you're elevating people like Andrew Tate, who is sexually trafficking young women. And you're back to a place where because men are growing up and not being as successful as they had hoped, because there isn't that kind of pathway laid out, that the reaction is, well, it must be women's fault, and now we have to tear women down, and now women are property again, and we have reassert our dominance, and it is a really ugly version of masculinity, but we can't just call it out and say it's your fault, because then people retreat. So I think giving young men opportunities where we can show examples of how men and women can coexist successfully together.

[00:24:37] Something that I am excited about as I think about what's next even for me is my husband is my biggest supporter. We do this together. He is a great dad and was also editor-in-chief of Jalopnik, a very popular car website. So not sacrificing. You can love guy stuff, you can love cars, you could love culture, and you can be a great dad, and be a great partner, and stand beside me in a way that I hope we can show new examples of what this looks like to coexist and not have to say well we're not succeeding in the way that we wanted to and it must be women's fault. So I'm really worried when I see polling that says things like an increasing number of voters think women should return to traditional gender roles and not be in the workforce. We can't whiplash like this, but we have to acknowledge that boys don't have those role models, they don't have those paths and recognize that we have a gap to fill and work to fill it.

Beth [00:25:37] Well, I have two girls and I know that you have a daughter as well. And I think a lot about the other side of this, which is how much pressure we've created around girls in the drive to empower and how I think some of those numbers of voters who think women should return to traditional roles include women because of that pressure and that drive to empower. You're a problem solver by training, you're an industrial designer. I wonder how you would help us re-engineer some of these expectations and the messages that we're sending to our young people.

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:26:13] It's going to take time. I go back to my alma mater every now and then, Notre Dame, and I talk to design students. First of all, my career doesn't make sense to them. I got a degree in industrial design. I was a car designer. Then I was designer for Hot Wheels. I did toys. Then I got into media and advertising, and now I'm a state senator. But I bring that back to, frankly, tell particularly young women, there is no perfect path. Because there's so much pressure. And I meet with young people, the anxiety is exuding off of their bodies and they are so nervous and they're sitting in front of me saying, "What internship do I have to get? What's the perfect career path? What's a perfect job? Am I going to be okay?" And what I tell them is a lot of my career was accidental. I tried things and you don't have to have the perfect first job. You take a step and you take another step and you're going to learn and you going to pivot along the way.

[00:27:08] And I think in the same way we need to give young men more examples and opportunities, we also have to give the young women a break and to say it's okay to find yourself. It's okay take a break. I write in the book about kind of coming up in an era where lean in was the popular theme of the moment. And then Michelle Obama coming out later and saying, that shit doesn't work every time. The idea that you can just girl boss your way through it without acknowledging we carry a lot of weight on our shoulders as women and moms, and we want to have careers, and sometimes you step forward, and sometimes, you step back, and it looks very different than just powering through it and taking it all on at once, because that's not sustainable.

Sarah [00:27:53] I don't know if you've read Careless People, but Sheryl Sandberg was also not girl bossing it through the whole time. That book is shocking. And even though we all live through this rise of social media, and that actually dovetails pretty well with what I want to ask next, which is how do you think about-- we've talked a lot about media, we've touched a lot of about podcast, but for better for worse, a lot people are still on social media platforms and numbers. How do you think about that as a state senator when you're trying to elevate those issues, when you are trying to listen to people, how are you seeing-- I know as a millennial myself, me and my millennial friends are reevaluating social media and its role in our lives. So I'm wondering where are you at with Facebook and Instagram, both in your professional capacity and personally.

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:28:48] I struggle with it, and I talk very candidly about that throughout the book. I came up in the social media era. You have to recognize that it's a tool, and use the tool for you. Don't let it control you. So I do things like I leave my phone out of my bedroom when I go to sleep, so it's not the last thing that I'm doom scrolling, and it's not the first thing that I pick up in morning. I'm also very active on social media, because I know that's where a lot of people are. So I use Instagram and YouTube, and answer questions. I do AMAs weekly just to hear what people are thinking about and answer those questions. What I think people are sick of is really gimmicky content, something that I really try to strike the line in as an elected official. I recognize I have a lot of power and people look to me for answers and solutions.

