How Latino Voters Are Reshaping American Politics

We talk with political strategist, author, and Lincoln Project member Mike Madrid about data, culture, and why both parties keep getting the Latino vote wrong.

Mike takes us inside the Lincoln Project’s 2020 strategy and the personal costs of resisting Trumpism, then draws a sharp line between principled conservatism and punitive nationalist populism. From energy policy to border security to employee ownership, we explore how Democrats ended up carrying a slate of classically conservative positions and why that still isn’t landing with working class voters. The throughline is practical: housing, wages, and permitting timelines beat slogans every time, especially for a young, US‑born Latino electorate that’s increasingly moderate, less partisan, and focused on near‑term economic mobility.

We also discuss culture and faith, challenging lazy “machismo” tropes with the maternal core of Latin American Catholicism and a track record of electing women. Mike explains how generational change, not country of origin, drives political behavior and why Latino voters split roughly 50–50. That elasticity could be the system’s safety valve, if the parties learn to speak to pocketbook priorities instead of waging endless culture wars.

We also confront the rise in political violence. Mike argues we’re already in a civil conflict—more Troubles than Gettysburg—and that healing will be social before it’s political. The antidote starts local: honest conversations, community action, and leaders calling out extremism in their own ranks. Along the way, we have occasion to toast some tequila and hear about Mike’s storytelling project on the Cuervo–Sauza rivalry, expanding how Latino lives are portrayed beyond tired stereotypes.

If this conversation challenges and energizes you, follow, rate, and share the show with a friend.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Why Mike Madrid
• 3:27 The Lincoln Project’s Strategy And Costs
• 7:40 Conservatism Versus Trumpism
• 12:59 Democrats Acting More Conservative
• 16:55 The Latino Century Thesis
• 21:05 US‑Born Latinos And Voting Shifts
• 25:18 Turnout, Partisanship, And Populism
• 30:12 Culture, Gender, And Catholic Roots
• 35:20 Stereotypes And Labor History
• 40:25 Why Democrats Keep Missing Latinos
• 46:02 Housing, Abundance, And Policy Paths
• 51:05 Identity Politics And Pocketbook Priorities
• 55:34 Political Violence And Civil Conflict
• 1:01:10 Can Healing Happen Under Trump
• 1:06:25 From Social Healing To Personal Agency
• 1:10:12 Tequila, Storytelling, And Representation
• 1:14:40 Where To Find Mike And Closing

Transcript

Randy: 0:06

I'm Randy, the pastor half of the podcast, and my friend Kyle's a philosopher. This podcast hosts conversations at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and spirituality.

Kyle: 0:15

We also invite experts to join us, making public a space that we've often enjoyed off-air around the proverbial table with a good drink in the back corner of a dark pub.

Randy: 0:24

Thanks for joining us, and welcome to a pastor and a philosopher walking to a bar. And a huge part of that fascination has to do with people of color and their votes and why this statistics and the data is telling us that black Americans and Latino Americans and, you know, others swung more towards Trump. And I was reading an article about this because I'm just, again, fascinated by it. And I came upon this interview with Mike Madrid, historically a Republican strategist and you know, mines data and is a classical conservative in many ways, but he wrote this book about the Latino vote and how misunderstood it is. And I was fairly fascinated by what he had to say, and I just thought, let me try to get this guy on the show. And turns out they said yes.

Kyle: 1:32

Yeah, worked out. Worked out. Yeah. So the book's called The Latino Century, How America's Largest Minority is Transforming Democracy. And it's fascinating. And uh there's a lot of data in it, and there's uh some really compelling arguments for why both sides of the political aisle are misunderstanding this to their own detriment. Correct. Democrats are particularly terrible at it at this historical moment. We get into all of that. Uh we also talk about Catholicism and Mary and what it means to be Latino in America right now, and why that's confusing for so many things. Yeah, right. And you know, why they sp seem erratic in their voting habits in in some ways. Um it's not it's not erratic. There's there's a rhyme and reason to it. We talk about tequila.

Randy: 2:12

Talk about Charlie Kirk and the political violence that we're seeing and this whether or not we're in a civil conflict or a civil war.

Kyle: 2:19

It was one of those conversations where I I was kind of literally on the edge of my seat, like, I I want to know what you think about this. And not not very scripted, really. Um and so I super enjoyed this conversation. I want to talk to him again.

Randy: 2:32

Yes, absolutely. And I think you will too, friends.

Kyle: 2:54

Mike Madrid, welcome to a pastor and a philosopher walking to the bar.

Mike: 2:57

Thanks so much for having me, guys. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Kyle: 3:00

Yeah, so first off, I just we're gonna have questions kind of all over the map here. Some of them are gonna be about your recent book, some of them are gonna be about the Lincoln Project, some of them are gonna be about recent political events, some of them are just gonna be about politics in general, because we want to pick your brain about several things. I think that's okay.

Randy: 3:14

And maybe a few about booze and tequila. Maybe some about tequila.

Mike: 3:17

I'm comfortable in that space, so sure. Wherever we want to go with it, let's go with that.

Kyle: 3:20

Awesome. First, I just want to ask about the Lincoln Project, because that's what caught my eye first when Randy mentioned you to me. How did you get involved with that? Um, if for listeners who might not know what it is, what did you guys do? And particularly I want to know what you think it accomplished, if if anything significant.

Mike: 3:36

It's been a while now. I mean, Lincoln Project's kind of uh the the pages of the Lincoln Project in political history are starting to yellow a little bit. It was about six years ago, I think, in December of 2020, um eight political consultants, uh Republican political consultants kind of realized that um um the the Republican establishment was not going to kind of do its duty, it's meet its oath to the Constitution. This was heading into the first Trump impeachment, um, where he was blackmailing Vladimir Zelensky in in Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. And um a lot of us had you know worked for a lot of these Republican members. 35 years I've been working on Republican politics. And there was just, I think, this kind of aha moment that um this is a time for choosing. This is a time in American history where people have to kind of stand up and be counted. And the moment for us was um a bigger moment in calling for our country and for our constitution than it was for our party and the businesses that we'd built and the reputations and relationships that we'd established. And our goal was to beat Donald Trump in the 2020 election. And um, you know, I was the data guy, uh, you know, and by data, what I mean is, you know, my job is to get really granular into the analytics and do the targeting and try to understand where the Republican votes were that we could kind of pull out and get into defect. And from a data perspective, uh we met, we actually exceeded uh our objectives and what we were trying to accomplish. I think there's a lot of Americans uh who were kind of watching it, political observers who would say, you know, these guys were just kind of making funny online ads and attacking the president. Um, but uh from an analytic data perspective, what we were publicly stating we wanted to do and accomplish, we exceeded, and that was enough to win uh the election. What I will say is one of the one of the regrets I had was we could see from the data and the numbers that the Hispanic vote was shifting to the right faster than most people were looking at, and faster than the Democrats, I think, could could recognize and understand. And we I was publicly saying that too. And the reason I was saying that was because we were running a real risk of getting enough Republican votes that we could peel out, but losing so many Hispanic votes from the Democratic Party that were defecting to Trump that it would offset it and Trump could possibly win. And I don't know if you guys remember, but back in 2020, the polls were showing a much bigger gap for Biden winning than actually materialized. And the reason was because nobody was watching the Hispanic vote. I was, that's what I've been studying for 30 years, and that actually became the the um foundational reason why I wrote the book uh The Latino Century that I think we're gonna be talking a little bit about today, because the Democratic Party was just kind of calcified in its perspective and its outlook, and it wasn't making the adjustments it needed to do it. It it it became catastrophe in 2024.

