The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 27 episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch this interview here.
Perry Bacon: This is Maurice Mitchell, everybody, who’s the national director of the Working Families Party, which I’m guessing people who are listening probably know what that is. So thanks for joining us. First question I wanted to ask you was—I’m a word person. I’m in journalism. “Authoritarian,” “fascist,” “dictator,” what is the term you use [to describe] what we’re experiencing now? Maybe that doesn’t matter.
Maurice Mitchell: What I think is the most important for people to understand is that for most of our lives we’ve dealt with politicians on the left or on the right or in the center that have agreed that they were going to conduct politics in a democratic way—meaning they have to be able to win over more people—and that at the end of the day when all the votes are counted, you take your licks if you lost. And if you win, you govern. Today in America, there’s an entire party that doesn’t believe in that—that believes if you have the power, you should do it. That’s more important. That concept is more important to me than some of the language.
I think the language is important, but in a hierarchy of importance—there’s a five-alarm fire, right? So I don’t want to be outside of the house and be having an abstract conversation when there’s a burning house and there’s kids inside about, Is this a five-alarm fire or four-alarm fire? How hot do you think it is? These are important—but relative to the urgency of the moment, all of us, anybody who doesn’t want that kid to burn in that fire, needs to take a bucket as quickly as possible to put that fire out and make sure that no fires happen in that house again.
Bacon: Let me ask it differently then. I guess a lot of times from 2017 to 2020, we, me, people were saying there’s an emergency, there’s a five alarm fire. Are we now in a six-alarm fire? I don’t know much about fires or alarms, but I think things are different now. And what does it mean? Things are different now, do you agree?
Mitchell: Yeah. Things are different because they won the election, right?
Bacon: He was president the first time is what I’m trying to distinguish between. I think things are worse.
Mitchell: Oh, absolutely things are worse because when Trump and MAGA was in this outside movement and when he got to the White House, he surrounded himself with people in the Republican Party, but people who still operated with some of the guardrails that most people have traditionally operated with. Over those years, they were able to build the infrastructure for MAGA as a governing project, right? So over these years, all of those right-wing think tanks now became MAGA think tanks, and all of those politicians became MAGA politicians. And he was actually able to create a cabinet-in-waiting so that he could actually govern the way that he wanted to do in Trump 1.0. And we said that that would happen. And the thing is, it’s not—they were saying these things out loud. And some of us, you included, all we simply were saying is believe the things that they’re actually saying. Steve Bannon goes on every day and broadcast his tactics and strategy. And so we’re just saying, Yeah, we believe that they actually believe the things that they are saying and that they plan to execute it. And that’s what they’re doing in Trump 2.0.
So it’s a continuation, but also it’s, in some ways, institutionalizing MAGA and institutionalizing the top-down authoritarian rule by one man. And initially, that wasn’t institutionalized. In fact, he was quite frustrated because a lot of the people in the bureaucracy that were translating his vision into action believed in those guardrails. That’s what we’re facing right now. And it isn’t approaching. It isn’t encroaching. It’s here. And the reason so many of us were organizing as many people as possible to vote against him and to vote for Kamala Harris was because we were clear that the election of Trump would lead to what we’re experiencing now.
Bacon: Let me ask a question in the news right now and about our response. Trump is trying to get Lisa Cook off the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. I think Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, put out a statement and said, They’re trying to throw a Black woman … noted that she’s a Black woman as well. And some people on Twitter were left of center were like, We shouldn’t lean into the fact she’s a Black woman. It seems to me they’re doing racist things and they’re doing authoritarian things and they’re doing economic injustice things—and we should talk about all those things. But how do—is it all of the above? I want to ask you how you feel about this.
Mitchell: Yeah. This is not complicated and it’s clearly all of the above. They are openly a white Christian nationalist movement. And they understand that aligning their political interest with white Christian nationalism fuels the popular appeal of everything that they’re doing. So yes, they’re invading D.C. for all types of reasons, but it is not a coincidence that D.C. is a Black city with a Black woman mayor. That is not a coincidence. Yes, he wants to be able to conduct the monetary policy of this country— absolutely—which is the reason why he’s targeting Lisa Cook. And she’s a Black woman, and that is not a coincidence. It doesn’t serve us to flatten what’s happen because then our analysis of what they’re doing is off. And then our response to what they’re doing will be off. And I’ve never lived in a world, at least in my organizing and in my advocacy and in my conversations, where race and racial justice lives somewhere else—in some bubble somewhere else—and economic rights and economic justice live elsewhere.