[00:29:37] I'm not about to get on and do TikTok dances or do the like Gen Z wrote the script thing to try to get clicks and likes into the first question. I'm not trying to go viral. But it's a direct line of communication to a lot of people, and that's really powerful. So I want to use it and not shy away from it, but also make sure that I'm also always in control of it and not letting it control me. And that's a constant. There are days where it gets out of control and I look at my screen time and I'm a little bit horrified and then you reset. So every now and then I'll take a hard day off where it's no phone, I turn all the apps off, I check out and just let myself reset. And then come back and start to use it in a way that's more healthy.

Sarah [00:30:21] I was encouraged by that part of your workbook. You don't read a lot of political books where someone says turn off your phone for 48 hours. You really need more than a day to get a hard reset.

Beth [00:30:31] I wonder how you think about who you're talking to on social media and who you are listening to. As I'm watching Democrats try things, Governor Newsom is trying his podcast, I was watching representatives Moskowitz and Raskin today as we're recording trying in a hearing, making fun of the Signal chat about the Houthi attack. And you could just see people out there trying things. And you can tell that they are not just chasing virality, but also trying to deal with this image of Democrats as self-serious or luxury, as you said earlier, and trying to find a new persona and a new balance. And sometimes as I watch those attempts, especially the ones that don't sit great with me, I think, well, who's this for? So how do you think about who is this for? Who is the person I'm trying to reach? What is the audience?

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:31:26] When I think about how I show up on social media, I wanted to feel the same way that I show up in real life. So when I have a town hall, when I had a coffee hour, when I am answering people's questions or engaging one-on-one or telling my own stories about what it's like to be a mom or just kind of my day job, I replicate that on social media because that's authentic to me. And what's great about social media is I'm reaching so many more people. What I've loved about the Ask Me Anything and the questions that I get is it feels like people are willing to ask questions that they might be too afraid to ask in a public forum because they're anonymous and because it's not in front of a room of people. And that's been really empowering. But that's always how I check myself. Is this true to who I am? Would this feel authentic to anybody who sees me in real life or my friends, or does it feel gimmicky? And if it's gimmicky, I'm not going to do it.

Sarah [00:32:25] So here's my question. We started with your virality and authenticity, but definitely a critique inside that we've been touching on multiple times with the Democratic party is that overly carefulness, over-dependence on the analytical answer. And so where have you been too careful? Where do you look back on an issue or an answer or an ask me anything where you think, I was being too careful. I was too worried about XYZ constituency and I really needed to speak a little more clearly around an issue, around COVID, around a situation? Do you have a moment like that where you look back with some regret and think I could have done that differently?

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:33:08] Yeah, there's a lot. I'm six years into this job. So I look back at my first few years and I wasn't as honest or candid. I didn't use social media in the same way. I was probably overly cautious about, okay, I'm going to communicate with people via press release and my team has to see it and I have to get sign-off and it's got to sound exactly right. And like anything, I am more comfortable with the speed of Instagram, the more that I do it. And there is something really freeing about the fact reels has extended the amount of time that you can do a video. But when it was just 90 seconds, it kind of felt the same way that old Twitter felt where it forces you to think about how do I say this in a concise way, in an authentic way, in a short amount of time, which I think is consumable for a lot of people.

[00:33:57] So I used to do hour, two hour long live streams where I had printed out a ton of research. COVID is a good example. I downloaded six different COVID reopening plans from Harvard in front of the state of Michigan. I was reading all of them thinking that people would engage with this. And it was too much. It was too information. And I think that's what I've learned is people can't engage in that much information. And I'm more willing now just to tell people where I'm at and answer questions, acknowledging that this is me in this moment talking to you as a person. And knowing that it may not be perfect all the time. I've even gotten texts from some colleagues saying, hey, I watched your video. I loved what you said, but could you tweak this one thing? And that's a good, healthy feedback loop where I think in my earlier years, if somebody had had any critique of anything I did, I would be like, "Oh God, I can't do that again," and panicked. And that that's not the right approach.

Beth [00:34:59] I am a careful person. I relate to a lot of the critiques that are being lobbed at the Democratic Party right. That I can be too careful, that I can too process-oriented, that I can be bogged down in the details. I can totally see myself with reams of research trying to get people to engage with me over two hours.

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:35:15] Yes. Like listen to me talk at you for two hours.