Randy: 6:32

So, Mike, I've heard you talk about the cost of your move to the Lincoln project and away from Trumpism and and all that. I mean, to like your kids getting threats and you getting threats and your livelihood. Can you just tell our listeners a little bit of the cost of what it meant for you to say, it feels like we're in a moment right now and I'm going to actually boldly step into something new and resist something um that's gonna come at a real cost for me?

Mike: 6:59

Yeah, I I think that we're all, all of us as Americans at this moment being called to something bigger than ourselves. Uh and I think that's probably across the spectrum. I think for those of us who who feel that there's um a moral problem in this country, an ethical values-based deficiency that we're watching unfold. That um it's become a bigger consideration than politics. And, you know, when I when I was asked, and I I was uh asked by some of the others in the group to kind of come on and join, eight of us. Like I said, there were only eight that we could kind of identify that could do the work that we needed to do to get the job done. There was a very um keen awareness that we were going to be attacked um in mi in a myriad of ways. Uh constant technological attacks, attacked viciously online. Our children were my children were threatened, you know. I had uh the death threats were continuous and and serious and credible. Um and it in many times I think throughout the course of doing the work that I was doing, um, I would question, you know, why am I doing this and is it worth the cost? But I never got stuck there. It it was so obvious and apparent to me that of course this is what you do. Like, this is isn't this what we all learned in grade school? Like, this is the moment when good people have to stand up against bad things. And and the goodness versus the badness was so apparent. It was so obvious. And it was so obvious to so many of the Republicans that I'd worked with for so many years. You have to remember, Donald Trump was a very unpopular figure through most of the primary in 2016, 2015, 2016. Hundreds of people, literally hundreds of people that I knew, um, were vocally, publicly, aggressively anti-Trump, the same way JD Vance was, the same way Marco Rubio was, the same way Nikki Haley was on and on and on and on. Everybody knew this was a bad thing. And um, but every one of them kind of fell in line. And there were there's something very disturbing and troubling to me about how easily people folded everything that they claimed to have stood for at one point in time into this void, into this nothingness. And I think watching that happen made me realize just what a moral deficit we have. And I don't know if it's particular to this time, I don't know if that's just human nature. I don't I don't know, but I do know that 99% of the people, 98% of the people that I worked with for decades failed the most basic test that you learn in in you know grade school, which is um why we teach history when it's important to stand up and do the right thing. And this generation, the generation ahead of me, the generation behind me, they've all I think failed that test miserably.

Kyle: 10:08

Do you think I want to ask this delicately, but kind of bluntly too do you think your being Latino had anything to do or how much to do with your not failing that test?

Mike: 10:18

Oh wow, that's a really interesting question. Um Well, let me put it this way. We've seen a historic shift of Latino voters to Donald Trump. So so if there were any cultural proclivities of people to kind of stand up and and uh you know do the right thing, it's probably not cultural, at least not from an ethnic perspective. Um that's a that's a fantastic question. I I don't I don't um I don't think so. I don't know. I will say this of all of the eight Republican consultants who uh started the Lincoln Project, I am the only Republican remaining. And I I remember being asked the question, why are you still republican?

Kyle: 11:05

What's his deal?

Mike: 11:07

And the answer I think probably does come back to my Latino heritage is because I fought so hard in the Republican Party for so many years to say this is not who the Republican Party is, that to have it actually reveal itself as being exactly that forced me to make a decision which was I was never in this party because of everybody else. I was in this party because of me. And in the same way I say I'm I'm also Catholic, and uh the Catholic Church there have been some horrific, horrific things that have been revealed in the Catholic Church that probably run back centuries, but certainly in modern times. That doesn't change my Catholicity. Because there are priests that have done really awful things to innocents, that doesn't that doesn't change my Catholicity. Because my country, America, does really bad things and is doing really bad things right now, doesn't make me less American. Um there are that I will be a critic of all of those, but these are human institutions, all of them, and they fail. And I think I take, sorry about the long answer here, but it's a really great question. My favorite Republican, uh actually, I have a portrait hanging over here. It's not Lincoln behind me, it it's it's Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass was a Republican his whole life, but he never had a comfortable relationship with the Republican Party because he never believed that in the moments when the important decisions needed to be made that the Republicans would do the right thing, and the Reconstruction era proved him right. So, um, in many ways, I I think because he was a non-white Republican, even during the abolition movement, he he understood how deeply ingrained that sentiment is in us as human beings and what it meant for a political party and political power. And I think that's why it's such a great question. I've never been asked that before, but it's really insightful.

Kyle: 13:08

So I appreciate that response and the candor of it. I wonder I that kind of response makes a lot of sense to me as a Christian, because I still am one, uh, even though I know all the shitty things we've done and continue to do. Um, and it makes sense to me as maybe a conservative, um, that kind of response. And it certainly makes sense to me as an American. I struggle to see it on the level of Republican, if I'm honest.

Mike: 13:32

Um that's fair.

Kyle: 13:33

So can you make that connection for even Frederick Douglass? Republicanism was an entirely different thing in his lifetime than it is now.

Mike: 13:38

So yeah. Um I um I I'm still conservative. I I haven't changed. That's what the irony is, is you know, and I'm a very vocal critic of the party publicly by saying this is not conservatism, this is populist nationalism, what we're saying. Trumpism is not conservatism. And I have a certain amount of platform and gravitas and credibility when I say that as a Republican.

Kyle: 14:01

Right.

Mike: 14:02

Because I can say I have spent my entire life fighting in this movement and this effort for the things that I believe in, and 90% of what I've fought for are not what this is. So there's a practical consideration, which is if if these are bad people and you don't want to work with them and they've shown themselves to be cowards and enablers of something bad, just leave. That's legitimate. You know, my my seven cohorts and partners in the Lincoln Project did. Um, I've chosen to stay. And I don't know if that will change, but for the moment, um, I believe that once I leave, and once I'm the last person to shut the lights off and leave, then everything that I stood for falls apart. As long as there is one person who holds up truth and holds up the mirror and says this is who we are and claimed to be, then we're still that. There's at least a part of us that is still that.

Kyle: 14:52

Yeah.

Randy: 14:53

Can I ask Mike? Um, you know, you say Trumpism isn't conservativism, it's populism and nationalism. Um but isn't, particularly in the second second term here, aren't a lot of the things that he's doing th things that Republicans have dreamed of doing for a long time, such as dismantling the Department of Education and decentralizing it and putting it back in the state's control and the tariffs, you know, the a lot of the foreign policy and the interactions with NATO and the way that's gone. And I mean, we could go down the list of many things that seem to be front and center for the Republican Party for the last 40 years, really. Um but I'm a layman, I'm not an expert at this. But it seems to me a lot of the things that he's doing are actually conservative.