In fact, it’s ironic because there’s some people on the left that want to reduce everything to class. And then there’s people who are, I would say, traditional liberals that want to reduce everything to identity. And at least in the Democratic Party coalition, I attribute that to 26 years ago the triangulation that Bill Clinton did where they tried to cleave off the social rights that have been the bread and butter of Democrats for generations and the economic rights, deprioritizing the interest of labor in the Democratic Party coalition in order to create space for corporate America and Wall Street. When they did that, they created that separation. It’s funny because many of them now are the ones that critique “wokeism” and identity politics. Their cleaving of those rights are actually the source of inside of the Democratic Party where they created this need to have people lean into identity outside of economic ranks. And so it’s funny the architects of that cleavage are now, years later, wagging their fingers against identity politics people. But you created a market for people who are focused on identity outside of economics.
And that’s actually a rift that we have to heal. We have to be able to talk about the fact that racial justice has always been about economic justice, and the Civil Rights Movement has always been a movement that has been deeply wedded to the labor movement in this country up until recently. Now there’s spaces where you could abstractly talk about race without talking about economics.
Bacon: If you’re the average American living through this, what should you do? You don’t have a lot of power individually, but there are protests you can go to and you can vote a year from now. But what should you do right now?
Mitchell: OK, I’m going to give people the advice that I got when I was a young activist in college. And it’s true: Honestly, there’s not much you could do as an individual. But individuals joining organizations can do a lot. So find an organization. Find a local organization that is a pro-democracy organization. Or you might be lucky and be one of the workers that actually have a union. Lean into your labor union and actually be more of an active member of your labor union if you have one. Way too many people aren’t represented as workers—but if you are, then you have a union that you could be really active in. Now if you can’t find a local organization—because I would encourage you to lean into a local organization—or if the organizations don’t really fit who you are, your issues, or whatever, there are national organizations like the Working Families Party. And so I would encourage any working person to join the Working Families Party.
But if we’re not your cup of tea and if there are no local organizations and if you can’t find a national organization to plug into, then that means you might need to start your own. And all that means is finding like-minded people, maybe neighbors, maybe friends, maybe classmates, maybe people in your group chats to roll as a crew. So instead of you just going to that march, decide we’re going to do this together. Instead of you just deciding to take some action, figuring out what local action you could take. And it could be really small. It could start off as, You know what, once a week or once a month, we’re going to get together and we’re going to read some articles about what’s going on so that we all could learn together. That is meaningful and a step in the right direction. The fundamental thing is don’t go alone. Don’t go alone. Find an organization, find community. And there’s so many organizations that you’ll likely find one.
And if anybody is interested, one of the things that we try to do at the Working Families Party is make it really easy if you have a limited amount of time to do something of consequence with many more people and to begin to draw connections. We have these things called wolf packs—and it’s a way for everyday people to get into activism with others, people you might know or also people you might not know. So when I say start an organization, we even try to make that easy by helping people start wolf packs with WFP. And we’re not the only organization that does this, but I’m biased, right? You could start a local organization with five of your friends and do something meaningful in the direction of democracy.
Bacon: Let me make sure I connect it. So Lisa Cook is getting fired up here. In a lot of local places—you may be in a city where your congressman’s already a Democrat, your mayor’s already a Democrat, your state has a Democratic senator, you voted for Harris. How does the local action shape the broader environment?
Mitchell: Well, it’s actually tremendous. The way that our country’s democracy is set up is that power actually is really diffuse. So Trump engages in a lot of theater, but actually the actual power to advance the Trump agenda exists on the local level, which is one of the reasons why he is attempting to bring in the National Guard. There’s just limited things that the federal government can do—which means in places where Democrats are elected, who the Democrats are and what they’re doing is really important. Issues that are really close to you—education, public safety, policing, housing—all of those things are dealt with on the local level in your city or in your county, and so I would start there.
At the Working Families Party, we endorse close to a thousand people because we understand how important that is. On the state level, where Democrats have power, what are they doing with that power? I think it’s inexcusable for Democrats to be wagging their fingers, rightfully, against Trump and the federal government, but then sitting on state power or local power and not advancing a full-throated working people’s agenda. That’s one of the reasons why we engage in so many primaries, right? That primary in New York is about the fact that Democrats aren’t on their job, and there’s a huge divide inside the Democratic Party around what to do in this moment. And so even if you’re in a place where there aren’t any MAGA folks in office, there is meaningful work to do. Because if you have governing power and you’re not part of MAGA, you can’t just rest on your laurels and you should be using those powers not just to defend. Of course we should play defense, but we also need to play offense.