Beth [00:35:18] And so this comes from a place of like self-reflection as much as critique of the party, but a lot of the discussion post-election with Democrats has been about communication strategy and not about substance. And I am struggling to put some meat on the bones here. Even if we're communicating everything in exactly the right way, I think some of what appeals about Donald Trump, as Sarah said earlier, is the sense that like, well, they aren't talking to me about how to get things done. They're just doing things. So I wonder if you had the kind of magic wand that Trump gives himself, takes for him himself and then just waits to see what happens if anybody will challenge him on it, what would you just go at hard? What would you be willing to go at almost recklessly in pursuit of because you think it would make the country better?

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:36:12] That's a great question. I think for me-- and again, this is just thinking about my background and when I graduated and how old I am-- housing. Just build as much housing as possible. And there's a lot of hurdles that stand in the way of that, but just do it. And in a place like where I live in Metro Detroit, regional transit. It is a conversation we have debated now for decades. We are one of the only major metro regions that does not have a regional transit system. So I think building those two things. Build a ton more housing and build a regional transit system and ask for forgiveness instead of asking for permission.

Sarah [00:36:52] Building is usually a good place to do that for sure.

Beth [00:36:57] Well, Senator McMorrow, thank you so much for spending time with us. It is a delight to hear from you. We're going to be watching your next steps very closely. The book is, Hate Won't Win. Any final thoughts for our listeners?

Senator Mallory McMorrow [00:37:10] Thank you for listening and thank you for staying engaged. I think I was worried in the second Trump era that people would be so overwhelmed they would check out and we haven't seen that. So I'm excited about the book. The book is a guide. It has a workbook section and I hope every listener knows we need you to do this. And I'm excited to see what you do next.

Beth [00:37:38] Thank you so much to Mallory for joining us. We're also excited to share with you our conversation with Jake Rakov, who's 37 years old, running in California, as we mentioned, against his former boss, Congressman Brad Sherman. He was the Congressman Sherman's Deputy Communications Director. And while he does not hold any ill will, he does see what many of us do, that it is time for some change. So we hope that you love this chat with Jake Rakov. Jake, I'm really excited to have you here on Pantsuit Politics. I am surprised as a 40 something year old Kentucky mom that I am so interested in a California election. So thanks for being here.

Jake Rakov [00:38:18] Thank you for having me.

Beth [00:38:19] I think it shows you're doing a lot of things right. I want to start really local with you because you do live in a really different place than I do. If I came into your district and went to dinner with five or six folks, what would be the pressing concerns that came out of that dinner about life?

Jake Rakov [00:38:38] This district is really unique because it actually covers a pretty broad section of Los Angeles. I'm not sure how familiar you guys are with LA geography. I'm in Studio City, which is in the San Fernando Valley, kind of on the eastern edge of the district, but the district actually expands all the way out west to Malibu and the coast and Pacific Palisades, where the fires were. So that is, depending on where you lottery pick those five residents from, everyone's going to have a little bit of a different view of how life is going for them in Los Angeles right now. I think a few unifying things that we have are the Palisades fire and the rebuilding, making sure we maintain our community, our small businesses and the jobs that were lost and certainly the people who want to get back in their homes. I think another one you're going to see is Ventura Boulevard, it's one of the main streets of this district, it kind of cuts almost completely across the middle of it from Studio City where I am all the way out to Tarzana and Calabasas. A lot of those businesses have closed down.

[00:39:34] A lot those businesses were small businesses owned by residents for decades. There's a lot of for lease signs on Ventura Blvd right now. Every one of those has a different story obviously of why they're not there anymore. I've talked to business owners who've said rising rental costs and overhead costs. And most recently, the tariffs are starting to affect some of the import business who sell goods from other countries. So there's a lot of impact there as well. And I think the other part of the district is if you go north that we go into, which is California State University, Northridge area, the university, there's Winnetka, Reseda, a lot of that area, that's a lot area that has been needing economic opportunity. It's a lot of younger families. Like myself, I graduated college in 2011 after 2008 financial crisis. The idea of home ownership like my parents had in older generations, we don't have that same reality. So I think economic opportunity for a big swath of this district of bringing good jobs back to the district and economic opportunity around where you grew up, where you saw your parents make a good living. And now you're like, how can I not make same good living in the same area?

Sarah [00:40:48] Some of that doesn't sound unique to our part of the country. I only say that because those are some big issues people are struggling with everywhere. They're not necessarily extreme or revolutionary problems, but not everybody's out there running against their former boss, Jake. That's a big deal. As a former staffer, that's a big deal. How'd you get there?

