If that force of the hammer comes down on you, if something happens like what Bakari Sellers is doing and raising what a million dollars into super PAC intentionally to challenge progresses with corporate candidates, if you have the forces aligned against you the way they did a pack on all of those kinds of packs against Nina Turner, are you going to be willing to say like Corbucci didn't do I'm a Kayla Wilkes and willing to go ahead and and buck the party leadership and endorse Nina Turner, are you willing to go ahead?

And not vote for additional funding to the iron dome, are you willing to say I will not vote for Nancy Pelosi to be speaker of the house?

Absolutely, unequivocally without a doubt, I absolutely would. And that's actually, you know, I was speaking with with someone the other day, we were kind of talking about how some of the progressives in office tend to support democratic primary challenges, kind of in safe races, so to say.

Like Jessica, these nettles, you know, she got so many endorsements from a lot of people that a lot of us look up to, but because of Henry Koyard and being against abortion access abortion rights, because that is kind of like the safe controversial topic, where something like Medicare for all a green new deal, canceling student that it's all controversial, there is no safe controversial issue to challenge.

And so that is where I would see myself being differentiated, because I think that we should be uplifting every single democratic primary challenger that is running against someone who is an incumbent, whether there are a Republican or a Democrat, whether they are running against someone who supports a controversial issue, a controversial policy, when they are all controversial, like this is what we're up against.

We can't be afraid to call out democratic leadership, because when we're running for office, we're calling them out by name, but then once we're elected, we're only referring to them as democratic leadership.

Who, who are you talking about named them?

Well, you know, I think that's a really good point. A lot of people saw AC during her race say things like, I don't understand why Nancy Pelosi, you know, Speaker of the House, and then do something that was pretty courageous, but just to have this sit in at her office and her first day in Congress.

And then see what feels like a real change of tone over the course of a number of years, and they're worried about falling into the trap with other future candidates who might similarly be influenced in those ways.

One question that I get a lot and that are a lot of the listeners are curious about is how do you find support to stand your ground to stick the landing when there are so many other pressures of foot, and when there is also this pressure that I don't think we on the left talk about our knowledge enough, which is that a lot of electives, I think, especially those who are representing marginalized districts or districts that have a disproportionate of marginalized people in them.

They feel as though it is important for me to stay in office because even if I'm not getting these big ticket items, I can see now that I'm here that I am able to have a direct effect on the lives of all of these poor and working people.

And even though I'm compromising and even though I'm getting yelled at on the house floor, what have you.

I suddenly see more value in keeping my seat than making the stand that could highlight the toxic rot in the core of the Democratic Party, and therefore I'm not going to be adversarial in the ways that I represented I would be when I came into office.

You know, how do you see yourself as being able to stick that landing and stay adversarial and not succumb to the idea that incrementalism is worth it is worth to compromise.

I think that from what you just said, it sounds like, you know, if you have that kind of mentality, it's more about you just staying there to be elected again because if you're in there and you say, you know, and I would be like, you know, I have to be here because at least we're getting a little bit.

We already already been getting a little bit we've already been getting breadcrumbs. And so it's like essentially you're staying there to do the very thing that made you want to run in the first place because nothing is changing incrementally.

There is no point for me to be there if I can't help the marginalized people or other people in my community.

In a fundamental way, me being there is pointless if I'm not in there fighting as hard as I can to make sure that everyone has health care if I'm not in there taking a stance to make sure that we don't achieve environmental justice, economic justice, racial justice.

If I'm not in there and I am not fighting for affordable housing and nothing is fundamentally changing in my district.

If people in my community are not saying tangibles, what am I doing there?

If you'd like to hear more, remember you can subscribe at patreon.com slash bad faith podcast for $5 a month to get our full back catalog of episodes with some sweet, sweet stuff.

Keep the faith.

...