Ninety million people didn’t show up, and I think a significant percentage of them didn’t show up because they have reasoned that participating in democracy has not earned them very much. In order to change that, in order to bring people into the process, they need to experience governance that actually is responsive. And so there’s a lot of grassroots work, I think, to push back against Trump—but also we can move forward because power is diffuse. And Democrats, I think, benefit way too much from how ghoulish MAGA is. They could always point at, Yes, I agree with you how authoritarian, how white Christian nationalist, how racist MAGA is. But they, where they have authority, should in a moment of stark contrast be leading in a particular way. And that has to happen through getting the agitation from the base.
Bacon: Talk about what’s happening in New York. What have you learned from that primary? I guess, let me ask it more directly, what are we learning from the fact that the Jeffries, Schumer, Gillibrand.… To be fair, Letitia James, Nadler—there are people who have endorsed him. It’s not as if no one’s endorsing him. It’s just more—that a lot of people are not. What do we make of that, and what does that tell us?
Mitchell: Yeah. I think there’s a lot to be made of what’s happening now. If we take a few steps above the particularities of it, I think it speaks to a crossroads in our democracy that is bigger than the Democratic Party. And look, I think people who witnessed what happened in New York City with Zohran’s race and the coalition that was built around him and the strategy that the Working Families Party created of creating a multiracial slate and using that dynamism in order to push back against the really corrupt politics of Cuomo and Adams—anybody that looks at that in the pro-democracy movement and seeks to undermine it, destroy it, distance themselves from it are writing themselves out of history. There are different arguments, and I think there should be different arguments, about where we go in our democracy. And there is a faction of folks that are arguing that we should set our sights lower, that we should demand less, that we should “moderate” ourselves—and that would somehow unlock the possibility to be able to win more people over. Months after an election where the pro-democracy movement lost at the top of the ticket, right, that’s their argument. And I’m trying to be as fair to their argument as possible.
We have a different argument. Our argument is based on the fact that poll after poll after poll shows that working people across identity, across ideology want government to do more, not less; want government that’s not corrupt; want government that actually invest in their community and themselves. So [they] really want a robust government. We consistently see that. And so what we did was we followed the people. And Zohran is a perfect example of that. It’s a very disciplined campaign focused on affordability because again and again and again, what people are saying is, I’m in a crisis of portability. Rent is way too high. The ability for me to own a home seems unreachable. Paying for basic goods every day is just way too much for lifesaving medicine, for health care. And it’s odd to me that based on all of that data—and some of that data comes from the “moderates” and centrist—that you would translate that into, Alright, let’s convince the population that we should do less.
And so, on one side is the do less, moderate, ask for less. On the other side is we want a country and a democracy and an economy that actually does more. And we have the proof of Zohran’s successful election, but not just Zohran’s successful election. In that election, on Election Day in New York, Zohran won and we were really excited about him winning. But we also had victories in Albany, victories in Syracuse. We have a candidate in Rochester who is competitively running in November. Victories in Buffalo. To me, that demonstrates that, yes, Zohran is an exceptional candidate and it was seismic the victory in New York, but we’re winning everywhere. The we should do more and we should focus like a laser on the issues that working people are saying that they care about—affordability and pushing back against corporations so they get a fair share, a fair shake—that is working in New York, Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany. All four of those places are very different. Buffalo was more of a Midwestern town than New York or anything else. It’s closer to Detroit in some ways.
And those same messages a few weeks later were successful in Arizona—Adelita Grijalva. That competitive congressional primary was one with the same coalition: labor and community, the Working Families Party, and focusing like a laser on affordability. And then a few weeks later in Detroit and Seattle and Tucson. Those same messages and that same coalition and the Working Families Party won really hard-earned victories. And I think what we’re establishing is in every region—even in rural Oregon, we’re having victories. In big cities like New York, in rural Oregon. When I take a step back, and you asked me about what does it mean, I think we’re at a crossroads about who should lead the pro-democracy movement. And they have an argument. And their argument, I think, is an argument of a past and a system that frankly doesn’t exist anymore. And those folks—if they want to write themselves out of history, be my guest. The future is demonstrated in the coalition that’d be built around Zohran and many of the other candidates.