Jake Rakov [00:41:16] I, like many other Democrats around the country, have worked in democratic politics since 2012. I started in college really working on local races in Austin, in UT Austin. When I came to LA, I came out to be an actor, I was a bartender and a waiter, and through those connections I met of my customers, I got back into LA politics, which I had worked on and studied in college. So I met a mayoral candidate in 2012, jumped on her race, worked in the valley. She used to live around the corner from where I live now. So I started every day at 6 a.m. in this neighborhood, meeting people and folks like that. So I got to learn L.A. Politics very, very quickly and I fell in love with the city. I think I've been in this industry for so long, and like so many Democrats after Trump won again in 2024, we all kind of went off on our own, kind of turned off cable news for a few months. Rating probably dropped for every network. Drank a little too much champagne to forget everything. But looking back on it, how did we get here again? For the first time, yes, a fluke, everything was crazy. No one knew what was going to happen.

[00:42:20] And that's when I worked for Congressman Sherman, it was in 2017 during his first term. And we saw how crazy it was so quickly. And to think, okay, we've gotten them beat, he's gone, we got Biden, we're going to pass the torch and all these things and this new Democrat era can begin again, because we saw just how crazy that got, and then he won. And all of us were shell shocked. And it's something I've talked a lot about in my career of the Democrats needed to move quicker after Obama to replenish their bench, to allow that new generation to come up, to allows those house members to raise up to senators, to raise up to governors, to raised up to AGs. And if we think that the Clinton and Biden to have been on the ballot since 1970s, this is the first time we haven't had a Biden or a Clinton like national government since like 1972. That's crazy. If we're not going to wake up and move the party forward ourselves from the party establishment, then it's going to be up to us to actually do it. And so that's really what led me to run.

Beth [00:43:23] So you're running this very ambitious generational change campaign against your former boss around three good governance pillars. And that's part of what really got my attention in your campaign because I feel like on the other side of 2024, one of the post-mortems takes that is kind of congealing in a way that I think is not exactly right is this idea that voters don't care about democracy. I think voters did not accept the democracy argument that the Biden campaign made and that the Harris campaign inherited and ran with. But I do think the way that you're talking about democracy issues has pretty broad appeal. So will you talk about those three pillars and why you decided to go this route in your focus?

Jake Rakov [00:44:10] Absolutely. The three points of my pledge that I'm running on that I promised to do is a) no corporate PAC money to my campaigns. I think after Citizens United, the direct donations of corporation PACs to candidates has just gone completely haywire. The other one is term limits. I believe in five terms for congressmen or congresspeople. That's 10 years in Congress. That's in DC. And then I'll hold a town hall in district every month I'm in office. I think these three things speak to something that I feel like we have lost in our politics, which is common sense. I feel we have so much common sense in our electoral politics and that Congress was never meant to be a career. I think just by the rules of the game that you have to reapply for the job every two years; and every ten years, your entire district can shift. Those to me do not point to a job that's meant to be a lifelong position. And I think that it's a good function of democracy to get new people in, to get new members of the community to serve their public.

[00:45:13] And so I think the three things we decided to run on, these are three things that everyone could do tomorrow. Every single member of Congress could take this pledge tomorrow, start their five term limits, and we would get more progressive politics the day after. Like it would immediately start people rethinking of how they legislate, how they operate in Congress, and how accessible and accountable they are to their constituents. And I think that's the core thing I'm trying to get to. It is so easy nowadays with technology and where we're getting our media and also what we as voters, as you were talking about rejecting that idea of democracy that Biden and Kamala ran on, are wanting our members and our elected leaders to be accessible, to be accountable. It's too easy to do that now for them to take the pass and go, I'm in D.C. I can't deal with my constituents right now. And I think voters have just completely not accepted that anymore. And I that's where that's coming from.

Sarah [00:46:07] I love the pledge and I love the idea that people could take it tomorrow. I'm wondering, have you thought any about more long term structural changes to get at that? I always use Los Angeles County (I think it's the County Commission) as an example of how much we have ballooned in the amount of representation. Like, the amount of constituents per representative. I really support uncapping the house. I think that's part of the democratic issue. Is that it's not just that they're not responsive. It's that you have so many people to be responsive to. That's really, really hard when it's so many people feel like one of a couple hundred thousand because they are. Have you thought about any structural reforms or have you heard of any other progressive ideas around getting at that the amount of constituents that you're trying to be responsive to.

