Discipline and Punish
Politix
Politix
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2025
⏱️ 37 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brian is on vacation, so special guest McKenzie Wilson joins Matt to talk about Blue Rose Research’s retrospective on the 2024 election and their work on message-testing. McKenzie came to Blue Rose after working in the private sector, working for Jamal Bowman, and working in the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services — she believes in progressive values and she wants to win elections.
In this episode, Matt and McKenzie discuss:
* The central role of the cost of living in the 2024 election.
* The importance of partisan realignment based around engagement with news and politics.
* The deep unpopularity of Joe Biden and the need for Democrats to internalize that as they move forward.
Then, behind the paywall, what are the Trump administration’s biggest points of vulnerability? What are Democrats getting right and wrong about highlighting those issues? Most of all, McKenzie makes the case for a disciplined approach that ties everything back to core values that motivate progressives and also resonate with swing voters.
All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.
Further reading:
* The full Blue Rose slide deck.
* Matt’s article on Republicans’ Medicaid cuts.
* A corporate marketing guru’s appreciation and praise of Bernie Sanders’ message discipline.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's not like the best strategy, but it's better than like doubling down. |
| 0:05.7 | Right. |
| 0:05.9 | Like if Trump went out on the cameras and was like, fuck yeah, I'm cutting Medicaid, |
| 0:09.8 | I want millions of people to lose health insurance. |
| 0:12.3 | That's going to be really good. |
| 0:13.9 | Like that would be, I mean, it would be great for Democrats. |
| 0:17.1 | I mean, yeah. |
| 0:18.1 | No, he should definitely do that. |
| 0:19.4 | He should also come out and talk about wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security while he's at it. That sounds great. |
| 0:28.9 | Hi, guys. Welcome to a free preview of the politics podcast. Brian is on vacation in either Belgium or Portugal or somewhere between those countries. |
| 0:38.8 | So my guest today is McKenzie Wilson from Blue Rose Research. |
| 0:42.8 | We're going to talk about their sort of post-mortem work on the election, you know, where what they think sort of happened last fall, where we are now. |
| 0:51.4 | And then in the paid section going forward, we're going to look |
| 0:54.2 | at sort of what's working and what's not working in anti-Trump messaging. |
| 0:59.2 | So I hope you like it, and you'll tell Brian that she's way better than him and, you know, |
| 1:04.2 | just has much better ideas. |
| 1:10.1 | Hey, folks. Welcome to the politics podcast. Brian is on vacation in Europe somewhere, |
| 1:15.6 | galivanting, just, you know, running down the American trade deficit in Belgium and Portugal. |
| 1:22.6 | So I am here with a special guest, Mackenzie Wilson, a friend of mine for years now, I think not |
| 1:28.9 | as well known to the podcast listening audience as she should be, but you are the director |
| 1:34.0 | of external affairs. |
| 1:35.3 | Is that your title at Blue Rose Research? |
... |
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