Mike: 15:37

I don't think I don't think there's a lot. I think those two that you pointed out, I think are are accurate. I will say this: I support the elimination of the Department of Education, and I'll tell you why. The Department of Education was created by Jimmy Carter in the waning days of the 1980 election because he needed something to run on. The Department of Education just moves paper. It's it's massive inefficiency. And the problem why it was never eliminated was because politically you couldn't say we want to get rid of the Department of Education. It it processes grants. That's that's literally what it does. There's a small civil rights piece of it, but that civil rights piece can and should be held under the Department of Justice, and all of that paperwork is better, more efficiently administered, and frankly, there would in other ordin other circumstances have more money available if you just did it where it was best apportioned. So it was a political thing. You know, this was a it's the newest cabinet, with the exception of Homeland Security. I don't know if that's even conservative. I think it's just kind of common sense if you take the politics out of it, because it's it's better for kids. It's there's more money for education if you just get rid of it. Having said that, your your original question um needs to be be asked in the in the context of, I think, the fact that the Republican Party today um has increased taxes more than um any president in living memory. We are now the friends and allies of the Russians against a freedom-fighting people in Ukraine. We now um oppose free markets. We um are the party that is uh dramatically increasing law enforcement officials, masked law enforcement officials that are cracking down on people, citizens and non-citizens, without enabling due process rights. Like these are the jack-booted thugs that in the 90s were the boogeyman of the American right. So the Republican Party today is exactly what I joined the Republican Party to oppose. There's very, very little that it actually is supporting. And those those that were there is some overlap, and there is some. There's deregulate deregulation stuff, there's the Department of Edge stuff. I would disagree with you on foreign policy, but that's you know, neither here nor there.

Randy: 17:55

Or just like decreasing the size of government and what Elon was doing for the first couple months.

Mike: 17:59

Yeah, and that's the thing, is they're not decreasing the size of government when you're talking about tripling the size of ice, right? We're increasing the size of a domestic, private, essentially military under the control of one man that is now larger than the budget of the entire United States Marine Corps. That like that is that is the nightmare of the conservative. Literally, that is what Reagan would be like horrified by this. Goldwater, uh, you know, Buckley would be like, what are you talking about in America, let alone in the Republican Party? So, you know, there's not, I would, it's not a conservative party. There may be conservative elements, but there's conservative elements in the Democratic Party too on some policy positions. In fact, in many ways, the Democratic Party is a more conservative party. In fact, in most ways, it's probably a more conservative party than the Republican Party is today.

Randy: 18:47

Can you explain that just briefly?

Mike: 18:49

Yeah, look, let me um under Joe Biden, for example, we were drilling more domestic oil than under any president in the history of the country. Um, you heard Kamel Harris uh running on a campaign, the Langford bill, which was a Republican bill, um, all the border security provisions, which is quite draconian, um, is now literally enshrined officially in the Democratic plank. The Democratic platform of the Democratic Party is the Langford bill. Like if I work for George W. Bush. If George W. Bush was running against a Democrat saying the things that the Democratic Party now officially stands for in their party platform, he would say that's anti-immigrant, that's racist. Yeah, because in many ways it is, right? Yeah, look at Kamala Harris's um opportunity uh economy plan. It was based off, get this, cutting corporate taxes for providing employees ownership in those same companies. Like that is Jack Kemp, Ronald Reagan Republicanism. Textbook. Like that is textbook Reagan Kemp Republicanism. So, you know, whether it's the economy, whether it's energy, whether it's border security, foreign policy, she said we were gonna have the most muscular, you know, military in in the in in all of human history. The Democratic Party is the party backing freedom fighting movements in all parts of the world while Republicans are supporting rising authoritarianism. Like that that is 1980s republicanism, right? So in in those four major ways, most of their policy positions more reflect the Republican Party of the 80s than the current Republican Party does.

Randy: 20:31

Thank you. Yeah.

Kyle: 20:32

It reminded me of a clip I saw of a I think it was a Republican presidential primary debate between Reagan and Bush, the first Bush, and immigration was asked about, and they agreed that like the best way to deal with it is to improve conditions in Mexico.

Mike: 20:48

The answer is like economic development, like build up the middle class there. I think there's a whole lot of other nefarious reasons why we don't, but that has always been the solution. That is the solution.

Kyle: 20:59

So let's Yeah, let's talk about it about the book a little bit. So the Latino Century, how America's largest minority is transforming democracy. So interesting book. There's a lot of data in it. I'm not a data guest, but I appreciated uh reading. Too much, a little too dense. There were sections where I might have zoned a little bit. I'm gonna skip that chapter, yeah. I'll skip these few pages. I do want to ask you.

Mike: 21:18

Can I can I jump in real quick on that? Because this is kind of funny. Yeah, go ahead. Um, I when I was writing the book, the first draft of the book was actually much more dense. And I I took it to the publisher, and Simon Schuster was kind enough to publish the book, and they said, We're not we're not gonna publish this book. And I was like, Well, why not? They're like, Nobody wants to read this book. Like, like, you and three people want to read this book. And I was like, I don't understand. Like, this is why you wanted me to to write this book. And what they said was, How many, how many political consultants have worked at the highest levels that you have in Republican politics? I was like, Yeah, maybe a few hundred. And they said, Well, how many have done that and also worked at the highest levels of Democratic campaigns? Because I've run, you know, governors campaigns for for Democrats. And I said, Wow, now you're down to like maybe four, three, four, five people. And then they said, How many are Latino? And I said, Well, this is just me. And they said, That's why we want you to write the book. There you go. Throw the data out, man. And it was like back to the drawing board and had to like re-redo the book. But I did want to keep some of my data because I'm a data nerd in there, so I apologize. That's okay. Totally forgiven for skipping over the data. I just needed that to my own little marker in the world, but uh appreciate the uh the the feedback.

Kyle: 22:29

No, it's it's important stuff. And I do want to get your take on um sort of the demographic shifts that are happening and that are going to continue happening. So describe that for our listeners. How significant of a political force are Latinos now? How significant are they going to be? You call it the Latino century for a reason. So, yeah, what's what's going on there?