Jake Rakov [00:46:57] I think that's a great idea. I hadn't heard of that before- the uncapping the house. I think that's an ingenious way to think about things because, yes, a member of Congress on average represents about 750,000 constituents.

Sarah [00:47:08] It's too many!

Jake Rakov [00:47:09] That's a lot that's more than some states. And so it is interesting that, yes, the LA County Board of Supervisors as you were talking about, I think there's about five and they represent the entire LA County and that's nuts.

Sarah [00:47:20] It's like the size of a country! That's insane!

Jake Rakov [00:47:25] It is huge.

Sarah [00:47:24] It's just a law. It's not in the constitution, man. It's not hard to change. They just did it because they like the size of the room. It's so stupid.

Jake Rakov [00:47:33] It's true. I think we forget a lot of these things are arbitrary. That we have been inventing democracy again and again over the last 200 some odd years, and it was never started as it was, right? We aren't the 13 colonies anymore. And so all of these things that we can look at changing, we can, and we've changed them even recently. To go back into like the early 1900s, democracy looks very different on a functional level than what it does now. So I think any of those ideas are good to bring to the table to say, okay, look, what we have been doing is obviously not working for where we as a country are and where we're going. And if we want to save this democracy and hold on to it, we are seeing it tested right now in this administration like never before. And we have to be able to be creative to go, okay, how do we not let this happen in the future and how can we actually make democracy work for the people again?

Beth [00:48:24] If you just want to kick around structural ideas anytime, we're your girls, we've been thinking about this for a long time. We have many, many ideas. But what I really appreciate about these pillars that you're running on is that you aren't waiting for those things. We can sit around and go, money and politics- terrible. How do we deal with it? And you're just saying, well, just don't take it. Just don't that PAC money. It brings me to something that we've been discussing for the 10 years we've been doing this, which is the tension of don't hate the player, hate the game. That really appeals to me because anything that is an argument based in grace, I'm going to find appealing. And I do understand the pressures that our representatives are under. And it's a very difficult job that I personally don't want because I can see how difficult it is. At the same time, I worry that there is a real lost sense of agency by people in these seats because the game is so complicated and so hard. And it feels like a breath of fresh air for someone like you to come along and say, "I see it too and it will make my campaign more difficult, but I'm going to do it and know that I'm contributing something just by showing that it can be done." If you win an election against an incumbent without taking corporate PAC money, you have made a very big statement.

Jake Rakov [00:49:43] Yeah, no, you're right. I am fully aware; I've worked in this industry long enough to know the uphill climb that I have in front of me. That certainly was daunting when I started it, but it was never a deal breaker. I was never going to say because the whole thesis of my campaign is this incumbency protection that we have just instilled into our party that makes us think primaries are somehow illegal or immoral, that active competition in an active democracy is somehow counterintuitive. I've seen it for so long and I said, you know what, I'm in a unique position where I have done this as my career. I can bring a new challenge to an incumbent who's been here for 30 years and hasn't had a real challenge in 13 years since 2012. I can actually bring a unique challenge to this and show you know what, we have to have this conversation. And if we have to start it forcefully just to bring this conversation to the table, then that's the way it has to be done. Because going about as we have for the past few decades of just "People in DC know better, they're telling us what Democrats are supposed to do and how the party is supposed to function," has only gotten us Trumped twice. And now a Republican trifecta that's letting the government basically burn to the ground. So if this is not the time to have that conversation, I don't know what it would take for the other leadership to go, you know what, let's actually evaluate ourselves.

Sarah [00:50:58] I've been a Democrat a long time, Jake, and I've been in Democratic politics a long time. And I know enough to know that you are taking heat publicly. But I got a hunch that privately you're probably hearing from people as well. So what are people saying privately about this challenge and what they would like to see where they are or how they're feeling about this sort of movement to primary Democrats?

Jake Rakov [00:51:27] It's funny, I've gotten a lot of radio silence from the party establishment that I expected of, of not returning phone calls or people I've worked with before not seeing my text message for a few days kind of thing. I've heard every excuse in the book, but I've also gotten a lot of proactive emails from a community activist and leaders around this district and around the country saying, thank you. We need this challenge. We need to have this conversation. Thank you for stepping out. I've had some people reach out and say, thank you, you inspired me to run against my city council member, to run against my local state rep who's been there forever. And I've had some Democratic staffers from the Hill reach out on Signal, the famous app, and be like, "Don't tell anyone I said this, but how can I help behind the scenes?" I think there is just a want of change and new energy and we just need new voices to be able to think creatively to see we have a lot of problems facing our country and our party and our districts. What we have been doing for so long is clearly not working anymore.