Bacon: That’s interesting because I was going to ask you to connect these two conversations—about Trump and what he’s doing and the primaries that we’re talking about in New York. Some people might say this is not the time to have a debate. Any fights between the centrist and the progressives should be—we should all focus on Trump right now. We should not focus on any divisions. And I think what I’m hearing you say, let me put in my own words, is how we decide to fight authoritarianism, what kind of message we have, who leads that fight is important. And the approach of Zohran is more likely to win the authoritarianism fight than the approach of poll reading and so on. Is that what you’re getting at—to win the authoritarian fight, it matters who the leadership of the authoritarian cause is to beat the authoritarians?
Mitchell: Absolutely. And I would say I agree deeply that the primary fight is the fight against the authoritarians, the fascists, the white Christian nationalists. And how you pursue that fight is critical if you want to win that fight. We’re not interested in engaging in factional warfare. We’re interested in winning the main fight and being part of the united front that does that—but how you do that matters. I don’t think we should just sit on our hands and allow the people that led us into the loss in November lead us into this next fight. I think we should have a serious conversation about what the battle plans look like, and that’s what primaries allow us to do. And the proof is in the primary victories. At WFP, we’re not writing breathless op-eds in The Washington Post or The New York Times about a factional battle inside of the Democratic Party. To me, that’s small.
We are putting boots on the ground and developing a strategy that is actually winning and winning new people into the coalition. Everything that the—I hate the terms “centrist” and “moderate” because it almost sounds like they’re reasonable. Also, I look at those people as being very, very deep ideologues. And my evidence is the fact that after the New York primary, if they weren’t deep ideologues, they would’ve dusted themselves off and said, Hey, this is the person who won the primary, let’s accommodate, let’s align. Or if they were being Machiavellian, let’s figure out how we co-opt this movement because there’s more people here. But because of their deep, deep ideological commitment, they only could look at this movement as something that is a threat, which means that they have prioritized factional warfare over the primary struggle which is the defeat against fascism. And they’re the “vote blue no matter who” team, except when the outcome isn’t what they want.
So yeah, absolutely, the primary struggle is against global fascism. How you pursue that struggle matters, and we’re engaging in good faith and in a productive way to argue that the way you pursue that struggle is through engaging working people in a language that they understand on the issues that matter most to them and focusing like a laser on that.
Bacon: And to be clear, Zohran did talk about ICE. He did talk about Trump. His focus was on affordability, but he didn’t ignore the other things, right?
Mitchell: No. No, absolutely. And that’s another, I think, debate that we’re winning. You don’t need to deny or tuck in or disappear your values. You don’t need to give up on some of the most at-risk or marginalized communities. I think it is a complete fallacy. What people desire in their leaders is authenticity and fight. People don’t require from their leaders a one-to-one agreement on everything. I think there’s this attitude of, These are “hot-button” issues. These are controversial issues. We don’t want to get pulled into a conversation about trans kids. We don’t want to get pulled into a conversation about immigration. And so let’s basically neuter ourselves of all of our values and focus on affordability in a way that is dishonest so that we could win over the working class. Basically, throw these communities under the bus, right? That is the argument. We disagree with that, and I think the proof is in the fact that all of the candidates that I talked about led with affordability—and were keen to focus like the laser on affordability—but also led with our values. There there was a fight, [they] engaged in those righteous fights. And what we’ve seen is that that’s actually inspired people—because that’s what leadership is.
Look, Trump’s base don’t necessarily agree with everything that he does point by point. Some of the stuff that he does is incoherent, so it’s almost impossible to agree with it. But they believe in him, and he’s built that deep agreement and cult-like connection. What’s most important for leaders is to build a true connection based on whether or not you really believe this person. And I don’t think you could get that as somebody who’s to the left of these folks if you don’t embrace people who are on the margins. That’s who we are as people who believe in democracy. And look, I saw some folks—people in the Democratic Party—hours after November, pivot and say, OK, look, can we just be real? A man is a man and a woman is a woman. That comes off so cheap. I saw Gavin Newsom do that thing where he started—it just comes off so thirsty. Ultimately, I don’t know who you’re winning, but I certainly know who you’re losing with that approach.