Mike: 22:46

I I believe a lot of what's happening in this country, the tension and the turbulence is really about the extraordinary size and scope of the change that we're enduring. Most of it technological, a lot of it economic for sure. The gap between the haves and have-nots has got to just sinful, unprecedented levels in this country, and it's getting worse by the day. But the third element is this demographic shift. We are going to be a non-white majority country in about 10, 12 years for the first time in our nation's history, in our whole in our story as Americans. And that's going to profoundly change the way we perceive America and perceive ourselves. And that that question has always fascinated me. And I've I've been studying Latino voters since the early 1990s when I was an undergraduate at Georgetown. I could see this demographic transformation happening. And I wanted to study it over my lifetime and and document it and do campaigns and be a part of it, knowing that by the time I got to you know my later years, I would be somebody who saw the before and after times. Like that's a rare thing in American history. And I just that that just has always fascinated me. But to the to answer your question again more specifically, the Latino voter themselves has ch have changed. And what I mean by that is we're we're in this period where immigration levels, most people don't realize this, immigration levels really started to drop and slow in 2007 before the what we call the Great Recession. We look back, it was really a depression. I mean, it was it was bad, right? The housing crashed, the engine of capitalism was melting down, and there was no work. So so a lot of people left and that and and stopped coming. So from 2007 up until Biden's first year, 2021, in office, there was a 15-year lull, 14-15-year lull in immigration. And apologize for the nerdiness, but it's important. What that lull did was it allowed for natural US born births to dramatically increase while the foreign born decreased. And for all of the commentary about Latinos not being monolithic and you know, Cubans are not Puerto Ricans or not Mexican or not Venezuelan and blah, blah, blah, that's true. But the real differentiator in Latino political uh decision making is not unlike it was with the Greeks, Italians, Poles 150 years ago at Ellis Island, it's the degree of generational difference from the immigrant experience. And this US-born Latino overwhelmingly identifies as an American first and is starting to lose these ethnic ties with the country of origin. So when everybody's looking at all these polls saying more and more Latinos support border security, more and more of them are concerned about illegal immigration, more and more concerned more about the economy than all these other ethnic issues. Common sense, we're gonna look back and 20 years and go, of course that was what was going on. Right now it's kind of very shocking, but when we look back in history, it's gonna be like, well, of course that was what was going on. And that's what's going on. And so I wanted to write a book saying, you know, the next 30 years of Latino politics is gonna look very different than the last 30 years when we kind of came up with this stereotypical understanding and conceptualization of Latino voters being recent migrants, Spanish speakers, working kind of you know, field workers or or you know, um, we are we are the we are the blue-collar, you know, working class, fastest growing part of the blue-collar working class in the country, that is true. Um, but we are also climbing up the ladder economically, and that upward mobility is changing the whole political system and it's challenging both party structures.

Randy: 26:31

So that that phenomenon that you just described of these, you know, uh native-born Latino people who are have their having their priorities shift and immigration looks different for them, and they're what what they're voting for looks different. Do you think this second Trump term is going to change any of that? Because it feels like there's a war on Latinos right now in our country.

Mike: 26:52

That's such a great question. And the answer is yes, but not to the extent that you think. And let me let me I hope I'm not getting too in the weeds on the nerdiness of the battle.

Kyle: 27:01

Please keep going. We're very nerdy, just not usually about data. So this is fine. Okay.

Mike: 27:05

Okay, good. Fair enough. So I want to take you back to 2018. 2018 was the first Trump midterms, and in the political environment looked like this. There were ice raids and crackdowns, not to this extent, but there were a lot of that going on. I don't know if you remember, but it was a time when Fox News was running 24-7 news coverage on the caravans coming from Central America. These caravans were coming. And that was when the country was introduced to the Darien Gap and all these people walking through the Darien Gap and thousands of people coming to the horde to take over America. That Trump was still doing rallies with the Build the Wall champ. Build the wall, right? That was a big so all of this anti-immigrant, anti-Latino sentiment was very front, row, and center, and the economy was in really good shape. Well, in 2018, we saw the largest Latino midterm turnout in history and the most anti-Republican in history. But in the three elections after that, we saw equally historic shifts to the right because more and more of these US-born citizens were dramatically exploding on the rolls. That takes us to this upcoming midterms. And I use 2018 as an example because all three of those times five are all happening right now. We've militarized a lot of streets, there's ice raids and crackdowns. We're all seeing this on social media. Uh, but one thing is worse, and that is the economy. And yet Donald Trump's support levels amongst Latinos are still higher than they were in 2018, at least at the moment. It could change. There's still a year to go, but things are pretty significant, pretty bad. If you haven't budged by now on what's going on, probably not going to budge too far. And so the question becomes why? Why? What happened in this eight-year period? And the answer again is this explosion of US-born voters. And to tell you how fast it's coming, fully one-third of the entire Latino vote, and it's about 16%, 15-16% of the electorate will be Latino nationally, a third of those are under the age of 30. And over 80% of them are US born. So when we talk about like Democrats having a problem with the youth and the non-college educated and people of color, the the concentric circle on that is like almost the Latino electorate. Younger, poorer, less college educated, and obviously Latino.

Kyle: 29:37

How many of them does that answer? Does that do, yeah? Thank you. How many of them are voting?

Mike: 29:42

Well, that's a cool great question. It's an even better question. God, you guys are you guys are good at this. You must be doing it for a living or something. Strong hobby. We wish. Latinos have the lowest voter turnout of any ethnicity in the country. And the question then becomes why? And a lot of people try to attribute Cultural reasons, I don't attribute it to that at all. What I attribute it to is this rejection of both parties. We have the weakest partisan anchors of any ethnicity, the most likely group to be not affiliated, no party preference, or an independent are Latinos. And what um we're really seeing is a Democratic Party that has ignored or failed to deliver on bread and butter economic issues for their own working class base, and this nativistic anti-Latino Republican party. And so a lot of Latinos are just like, I'm not voting for either of these guys. First of all, it doesn't make any difference because neither of them are speaking to my concerns. I'm afraid of one of them, and I'm just kind of ignored by the other. So that's manifesting it itself in a much lower turnout than we're seeing um amongst any other ethnic group.

Kyle: 30:51

Yeah. So if you could, I know this is wild speculation, but if you could wave a wand and the Latino voter turnout is comparable to white people, 70% or whatever, which way do you think it would go?

Mike: 31:05

Again, a really good question. Um I'm gonna dodge it by saying it depends. Let me let me set the framework for that. Latinos in the 2024 election voted uh 48% for Donald Trump and 52% for um Kamala Harris, roughly. I think there's one or two points off with our, but essentially it's a 50-50 vote. This is the only vote that's 50-50 in the country. Everybody else is pretty hyperpolar polarized. Latinos are 50-50. So when you say if turnout increased, my guess is it would probably split about the same, right? So it wouldn't advantage one or the other. And and and the reason why my book is ultimately optimistic, and I don't want to ruin it for you, Pastor. But when you read it, it ends on a good note. And and the reason why is because that 50-50, Latinos are the moderates in both parties. Latinos have more moderate views than the average Democrat, and they've got more moderate views than the average Republican. This is the only way to solve for the hyperpartisan problem that is afflicting the country. The solution are literally in our own American DNA, occupying the roles faster and faster every day. Is there's a rejection of the extremism. We will vote against Democrats when they fail us, the way Kamala Harris and Joe Biden learned, and we will reject Donald Trump when he attacks our communities the way he learned in 2018, and we'll see again in the in the 2026 midterms. So it's it's it's the swingiest vote, it's the most 50-50 vote, it's the fastest growing vote, and it's the least partisan vote. So to me, that's hopeful. Yeah. Because that's that means we're the group that is still operating the way the system should be operating before everything got cemented into red and blue corners.

Randy: 32:56

So you may have answered this in the book that I'm the douchebag who didn't read the book again, right? But um so I'm a former evangelical. Uh I say former now because 2016 just took the any desire to be evangelical out of me. But evangelicals, my people, my my tribe, or former tribe, I would say. Um Kristen Combus-Dumay has written a bunch about this. There's many people who've written about how this patriarchal, strong, authoritarian leader that we find in Trump is really kind of ready-made for evangelicals. They kind of just flock to it, they're almost kind of conditioned and programmed to be attracted to that kind of person and that kind of leader. Yeah. Is there a similar phenomenon with the Latino vote, would you say, or what's what's is there any correlation between this?