Beth [00:52:35] I think you're right that there is a vibe that competition is feared and that seniority is the most important thing. Just as we're talking today, I was reading this morning about who's going to head a committee after Dick Durbin resigns and we're just like, well, I tend to favor seniority. Seniority's the way to do this. And that seems like a banana's lesson to take from the past election to me. And I was thinking about this good governance agenda of yours as a model for the party. I really appreciate that you have these pillars that could translate nationwide as a contrast to Republicans. So the democracy argument not being Voldemort over there is going to take everything down and we've got to sell you on how bad they are; but the democracy argument being we're going to clean up our own house first. And if that's what the National Party were about right now, then I think it would give candidates a lot of room on specific issues. To be what their districts need them to be. Is that kind of part of your calculus here?

Jake Rakov [00:53:37] Yeah, absolutely. I think the size of the House and the size of these districts and just how across the country they are, every district's going to have different issues that they're wrestling with, especially given where the government is right now. And so the issues I hear in my constituency are not the same as someone in Michigan or someone in Florida, a Democrat even. And I think, yeah, us being able to say, yes, this is terrible what is happening over here; Democrats can be the party to intelligently rebuild the government because we're going to have to. We're going to have to restart this government and bring it back, but we can bring it back smarter and better and, yes, more efficient to use the keyword, but Democrats should be the ones that voters can trust to do that with the same hat on, and we can't do that if we are stuck in this mentality of ignoring the problems that led us to where we are.

[00:54:26] And so it's not about, I think, rehashing the past or anything like that, or saying this person did that and that. But it is about we have to be able ourselves as Democrats, look at our own party and go, where did we drop the ball? Where did we fail and how can we move forward to be able to get voters to trust us again? Because we've always been the party of progress and for the middle class and working Americans, and that's who's going to get hurt by a lot of these policies. How do we get them to trust again? And I think showing that we are taking our own mess seriously is a good step to doing that.

Sarah [00:54:58] Well, and look, where else is that conversation going to happen except in a primary?

Jake Rakov [00:55:05] Exactly.

Sarah [00:55:05] You know what I mean? I am sympathetic to how we got here when there are finite resources and finite support. Well then, of course, you would look at swing districts and you would focus there. And you wouldn't be consumed with safe districts. I get it. I do. Only problem with that argument is that the swing districts shrink in number every year. We don't have that many seats to defend. So that's why it gets so limited and the conversation gets so stilted and shrunken because we're operating on what? Like we're defending like 50 seats? No, it's not anywhere close. So if we're not testing our own ideas in primaries, they're not getting tested because we just don't have enough swing districts anymore. Now that's a problem that I actually think uncapping the House would get at. But until it does, that's the limitation of that idea. Now I know I get that the swing districts have gotten more expensive. Those races have gotten more expensive. I get that. I can see that. I understand that. But that's also still kind of a limiting vision through which only money is the thing that matters. It's the only resource we have to protect. I just think if we can't allow some freedom of debate and innovation inside primaries, then we're basically saying two thirds of these don't even matter.

Jake Rakov [00:56:38] And I think we have disenfranchised so many voters because of that exact mentality. And if we cannot look at our safe seats-- this is a D plus 20 something seat, he's won handedly over Republicans plus 20 points every time he's ran. If we can't have those conversations in our safest seats to go, okay, let's hash out this democratic idea. Let's hashout these policies from a democratic perspective and in other districts across the country as well where there are safe democratic seats granted on different issues, but we should be able to have these conversations here because then how can we trust ourselves and our party and our brand, which we do have a national brand, to go to those swing districts and go, I know what a Democrat is. I know it Democrats are fighting for.

[00:57:20] I see the Democrats who are leading their party and leading the voices of other Democrats. And that is what they're going to do here. And instead, you're absolutely right, we focus on the swing districts first and go, we got to buckle down on these frontline Dems. And we do because they're going to be the most dangerous, but that's not where we as a party are forming our ideology. That's where we're defending it, but we are forming it here. And it's these primaries that I and others are running are really allowing us to go, okay, what is that message we're going take into those swing districts to go okay, this is where the democratic party is right now.

