STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
In this country, Democrats are asking how they can do better in the next election. One of their rising leaders feels he knows why progressives lost the working class. Congressman Greg Casar represents parts of Austin and San Antonio, Texas. And now, at age 35, he will lead the House Progressive Caucus, which includes more famous figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Greg Casar wants his party to change its approach.
GREG CASAR: I started out as a 24-year-old running for city council. I had been a labor organizer before that and on construction sites, where our job was to organize workers, whether they had been fifth-generation Texans coming from majority-white unions to Spanish-speaking workers who had just immigrated here. The way that we recognize the cultural divides on a construction site are the same way that I think the Democratic Party needs to address those divides, where you can't ignore the differences of people's views - what they care about, where they're coming from. But you could bring everybody together around fighting for one thing, and that was a raise, getting a fairer deal at work.
INSKEEP: Are you telling me that you might find people on a construction site who are Catholic and more conservative and oppose abortion rights, or maybe they're the children of immigrants but they have a problem with illegal immigration - people like that, but you still want to appeal to them on other issues?
CASAR: What I've found is the vast majority of people on that construction site want to see everybody treated decently. And they want to make sure that they and their co-workers all get a raise, that the construction site is safe - not just because they want their co-workers to be safe on the construction site, but if somebody else is in an unsafe situation, that could hurt you. Those basics are what brought together the FDR coalition and the JFK coalition in the Democratic Party. That's how Texas Democrats maintained control of this state for so long up - until around the time that I was born - and I think we've got to find a way to get back to that. You don't have to throw vulnerable people under the bus to do it.
INSKEEP: Now, somebody listening to this who followed the presidential campaign that Democrats lost might say, hey, wait a minute. Democrats had a whole list of proposals and programs that would lower people's costs, that would give them an opportunity to get a raise, that would support unions and a lot of other things. And I'm wondering if you're telling me something else. Are you telling me that Democrats lacked some larger narrative as to what all of those programs added up to?
CASAR: The Democrats have a big narrative problem. We have some substance problems I also want to talk about, but narrative - the Trump GOP had a clear narrative. The Democrats need a narrative that says, it wasn't a trans person that denied your health insurance claim. It was a giant corporate insurance company that's gone deregulated by the Republicans. Democrats needed to have a narrative that said, an asylum seeker isn't jacking up your rent. In fact, it is a Wall Street hedge fund that's buying up all these houses that's jacking up your rent. And it's those Wall Street hedge fund CEOs that Trump is putting in charge of his cabinet.
INSKEEP: I wonder if there is one way that Democrats did participate in the culture wars in a way that harmed them politically, because we're in a democracy and everybody who's an adult - almost - has a vote. And it seems that Democrats were perhaps a little more willing to say, if you don't have my view of race, social justice, policing, trans rights, a lot of other things, you're out. I don't want you.
CASAR: The Democratic Party has to make sure, both in message and in substance, that whether you agree with us on every issue or not, you're welcome to be in the party. We have to have a tent big enough that includes people across geography, across race and across ideological views. I have, in my district, more conservative voters that voted for Donald Trump or Greg Abbott and still even voted for me, as a very progressive Democrat. We're here to add more people to our community, to our party. We can stand strong for our values but realize that politics is a game of addition, not a subtraction.
INSKEEP: Did Republicans do a better job of adding in 2024, by which I mean finding new voters, people who rarely vote or never vote, and getting them on their side?
CASAR: Republicans were able to bring more working-class people into their coalition - so many people that just say, look, all the parties are the same. What's the point of participating in all of this? We need to show those people that we're different.
INSKEEP: One other thing. Is it possible we're just overanalyzing the 2024 election? The fact is that people have voted again and again and again against whoever is in power in not quite all, but most of the elections since the financial crisis.
CASAR: Since the financial crisis, the Democratic Party has slowly been losing its share of working-class voters, so we aren't overanalyzing it around just this one election. And the other piece of this is that since the financial crisis, there has been unrest in the American electorate. Think about it. You've got the Tea Party movement, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter. People have been upset with the political system not working out the way that it is supposed to. We've got to be the party of saying, we're going to make sure democracy works for you, and not just the people with lobbyists and with money.
INSKEEP: Congressman Greg Casar of Texas was just reelected to a second term in the House of Representatives, where he will also lead the House Progressive Caucus - the youngest ever member to do so. Thanks so much.
CASAR: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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