Kyle: 33:48

Can I combine this with a question I wanted to ask? Because I think it's relevant. Sure. You talk a bit about um, I don't want to call it a matriarchal culture because that's reductive, but you talk about gender a bit, and yeah, it surprisingly um I don't know, I don't know if egalitarian is the right word either. Surprisingly non-patriarchal is the the way you describe it in your book. So combine that with what he just asked, because I'm curious your take on is there a correlation there?

Mike: 34:13

Yeah, so a lot of a lot of this, I think, when people are looking at it, they make a couple of stereotypes, and I don't mean that in a pejorative sense. It's no stereotypes is what we do.

Kyle: 34:21

Yep.

Mike: 34:22

Um, people will be like, oh, it's a machismo culture, it's a little bit more misogynist, it's a racist culture, and it's uh, you know. So let me kind of dispel that a little bit from from my perspective, because I I I did spend a whole chapter on this. And I I could write a whole book and maybe I will, trying to explain how Latin American culture is a much more feminized culture. It really does have the centrality of the feminine much more than we see in Western European cultures. You could never, and I make this example, you could never, I don't think you could ever have the the Virgin Mary, which is the national symbol of all of the Americas, by the way, but particularly Mexico, having the a female imagery of who you are as a people. Like that's an Uncle Sam image. A lot of people say, well, you know, Statue of Liberty. Statue of Liberty was a gift from the French, right? That wasn't us. We didn't conjure that up. And we do refer to America as a herd.

Kyle: 35:22

We haven't torn it down yet, though. It's still there.

Mike: 35:24

Yes, good time. But yeah, there is there is um a very different, as you said, a patriarchal way that is structured uh with with the strongman, right? And a lot of people will say, well, there's a the strong man because of Latin America. Most of the strong men in Latin America have been, you know, propped up by the by the American government for for commercial reasons. We as a community, Latinos, elect women at higher rates than any other racial or ethnic group. There are more female elected leaders in the California state legislature than there are male uh Latino legislators. And it's getting bigger. And it's not just a California phenomenon. Texas is almost at parity, Florida uh is at parity, New Jersey, far more women than men, and they're Puerto Rican, Cuban in Florida, Mexican American, Texas, and California. We also have to remember like the two politicians that had the highest support levels for Latinos, including Latino men, were Barack Obama, a black man, and Hillary Clinton, a white woman. Kamala Harris, a lot of this, you know, pushback that people got was, well, they didn't vote for her because she's a woman or she's a black woman, Latinos, that's why they didn't vote for her. Kamala Harris's whole career was built on dramatically overperforming in California for 25 years by winning Latino votes. She beat Loretta Sanchez in Loretta Sanchez's own congressional district, Hispanic congressional district, when she ran for the U.S. Senate. So there's there's just evidence and evidence and evidence and evidence that that that that kind of um perception doesn't stick. Uh this is a very maternally focused culture. And I think uh because it is you know much more um communal, it's more agrarian, I think that probably plays a big part in it. Um, but the the feminine plays a very, very significant role in Latin American culture. Okay, and I think that's that starts with sort of the Catholicism. The the Virgin Mary again is not um one of the and sorry sorry to go off on this again nerdy tangent here, but the Virgin Mary is very important. Claudia Schambaum, by the way, is the president of Mexico. She was the first woman to do the grito last night. Today is today's Mexican Independence Day, by the way. So absolutely tequila. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um but the one of the great ironies, the way to best understand Mexican identity, I think, is the the Virgin Mary really tells the whole story. She is both the symbol of the oppressor, right, as a as a religion from the from the old world coming, who becomes and is embodied as the sign of revolution. She is what is called for uh on on Mexican Independence Day to rally to her cause to free Mexico from the Spanish, and she becomes the a national symbol. She's she's a symbol of of Mexico and and the Americas. I just could not, for the life of me, imagine that that would be a Western European dynamic ever. Yeah.

Randy: 38:15

So is that just a racist trope then? They're like trying to make that connection between Latinos and authoritarian patriarchal. Where does that come from, do you think?

Mike: 38:26

It's a little lazy. I think a lot of it comes down from um, like the we use the term macho too, even when we're not talking about Latinos. Like there's this macho or machismo, right? There's this male-dominated, you know, society. Uh, the thing that there's a couple stereotypes that really that shock me a little bit because they're they're really 180 degrees different. One is machismo, the second is the strongman stereotype that Latin Americans just want a strong man. And the third is that Mexicans are lazy, right? Like and all of those do have a they have got a history that go back to colonization, is what is really what what they what they are. The strongman, the cabillo, was usually US backed. And you know, it was your strongman who's trying to take over the U.S. strongman, and that was the only way is fighting tribal chieftains. And that structure worked really well for the United States when we were exploiting resources from Latin America for a couple of hundred years. That's where the Caldillo comes from. And I think we just lazily in part go, oh, they're just looking for a strongman when it was our strongman that was that was making that system work. The trope of the lazy Mexican uh really comes, uh goes back to the the Brusero programs and and even earlier when they would try to bring Mexican workers up uh in the 1930s during the Dust Bowl. And the the US had an actual policy of removing Mexican workers to make way for the Oakies. So we have the you know the Oakies that came from the Dust Bowl from the Depression. We literally, literally in California from our Central Valley, massive agricultural space, deported Americans, Americans, uh Mexicans and Americans by the thousands, thousands of U.S. born citizens of Mexican descent were deported in the 30s to make way for the Dust Bowl refugees. So a lot of the you know Steinbeck novels about you know the Oakies being poor and destitute, they they were, and and I'm not saying it's easy work, but they were still a ladder in the rung above the Mexicans. And that the the the the the the nomenclature of the lazy Mexican begins there because that's not the first or the last time we've done that. We did it again during Operation Wetback in Eisenhower's era in the 50s.

Kyle: 40:41

Real name, not not a slur. Literally called it that.

Mike: 40:45

The Eisenhower administration called it Operation Wetback, like this is just overt, ugly racism. And so they would use these, you know, these are lazy Mexicans. This is Mexicans, of course, are the only ones who will do this work now, and we're seeing that, right? These farms going bust in Arkansas and in the Central Valley, everybody going work where we have food rotting in the field, groceries are about to explode in price because there's no workers to pick the food. We can't rebuild Los Angeles after the fires because there's no construction workers. Like this is the working class, and I mean the work is hard, menial labor for very low wages, but the way we've used them and treated Mexican labor required some sort of justification, and so that's where we came up with the lazy Mexican nomenclature.

Kyle: 41:29

Yeah. I just a couple more political questions, I think. And then you can go for it. Why do Democrats have such a hard time with figuring out what Latinos will vote for? I guess that's the the simplest way to put the question. And if you had an hour with the DNC to convince them to do it differently, and maybe you have had this hour, what would you what would you say?