Beth [00:57:54] So you are quite a bit younger than your opponent, and you are getting profiled in connection with other people who are quite a bit younger than their opponents. And this topic of age and politics makes people really nervous. It makes a lot of people in our audience really nervous every time they hear us talk about Joe Biden's decline and our feeling that he should not have run again, because it's easy to get in a very zero-some place about generational struggle and about age as a factor in who should be leading us. So I wonder how you think about that and how you speak to much, much older people you want to represent. How will you be both a voice of the new generation while also caring for people whose dependence on government grows as they get into later chapters of life?

Jake Rakov [00:58:40] I lost my mom earlier this year. She passed away in March 5th, and I listened to y'all's episode the other week about assisted suicide, dying with dignity, and she was in hospice for the last few weeks of her life. She had dementia and a number of other health issues. And also my father a couple of years ago to cancer, who also went through a hospice situation.

Beth [00:59:04] I'm so sorry.

Jake Rakov [00:59:09] Thank you. And double whammy, my dog has cancer and is getting surgery today. It's been a roller coaster week

Beth [00:59:18] No. We should have baked you something.

Jake Rakov [00:59:22] No, thank you. You guys got me on a day, but I'm so excited to be here. I started that sentence by saying we do have a generation that is about to come into an age where they are retiring, where they're receiving services that they paid into and they're due to those entitlements of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. To think that the Republicans in Congress are just going to callously cut them without blinking an eye probably here in a few weeks. The thing about, I think, my pledge that I really appreciate is that it doesn't say anything about age. It doesn't say anything about once you hit 70, you're really not helping anyone. You need to go and sit down and just set away. If you are 65 and you want to run for office for the first time, and you are serving district with an experience that that district appreciates, go all for it. You have experiences and knowledge that I don't at 37. And 25 or whatever the minimum age is I think for Congress that they don't have certainly. And that's not to discredit my experience, certainly, or anyone else younger than me who's running. We have experiences and worldviews that a 65-year-old person wouldn't have. But I think just this idea that allowing the district to choose new and vibrant people and at least have that primary system of the conversation of, okay, the districts even shifted the boundaries. Where are we right now?

[01:00:45] In 10 years, did a factory close, did the business open, did a university expand? All these things change the dynamics of the districts. And if you are not actively connected to that district, like I think so many of these long term incumbents, they just rest on their laurels and stay in D.C. all the time. Like my opponent does. He doesn't even live here anymore. How are you connected to that constituency to know what they're feeling? How are you engaging with them? How were you truly representing what your district is if you weren't here dealing with them and seeing where they are emotionally, where they are economically? I doubt Congressman Sherman knows the state of Ventura Boulevard right now. I doubt he does. He's never here. And so if you can't take that to DC, to where you legislate, that's the problem. And then you become ineffective. And that's what all this is about. It's about effectiveness. It is about accountability, accessibility, and effectiveness. If the term limits, I think we get to that. We get to the idea of 10 years from now, I'd be done and whoever else is next can bring up where the community is then. And that is the whole point of it.

Sarah [01:01:49] I do think there's something to be said, though, for the time in D.C. I do want to put in a plug for I think all the time about Bill Clinton saying like the Contract for America, where everybody started going back to their districts every week, is where a lot of the bipartisanship fell apart. Do you think about how to balance that? I think once a month is reasonable. You got to go pretty far to California. But I think it is hard to balance the relationships you're trying to build on the Hill with the relationships you're try to maintain with your constituents.

Jake Rakov [01:02:15] Absolutely. I think they go hand in hand. I think there is something to be said right now. I don't see a ton of bipartisan work happening across the aisle at the moment, but it happened before and I believe it can happen again. But I believe if it can happen again if everyone comes to that table with that same understanding of I'm here for 10 years. I got to get shit done. I can't lay around waiting for my seniority to kick in so I can actually propose a bill that gets anywhere in the committee. I know it's going to take generational change and structural change like you were talking about, but that's the idea of the game of. It's we got to work through this quickly because I don't have five years to wait for a study to tell me what my tax percentage needs to be. I think so many things we pass now are just for government studies. That doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help a thing. We know what's happening. We see it in our communities, we see our districts, and I know the Republican districts who are suffering the same way my districts are. And so I have to be able to know and research that and find out who's on my side of issue-based and go, okay, let's work together. And you can do that a lot faster if you are more clear-sighted about the issues affecting your community.

Beth [01:03:20] What is your thought about bipartisanship? Who is in your scope of someone that you could work with across the aisle, or is that just kind of off the table right now because of the Trump administration?

