We both agree the party has to be changed from within. We agree on basically everything. I do not hope everyone starts talking like Mamdani tomorrow. I'm in Arkansas, formerly blue and now red (like my home state of Iowa). Absolutely zero people here, within either the Dem party or the progressive coalitions working outside of it, would say "what works in NYC will work here." People are not there yet. We have to meet them where they are so we can change their hearts and minds.

What will work here is the simple message "we know you're at or beyond financial ruin, we have the only solution."

What won't work is "let's divide ourselves as progressives vs. establishment, pro vs tepid trans support, split every hair and make ourselves look like the weak navel-gazers they paint us as. Stop dithering about who is "DNC" and who isn't. That's the problem right there. We are all DNC. We are all progressive. We are all one.

Unity. It's what the Republicans started with the Southern strategy, which I know is real because I saw it flip two states, starting way back in the 80s when AM radio was quietly taken over. AM radio was in fact a brilliant way to reach the rural folks and start a populist campaign, which the bore fruit in the 90s and 00s as the party began evolving away from old ideals. They had one message - "those city folks want to destroy your good, wholesome, Christian way of life." From there the party itself reinvented itself (multiple times over) not at the ballot box, but by powerful people within the party who knew how to crack whips and enact reform. We need to identify and empower these people within the Democratic party, and that might mean putting side differences to build the big tent coalition we need.