Bacon: We don’t have any exit polls on this kind of thing, but you assume there are some Zohran Trump voters. The thing you’re hinting at is people want authenticity and respect and so on. There are people who are not reading the checklist of, He’s for rent control and I’m against rent control. I don’t like grocery stores because I’m a capitalist. Your guess is that this is not how most people [operate]. They’re looking for leadership. They’re looking for, Does this person get where I’m coming from, [that] affordability crosses ideology?
Mitchell: There’s a lot of people, and there’s a electorally significant group of people that want leadership, that want change, that don’t want the status quo. I know it’s hard for people like me and you to believe, but there are people who do not at all follow politics the way that we do—and there’s people who don’t identify and could not place themselves on a left-right ideological spectrum because they don’t live in a world where things like ideology are identities that matter to them. They live in a very different world, but they are seeking solutions to the problems in their lives. They are seeking leadership that actually is focused on them. And in the ways that Trump was able to convince some people that that’s true, there’s a group of people who either were confused enough that they didn’t show up or voted for Trump that are not MAGA people. I got cousins who lean in that direction or are—
Bacon: Open to it.
Mitchell: Yeah. Open to Trump. And those are the folks that I’m talking about. I’m not talking about MAGA cult people. There [are] 13 or 14 percent of people who are part of the MAGA cult; I’m not talking about them. There are 13 or 14 percent of the people who are on all the issues, all the way down with the pro-democracy progressive movement. And then there [are] 13, 14 percent of average everyday pearl-clutching MSNBC-watching liberals. That leaves everybody else, which is the majority of working-class people, that are cross-pressured. And absolutely, some of those people that voted for Trump months after are open to other ideas—and it’s through the leadership of people like Zohran, the leadership of many of our other candidates that could pull them in a different direction.
They’re not off the board, and I’m not willing to, as a movement, write those people off. I am willing to write off the cult. The 13, 14 percent—I’m not going back and forth with them. But that leaves the majority of working people who are being swayed by some right-wing arguments, and we need to make sure that we’re having a better conversation.
Bacon: I have two more questions. When you say working people, you don’t mean necessarily just people without degrees. Or what do you mean? I think that education polarization is happening, but I think we’ve overdone it. How do you view the electorate in a certain way? Are working people a broad group? Are college-educated people outside of the group? When you say working people, what do you mean?
Mitchell: Yeah, a lot of the definitions that people use are so imprecise. A lot of times, when people say the working class, it’s code for something else. So I think it’s worth talking about. Sometimes when people say the working class, they’re talking about white working-class men or white working-class men in the Midwest.
Bacon: Work in factories, etc.
Mitchell: Yeah. And you can think about this individual—has been furloughed—is sitting in a diner somewhere in the Midwest thinking, whatever. I’m not talking about that. Sometimes, they talk about noncollege people—people who have not gone to college—and they use education as the definition. I’m not talking about that. My mother is a retired 1199 nurse. She is a working-class person for sure. And most nurses have to go to secondary education. So if you use college-noncollege, then you’re automatically excluding my mom, which doesn’t make sense ’cause she’s surely part of the working class. Sometimes people use income. And there are people who are very much the working class—like a working-class plumber—who draws a pretty good income. So if you use income, you’re going to lose that person. And then of course, race. Some people, when they say working class, they’re talking about white people. And as we know, the working class is very, very, very diverse—more diverse and also more gender diverse today than it was before.
So when we say working class, we’re talking about income. We’re talking about educational attainment. And we’re also talking about the status of somebody’s job. All three of those things. We actually have developed a much more nuanced definition that includes 63 percent of the voting population.
Bacon: You’re talking about New York City, where even people with three degrees might have an affordability problem. Really, in urban areas, affordability is an issue pretty much. Unless you work on Wall Street, New York is not cheap.
Mitchell: No, no. In most urban areas you have to pretty wealthy to live the lifestyle that most people think of as the regular middle-class lifestyle. So even people in New York City and other urban areas that are making six digits are having to make really hard choices in order to afford the city. And when you think about how cities need to run properly, your average EMT, your average nurse, your average school teacher, your average person who’s leaving college is part of the affordability crisis. Your average sanitation worker is part of the affordability crisis as well as people who you might think of as being part of the traditional industrial working class, which is less and less a reality, unfortunately, in this country. And so when we talk about working class, we’re talking about a wide spectrum of people—from your barista to your EMT to people who might have multiple degrees but are really struggling to folks who might actually work at a university, who have all types of degrees. If you talk to your average adjunct professor, they are struggling. And so it’s a very, very diverse, broad set of people, which is why we’ve done a lot of research to understand the working class to build a movement that represents the nuances and the diversity of that working class.