Jake Rakov [01:03:30] I don't think it's totally off the table. I think it was just yesterday, someone posted about a bipartisan bill about lithium ion battery safety measures. And they passed I think with maybe 30 people opposed to it for some reason. You'll find those kinds of things that are just like, yes, we need to update some regulation or some law because technology is not where it was when the law was written. I think there are some Republicans who probably are out there with a little bit of a sane mind. I think Michael McCaul, he's on Foreign Affairs and Armed Services. He's done well, I think, for international issues. But I think right now, the ability of just getting anything through Congress does seem to be pretty stifled in a way that it's going to take some time to get that back. And I think January 2027, if Democrats take back the House, I do think you're going to see a lot of the legislative calculus shift because of that.

Beth [01:04:37] We always end our episode Outside of Politics, and I know that you are a theater kid.

Jake Rakov [01:04:42] Yes.

Beth [01:04:44] And I would love to hear what your favorite musical is and why.

Sarah [01:04:50] That's mean, Beth. That's like asking somebody their favorite child. You can't ask a theater kid that.

Beth [01:04:53] I promise a hard-hitting interview, I'm telling you.

Jake Rakov [01:04:57] This is what we came for. I've got a couple that I'll qualify it. So, Cell Block Tango is probably my favorite musical song.

Sarah [01:05:06] It's so good.

Beth [01:05:07] It's so great.

Jake Rakov [01:05:08] You could only do that song in a musical, and that is what musicals are for. It wasn't a pop song. It was just a great song that can only be done in a music. So Chicago's definitely up there. When I was in high school, Guys and Dolls was our big musical that we did, so that always has a soft place in my heart. Like that was kind of my heart-breaking musical.

Sarah [01:05:27] Did you ever see the performance of Guys and Dolls in London?

Jake Rakov [01:05:31] No.

Sarah [01:05:32] The audience was like a part of it. So the stage would rise and fall. And there were people in there. And so little police officers were coming to like move you around as some of it came up and became like pieces of the, and then they drop it back down, they dance and they kind of, it was so cool.

Jake Rakov [01:05:49] That's the thing about theater is you can do so many of those innovative, creative ways to perform things. I got to before my mom passed take her to New York to see Cabaret with Eddie Redmayne, which was such a unique take on the production. Cabaret's a great musical as well, but it was so interesting to see. It was in the round. So like the audience was a part of it like you were saying. Like you were in the club. But that's what I love about theater is you can always do something new. You can always reinvent it. And I think to end a little bit in politics, I think that's what politics should be. You always can invent. You always can do new ways of thinking, and we have to allow ourselves to do that. But we can't if we're still stuck operating like it's 30 years ago.

Beth [01:06:26] I love what you said about how Cell Block Tango could only be done in a musical. I think that's what I'm always looking for. I subscribe to our local theaters season, and I don't like the jukebox musicals. I just don't. I want to. I want to keep my mind open. We just saw Ann Juliet. I had really high hopes. The performances were stellar. The woman who played Juliet, it was worth being there just to hear her sing. Whatever. She was incredible. But I just always find myself feeling like we worked really hard to get these songs in and stretch some kind of story around them. And I like the distinctiveness of songs that can only be in a musical.

Jake Rakov [01:07:07] Yeah, I think there's a sound to them, obviously, but I think there's just a more acceptance of a storytelling in the music that doesn't exist a lot in a lot of like pop musicals. And when we can hear those amazing singers sing those songs, even the vocalists who can perform now on Broadway unlike anywhere else. But I think just the drama of how a song can be only really exists in a true musical.

Beth [01:07:29] Well, thank you so much for spending time with us. Keep in touch. Again, if you want to hear how we think the Supreme Court could be better, let us know.

Jake Rakov [01:07:36] I'd love to do that. I have tons of ideas, would love to talk to you about them.

Beth [01:07:40] And good luck with your campaign.

Jake Rakov [01:07:42] Thank you so much for having me.

Beth [01:07:45] Thanks so much to Jake for being here and for sharing his vision as part of a new tide of hopeful democratic leadership. We know there are lots of great candidates gearing up to run in 2026 and beyond, including many of you. We want to hear from you. If you're out there mounting a campaign, it gives us so much hope about what's to come in America. We appreciate you spending time with us all week this week. We'll see you back here next week. Until then, have the best Memorial Day weekend available to you.