Mike: 41:49

Well, let me say the DNC both loves and hates me because they've called me. To their credit, the Biden campaign called me a couple weeks after the book came out. I I've been a name that's been around. There's not a whole lot of Latino operators that have kind of done the work that I've done at the level that I have. They also knew that as a Lincoln project guy, I was on their side, right? So they called me, and to their credit, they were they were they listened to a lot. And I'm not saying that, you know, I'm the reason they made the adjustments, but there's maybe it was just a big coincidence. I'm not going to take credit for it or say it, but you also can't change the whole party in 90 days and change the brand. There's two real challenges that the Democratic Party faces right now. And that the first is it's really central to their orthodoxy of who they believe they are. They believe foundationally they are the party of the working class, and they believe that they are the party of non-white people. And both of those groups are fleeing the Democratic Party quickly. And the question then becomes, why? And this is, by the way, that that that really explains why the Democrats have been struggling in the wilderness, as we call it, with no control of any levels of government right now in finding their footing. They don't know who they want to be. Do we want to be Mom Donnie in New York, or do we want to be Ruben Gallego in Arizona? Because they're both getting big numbers of Latino working class voters. One's a Democratic Socialist, the other one's a centrist Democrat. Like, what do we who are we? What are we doing? Why isn't this working? And again, the the challenge for the Democratic Party is it's not, it needs to first fully acknowledge and breathe in that it is not the party of the working class anymore. And they have a real tough time with that. They just don't they still believe they're the party of FDR, and they're not at all. And and and that that's both cultural and it is primarily economic.

Randy: 43:39

Now, can I ask real quick? Yeah. I'm sorry. I I completely agree with you that the reality is that they're the Democrats are not the party of the working class anymore. But I think I would still argue that more of the Democratic policies are helpful for the working class more than the Republican Party.

Mike: 43:56

Fair argument. I'm not sure that I would agree with that, but it doesn't matter. Let's let's accept that as true for the moment.

Randy: 44:00

Okay.

Mike: 44:01

The problem is the working class, not since FDR has the working class looked to government for economic opportunity or mobility. Let me give you a specific example. Joe Biden passes the largest infrastructure bill in the ever. Yep. And it's hard hats, it's building bridges, it's doing highways, it's tunnels, it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. These are all things that are going to come online maybe in a decade, maybe in 12 years. Working class people don't have the luxury of thinking in a 10 or 12 year horizon. Working class people often don't have the time if you grew up like I did. We don't have 10 days to think about it. You've got to pay you know rent in three days. Like I say, God, the good weeks were when we were paycheck to paycheck when I grew up. Like we were, that was not my family. And so I'm keenly aware of that. You guys may be too. That that is not like government seeing the government solve these problems is something that hasn't happened in decades. That's why Ezra Klein wrote the book he did on abundance. Is the the Democratic Party is not building anything. In fact, it's designed to not build things because of the pillars of, frankly, the environmental lobby and its coalition. And so these are at odds. And the pro-growth segment of this country is the Latino. They're the ones that are swinging hammers. Get this. One in five Hispanic men work in the construction trades or related industry. 20%. So when Joe Biden's president and interest rates triple, which they did, and I'm not, it's some wasn't, he wasn't, he's not the Fed, but it doesn't matter. The buck stops here, right? The interest rates triple and we see this massive devaluation of our currency because of the inflationary pressures year over year. Like housing stopped. That's 20% of the Latino GOP just shut down overnight, especially men who are the most likely to leave, leave leave the Democratic Party. So the the working class, like Reagan, Reagan's policies, you could make a great argument. Reagan policies didn't help the working class, but the we we used to call them Reagan Democrats. These were hard hat, you know, lunch pail carrying guys who were up on construction beams. It wasn't just cultural, although there was a part of that. The other part was the opening up the economy to grow and expand requires labor in those industries. And that's the way working class people see their opportunities is hey, there's a job I can go work at right now, not a bridge in 10 years. And so looking to government is what the Democrats do. I'm not saying it's not virtuous, it may be, but it's not practical in the world of politics, especially in the current environment, where it's like, oh, let's just do a bunch of infrastructure spending, commit billions of dollars to doing this, and then you got to go to a place like California and actually go through the regulatory hurdles of getting a bridge done. Like that's gonna take maybe 30 years in California to do a freeway overpass.

Kyle: 47:13

Yeah. So what did you tell them when they called you?

Mike: 47:16

I said you've got to focus on housing. Like you got to get have a housing plan, and they developed the housing plan, right? Housing is central to the whole thing. Because this is another thing I found too, which was really fascinating. And I did this, I did some polling right after well the short answer is this housing, housing, and housing. If if if the if the Harris Biden campaign had fixed housing, there would they would have had a shot. Okay. The border stuff was a big mess, and we can talk about that too. It was really bad. I just tweeted some stuff today about how the shifts uh in all of the border communities from California, San Diego, all the way down to Brownsville, Texas, going through New Mexico and Arizona, shifted from um a 60-point swing away from the Democrats from 2016 to 2024. 60. Like I have never in my life seen that kind of a swing, a realignment ever in decades, just massive. Um, but but you know, housing again, to to answer the question very quickly, uh, we had a long talk on housing and what they could do for housing policy, and to try to kind of say that you know we're going to be doing something on housing, but you can't fix a housing problem in 90 days.

Kyle: 48:28

No, so what is it? You anticipated my next and last question about this, um, which is kind of what do you think of that abundance strategy, but also what do you think of, and this is a a distinct thing, um, but the Mamdanni kind of thing. Like, I've heard people say, I've heard the argument, I've seen some data that seems suggestive but not conclusive, that maybe the best strategy for Dems going forward might be to lean into that a little bit more because the idea there is that the mistake so far has not been um they haven't been losing people because they're too liberal, they've been losing people because they haven't been like showing what they can do for them economically, right? And the democratic socialists are all about that. So, like, what do Latinos tend to think about AOC? And like, is this a a reasonable path, do you think?

Mike: 49:09

That's a great question. And the way I try to answer this to Democrats, I speak to a lot of Democratic audiences, um, and I'll speak to Republicans too. It's just they don't they don't really have me much anymore. But I'm not afraid to talk about this for anybody because I'm I'm I'm not really much of a Republican or a Democrat anymore. I'm an advocate for working class people, and neither party is. As much as I'm saying the Democratic Party isn't the party of the working class anymore, I'm not suggesting the Republicans are. I'm saying Republicans are the beneficiary of an exodus of working class people from the Democratic Party, and they started at such a high level that they're naturally going to pick them up. And of course, they're at 50-50 now. And to me, that's the best place for the Latino community to be, because as long as we're 50-50, both parties will start speaking to us and focus on our policy agenda. For example, the Texas Republicans draw five new congressional districts, three of those are Hispanic majority, which is they believe that the Hispanic voter has moved to be a central part of their coalition. I think they're making a big mistake. But to me, who somebody who's been working on this for 35 years, to see that happening is an extraordinary, extraordinary uh step, extraordinary moment. So, to more to your question, let me answer by saying this. Let's look at Latino working class voters in New York City, for example. Um, four years ago, they elected a law and order conservative Democrat named Eric Adams, the current mayor, right? That they broke towards the center. Two years later, they voted for Donald Trump in historically high numbers. They moved to a populist, nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-Latino guy, right? Then eight months later, they vote for Mom Dani in the primary as a democratic socialist. There's no ideological undercurrent there. This is that populism I was talking about when we first started the interview. There is an emergent Latino populism that is going to redefine both parties. So I'm not going to tell Democrats it's Democratic socialists or it's moderate Democrats like Gallego. They're both right. As long as you've got a plan and are actually talking about it for once, you will get some of those votes. The problem is Democrats, because again, they've been so focused on things like climate change, and climate change is real, it's an existential problem. It absolutely is. But you you can't sacrifice one for the other. And and Democrats have to have a reckoning and realize that's exactly what they've done for the past 25 years. And in that, they've gotten a ton of environmental regulations passed, but at the same time, they have lost their working class base.

