Hello everyone and welcome to the focus group podcast I'm Sarah Longwell publisher of the

bulwark and this week we are talking about the future of the Democratic

party now we recently heard from swing voters who had watched Biden's state of the Union speech,

and while they thought he knocked it out of the park, they had major reservations about him running again in 2024.

And yet, when it came to Biden versus Trump or Biden versus DeSantis, they all took

Biden without blinking. Our friend Peter Baker who was just on the pod is out

with a New York Times story this week about

Joe Biden's 2024 strategy and it boils down to three words competent versus

crazy and it's possible that may carry the day.

But it does seem like Democrats at some point are going to need a better pitch than just

hey we're not these lunatics and they're going to need candidates capable of making that pitch that their party is the one best equipped to take America into the future.

So what is the future of the Democratic Party? My guest today is someone who knows a little something about candidates who can make an

optimistic pitch for the future, former White House Press Secretary during the Obama

administration, and co-host of one of my favorite podcast, Hacks on Tap, Robert, thank you for being here.

Happy to do it. Thanks for having me.

So Robert and I both have COVID, and so we're just going to have a political COVID party here, and we're going to

apologize in advance for some throat clearing, maybe a little coughing, our voice is being a bit off.

Just if you're, if you're listening, just, we want to emphasize we're, we're

quarantined, we're not in the same place.

That's true.

Even though it would be okay, it'd be okay, We just be infecting each other at that point.

I guess, right. We're like the only people who should be hanging out together.

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