Bacon: There’s a great report WFP did on the working class, and I’ll post it publicly to make sure people see it because it was really good and taught me some things too. Last question: I was making fun of people—there was a memo sent out by one of these firms basically defending the idea to call the National Guard—calling the National Guard being in D.C. a distraction or a tactic or a stunt and downplaying it. But I’ve got to admit, my friend Senator Warren, who I love, used the term “diversion” to talk about Lisa Cook last night. I assume there’s some strategy here, but I do not feel like we’re living in a world of distractions and stunts and diversions. I feel like a Black woman who was the first Black woman on the Federal Reserve and who also was representing an independent agency got pushed out and maybe fired—it feels like a very important thing to me. Not a diversion, not a distraction, not a stunt. The National Guard being in D.C., not a diversion, not a stunt. I’m bothered by this language, but maybe I’m missing something. So help me understand ’cause you are reading these poll, you do politics in a way that I don’t.
Mitchell: I think I could synthesize it. I think in a world where Donald Trump was a popular president that had popular policies, he would not have to resort so blatantly to authoritarian means. At a very clear point, he has chosen—and I want to connect what’s happening in D.C. with what happened in Texas—to give up traditional politics. He understands that he is not a popular president, that his policies aren’t popular, and that he has gained the allegiance of his base and of the Republican base. If you look at polls, he’s deeply, deeply underwater with Democrats and independents. And he has soddenly the same numbers with Republicans. And I think based on that reality, he’s wholly pivoting away from democratic politics to authoritarian politics.
Bacon: You mean democratic small ‘d’ as in democracy?
Mitchell: Democracy. He does not look forward to future elections as things that he can win fair and square. And so as a result, he needs to create the infrastructure and the permission structure for the military to be on our streets. And he also has to steal congressional seats. And there’s a number of other things in the authoritarian playbook that he has to do. The place where the diversion people, and this is real people, align is that in a world where that big, horrible bill wasn’t horrible and wasn’t unpopular, where the Epstein controversy wasn’t high, where he wouldn’t need to do these things because he could run on his popularity. And so that’s the synthesis of those two things. These things are real. It’s really happening. And he’s given up on being popular. As a result, he has to do these things. When you understand that he’s choosing to govern as a true authoritarian, a lot of these things that seem disparate actually have a logic to them. It makes sense. And if that’s true, then the things that we have to do become a lot clearer as well.
Bacon: And you can be an authoritarian and be popular. He happens to be an unpopular one and that’s a good thing. So it’s a bad thing in that he’s lashing out, but it’s a good thing in that we’ve made him unpopular or he’s made himself unpopular or whatever it is. It is better to have an authoritarian with a 40-percent approval rating than an 80-percent approval rating, I would assume.
Mitchell: Correct. And I think one of our hypotheses in November was that they were going to engage in overreach that will disturb a lot of people—not just self-identify progressives and, again, the pearl-clutching MSNBC-watching liberals. A lot of people would be disturbed and will actually feel the weight of the decisions that he’s making. And that’s happening in the economy. That’s happening through the immigration policy. That’s happening on a lot of levels. And that will create the venue for a pretty broad, diverse solidarity. And that is happening. Now, there’s a lot of people—and some of them voted for Trump, [some] lean conservative and may not have voted for Trump, some of them didn’t vote for all—who are now part of the pro-democracy movement. But I also want to elevate the challenge. His approval with his base is still really resilient.
Bacon: And his base is a majority of people in many states.
Mitchell: Right, right. But the upside is that his base does not represent the majority of people. And you can’t win popular elections with just Republicans. Again, that aligns with the theory that he has to advance authoritarian rule. But it also means that we have to build that united front. And if that united front is as big and as bold and as diverse as possible, we will prevail. And that gives me a lot of confidence. It won’t be easy.
Bacon: If that base is as big and bold, we can prevail.
Mitchell: Absolutely. Look, victories are never linear and there is a relationship between their desperation and their willingness to do very extreme things. And so that’s the other thing: When they do extreme things, it’s not necessarily a show of their power. It could certainly be a show of their weakness and their desperation and acknowledgement that our movement is gaining traction and momentum.
Bacon: OK. Maurice, thank you for joining us. I think there’s a lot of insight here. I appreciate it. Take care.
Mitchell: It’s good to be with you.