Randy: 51:49

Really quick last political question. But um has the Democrats' seeming commitment to identity politics played at all into their loss of Latino vote, do you think?

Mike: 52:04

Yes, but not the way most people think. How so? The problem with the overemphasis on identity has created a relatability problem. It's not that Latinos are against this stuff. Some are. I mean, of course. But by in a way, when when people are telling you in polling data that it's economic and affordability concerns by a wide measure for 30 years, and you come back to them and want to talk to them about racial and ethnic identity, it's kind of like, I hear you and I agree with you, but that's not you're talking in a different world than I am. Like your reality is not my reality when that's what you think my problem is. You may be right, but that's just so inconsequential to the reality of feeding my kids and and paying rent and making sure the light stays on. That's my reality. Address that reality, and you know, then I'll listen to you on the other stuff. It's kind of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So it's not that, like I said, and I tell this all the time, it's not that the cultural issues, and I think the Democratic Party has over-emphasized cultural issues. I think the Republican Party has framed them that way, uh, you know, well, more than more than them choosing to be. Yeah. Um, but they do take the bait, and and the Republican parties are fully ensconced in culture wars, too. That's all it is. It's all it is. There's no discernible ideology there. But that's why that it's such a good question because that's why Latinos are the moderates in both they're they're a working class part com uh constituency that is focused almost entirely on economic issues. Sure, there are some evangelicals. It is a big part of the growing evangelical base. Sure, there are people that want to say, call me Latinx and want to reconquest America and return it to Mexico. Sure, I get those extremes exist. But the vast majority of Latinos are in the middle saying, What's the economic policy that's going to help the industries that I'm in get a better job or make more money or not be taken away or help me, you know, uh help my family members get a job. Like that's once you get back to economic pocketbook issues, you start to understand why this is a the more moderate vote in both parties. And that's why the Democrats have trouble. It's not because Latinos are opposed to those issues, it's because Latinos don't prioritize those issues. They don't have the luxury of prioritizing those issues. They'll vote for a racist if they can help, if they believe it's gonna help them economically, because they're they're desperate.

Randy: 54:31

Okay. Thank you.

Mike: 54:31

And they did. Yeah.

Randy: 54:33

Good. So switching gears, um, just to finish finish off this conversation, since we booked this interview, Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Not only that, but less than two months ago, I think less than two months ago, right? Re Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband in Minnesota were were killed by an extremist. Um I mean, we could go through all the things that have been happening, you know, Shapiro's house and all the things. I've heard you say that we are in the midst of a civil conflict. And you I've heard you say that we shouldn't wait for civil war because we're in it right now. This is what actually what it looks like to be in civil war today. Um I've also heard you say that this political violence that we're seeing regularly now is only gonna get worse and might be around for a decade or more. Tell us about why you say those things. Um I'm sure they're data-driven. I I would I'd tell us your perception on those things and the civil conflict, the civil war, is it gonna get worse?

Mike: 55:29

Yeah, and look, I've been, I think, criticized a little bit because people will say, well, I mean, you can't say we're in the midst of a civil war, but I I think people's perspective and understanding of what civil war is going to look like is is kind of like old, you know, black and white photographs of guys, you know, uh packing cannons and carrying muskets down the field in Gettysburg. Like it's not that's not how this war is going to look. That's not how much warfare, with the exception of Ukraine, and even then it's a drone war now. But you know, that's not that's not what I mean. What I mean is when you have a civilization like ours, whose political system has collapsed to the point where violence is a recurring phenomenon, uh, not unlike the troubles, for example. I made that comparison in uh Ireland, which from 1969 to about 1988, about 30 years, was defined largely by domestic terrorism, terrorism itself, car bombings, shootings, guns and gun running, um, election cancellations, election rigging. I mean, the whole thing. Um, we are in a period where we are going to have contested elections, where we are literally rigging the systems, both in Texas and in California, trying to in California, we probably will, uh, to change outcomes, to cheat, to give partisan advantage. They're both cheating. That's what gerrymandering is. We are uh we don't believe elections, we're rigging the systems in the elections. We are seeing political assassinations, uh, we are seeing attempts on people's lives, right? Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed, but there was also another state legislator not during that same night who was attacked in the middle of the night uh in her house trying to be killed. Congressman Scalise, Congresswoman uh Gifford, um Shapiro, the firebombing you talked about. I mean January 6th. Like, I mean, uh on and on and on. It's like at a certain point, like we keep going, is it coming? Is it coming? And it's like, stop and turn around. We're in it. This is what it looks like. Now, and I believe that it's going to, because of the nature of the reaction of both sides to each's action, that we are going to see an a probably a dramatic increase in this type of behavior. I think we're certainly seeing that from the White House, which is where it all begins. And that leaves the Democrats with, at least from their perception, uh, very few options. But the rhetoric on both sides has dramatically escalated. You know, New York governor Kathy Hokel says we're we're in a war. Uh, I don't like the fight, fire with fire stuff that Gavin Newsom is saying. I noticed today, by the way, before I jumped on, he was having his big national online rally where he changed the name from FAFO, right? They dropped that stuff. They're kind of downplaying the fight, fire with fire stuff after the Kirk assassination. Uh, the the Republicans are way over the top. Way, I mean, they're in and like I said, that we can get into the who started it and and who's worse, and it's not the same. And if you're making that argument, I think you're kind of it's kind of like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Well, you killed us and we killed you, and it's like at a certain point, people are dying. So when do we stop with the blame and start finding solutions? And that takes that takes everybody's efforts to call out the extremism on their own side. That's the only way we get to resolution. If we're still stuck in a phase where people are going, look, the killer was MAGA or the killer was leftist, trans, you know, and trying to find and justify why their side was right or wrong, you're you're you're still taking steps down the road to violence. That's what you're doing. You're just you're trying to find reasons to blame andor justify. And once once you start to see people exhausted by the violence and starts to say, okay, it doesn't matter, it's gone on too far, I'll be the first one to say that and acknowledge that and extend my hands in peace. Uh, you also have to have a willing partner. I don't see that in the White House right now. I think if if if uh Gavin Newsom were to say, I'll call off the dogs and let's shake hands and be done with this, I think you know, Donald Trump would, you know, punch him in the face. So I just don't think we're there. I I think all the evidence suggests that we're already in it. It's already happening. It already meets all the definitions, at least from my my definition of it. And I I don't see think that we are anywhere near exhausted yet as a country in this fight that we're going to do by destroying ourselves. I think we've got probably another decade before we can even start thinking about it.

Kyle: 59:51

On that happy note. Yeah, that's a little more tequila there. Right, right.

