This Democrat Is Willing to Be Honest About How They Lost Their Way | Jim Himes
The Rubin Report
Emma Dog Productions
4.5 • 13.9K Ratings
🗓️ 12 July 2025
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” talks to Rep. Jim Himes about the evolving identity of the Democratic Party; the importance of government programs like Social Security and the GI Bill in addressing economic inequality; the role of government in uplifting marginalized communities; how identity politics can both help and hinder the party’s image; the controversial debate around transgender athletes in women’s sports; the balance between cultural issues and economic priorities; if he thinks Zohran Mamdani should be supported by centrist Democrats; what Republicans get wrong about the Big Beautiful Bill and how it will impact people on Medicaid; the effectiveness of government intervention in solving real-world problems; and much more.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | All right, joining me today as a congressman from Connecticut's fourth district, Jim Himes, |
| 0:13.0 | Representative Jim Himes, I should say. How are you, Representative? |
| 0:17.4 | Dave, I'm well. Thanks for having me. |
| 0:20.2 | I'm glad to have you. We only spoke for about 10 seconds before the recording started, |
| 0:24.7 | and I said, do you look, it's tough for me to get Democrats on this show. |
| 0:28.3 | Rokana is the only guy who will talk to me, and I have to give credit where credit is due. |
| 0:32.5 | Your guys reached out to us. So this should be a fruitful 20 minutes or so. Hey, you know, it's like I tell |
| 0:40.3 | both my staff and my constituents. I learn nothing when I go to a town hall meeting and everybody |
| 0:44.6 | agrees with me. When I learn is when I get to engage with smart people who disagree with me. |
| 0:48.9 | I don't know why. I mean, I do know why we reject that, but that's important to our dialogue. |
| 0:53.8 | All right. Well, let's see what we agree on and what we disagree on. |
| 0:56.4 | Let me start with something broadly because I'm guessing you know a bit about me and I was |
| 1:00.4 | a Democrat most of my life. |
| 1:02.7 | I've started, you know, about a decade ago, started seeing a lot of the identity politics |
| 1:06.8 | stuff with the left, which I think is now morphed into a series of other things. |
| 1:15.3 | What I'm struggling with right now when I cover the Democrats is I don't know what the Democrats stand for anymore. I think we have a sort of very radical left version, you know, the really |
| 1:20.6 | sort of progressive, woke base. And then there's, I guess, some sliver of what I would call |
| 1:26.0 | moderate. I don't know exactly where you consider |
| 1:28.1 | yourself within that or if you think that's a fair prescription. But just maybe lay out first |
| 1:32.7 | what you think the Democrat Party stands for at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. And let me answer that |
| 1:39.9 | question both as what I believe to be true, but there's going to be a little bit of aspiration |
| 1:44.1 | in what I tell you. And I'll explain that. What I believe to be true, but there's going to be a little bit of aspiration in what I tell you. And I'll explain that. What I believe to be true, and certainly it's true |
... |
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