Randy: 59:56

So I had a moment where I was driving, I can picture it. Clear as day, driving with my daughter, and we were listening to the news, and Trump was saying Trumpy things, right? Violent, nasty, really, really just ugly stuff. And I turned off the radio because I just realized my daughter, you know, she's 18 now, but she was, I don't, maybe fifteen then. And I just realized this is kind of all she's known. All she's known. Right. And so I turned off the radio and I was just like, I gotta tell you, girl, it's not it's n it has not always been this way. There Democrats and Republicans haven't always liked each other, but they sure were friends and they sure were civil with one another, and they sure did try to work with one another for a long time. Um I was watching, then fast forward to now me watching on the the day that Charlie Kirk was assassinated, I think last Monday or something like that. Um I'm watching Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, talk on CNN, and he's saying very emotionally and passionately how we have to turn down the our rhetoric and we have to, you know, tamp down all the violence in the way we're talking and the way we see one another, all the stuff that you're talking about, really, to be honest. Yeah. In a ring so hollow to me, still does, it rings so hollow to me, because he's a puppet of Donald J. Trump, right? And he it just mystifies me when I hear this from from politicians who obviously are supporting and following leaders that kind of I think I find responsible for a lot of the violence and the violent rhetoric that we see. So question can can healing of any sort happen with a person like Trump in the White House? And who do you think is next in in line for? Like who is who are we going to be voting for in the Republican Party in you know t 2028? Is it going to be J.D. Vance, or do you see it get becoming less populous, or are we gonna go more to the to that side? Read your crystal ball for us a little bit.

Mike: 1:01:57

Yeah, there's a lot there. Right. Uh well and look, and J.D. Vance was on the Charlie Kirk show, right? There's some pretty vitriolic stuff. Like we're going to come after the left, we're going to squash it. Stephen Miller is saying we're going to use the full force of the government to shut down hate speech. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, is now saying, you know, we're going to investigate people who are involved in hate speech, which means criticizing the president. That's that's what the hate speech is now going to be defined as if you say anything bad about the president, that's you know, you you're you hate America, obviously, because we're America and you're not.

Kyle: 1:02:27

For what it's worth, I saw a meme about that today with a quote from Charlie Kirk denying that hate speech exists. It was sad.

Mike: 1:02:33

Yeah. So I you know, um I I my faith tradition teaches me that there is no one that is beyond redemption. I I don't believe that any of these people are inherently bad people. I don't believe there's any evil people. Uh I do believe you you have to be you know contrite. You have to want to be forgiveness, you want to change, and then then then that can happen, right? I I just you you point out a very uh uh the everything you outlined is why I don't believe that we're heading towards better. I think we're heading towards worse, is because they are when you have a guy like Mike Johnson who claims to be, you know, uh maybe I shouldn't say claims to be, but but pronounces that he is a man of God, right? A man of faith, and yet does the things that he does. When um, you know, I I just I don't think Charlie Kirk, I think, was a very intelligent man. I think he was in many ways a brilliant man. But do I believe that Christ would be teaching that way? Do I think that Christ would be using the language that he was and using the methods that he was? No, of course not. I don't. I don't think he was a good um representative of the Christian community broadly. Um and and so look, we're we're at this we're at this really difficult inflection point in American history. We're we're not only struggling over our American identity, which is kind of the book I wrote and what we've been chatting about, but our Christian identity is central to all of that too. Like, what is that? What does that even mean? And and when you're when you when you have to question what that means, boy, you're already pretty far down the road on trying to to find your way back. But we have to remember that at our core, the one undebatable thing, or maybe it's not undebatable, right? It's like when you hear the way they talk about immigrants or the way they hear they talk about Muslims, it's like these are we're all children of God. Like that, I think I thought that that was like the basics. Like we've got to agree on that, right? Like from there, we can start building out different variations of what our belief systems are. But if we don't even believe that, and and worse, we're starting to kind of bastardize a a beautiful faith into saying that that, you know, yeah, Jesus would be deporting these people. Jesus never, you know, said you could come here illegally. Like it's like it's just I I don't I I think we're we're so questioning some of the the core identities of what has made up this nation for 250 years, with all of our failings, that we're in this place where we're just kind of floating out there, very unmoored and very unanchored. And um I don't know that healing is possible in this environment, but what I do know is this our political leaders are not capable of leading us out of it. I that I'm convinced. Yes. So the only way we get to political healing is through social healing. The only way we get to social healing is through our own individual healing. And if we are all better and we become better stewards of who we should be, we can change our culture, we can change our society, and then our politics will reflect that. But we can't our politicians cannot make this better. They're they're incapable, not just as people, although that's also true, but systemically they're not capable of it.

Randy: 1:05:46

Yeah, yeah. So that's that's a great segue then. So concretely then, because I hear stuff like that that says our our politicians are incapable of of healing this, and I completely agree with that. If it's up to us, though, what does that look like? Because I feel very powerless to change the the course of conversation. I mean, I'm a pastor, I can give sermons and I can write things and I can try to motivate people and all this stuff, but most of us feel kind of powerless when it comes to actually changing the course of our political discourse, maybe, or just being neighbors. What does it look like to you, Mike, to be the origin of some healing in our nation?

Mike: 1:06:23

Well, and again, just as a data guy, what I will say is this we have been through this before as human beings. We've been through far worse than this as a country. And so when I say things are gonna get worse before they get better, I want everybody to focus on the fact that it's going to get better. It will, this is going to get better. This dark, this dark era will pass. Of that I am 100% convinced. How long it will be is up to us. And like I said, I usually look for a demographic reason or explanation to understand that. But this will absolutely pass. The question is, who are we going to be when we emerge from it? And the only way we can answer that question is by as much as you feel disempowered by the fact that you're doing something, you are doing something. Like that's what's required of us at this moment. You're you host this podcast, you write, you talk, you reach out to people, you serve as an example, you're raising a daughter who you're saying, I'm not gonna shut this off and I'm going to explain that this is not right. That's that's that's what it is. And it may not feel like you're you're you know, you can affect what Mike Johnson's gonna be doing on whipping the votes, and and that's problematic, but that's literally how the healing begins. That that that's why it took Ireland 30 years, and and look, the troubles were you know, the Catholic Protestant fight went back for hundreds of years, but the troubles itself, when when when politics doesn't work, the definition of politics, you know, uh is trying to is trying to reconcile conflict by peaceful means. So when conflict falls apart, or when our structures for for resolving conflict fall apart, violence is the inevitable result. So how do you solve that? You create a scenario where you can resolve conflict across party lines, neighbor to neighbor, brother to brother, person to person. And as long as you're working towards that road, it may not feel like you're seeing a vote go the right way, but you've got to heal society individually and one by one. There's just no other way to do it. There's no quick route around it. There's no system, there's no process, there's no bill, no politician is gonna come and save us. We are a sick society, we are a broken culture, we're not in good shape, and it's kind of like going to the gym. You, you know, your your physician can tell you diet and exercise, but until you get up and take the first steps and put on the tennis shoes and start going for that walk, change ain't gonna happen, and you're not gonna see change happen for a good long time because you're really not in good shape, and we're not.

Kyle: 1:08:51

First first three months are gonna suck a lot. Yeah, yeah.

Mike: 1:08:54

Yeah, but but what I will say is this this is also what forges character in a nation, the same way it forges it in an individual, and that's why I'm so optimistic. I do believe that this country has it in our character, it is in our nature. You know, we have a long history of waiting till the last minute to tackle major crises in this country and and at horrible human cost. I mean, that's the story of this country. We're gonna get there. We will. It's gonna take us far longer than it should, with far more destruction than needs to happen, with far more deaths and violence. But we will get there and we will be a better people for it because that's that struggle is what makes you better. Fighting for freedom, fighting for equality, fighting for racial justice, fighting to be a better people instills that virtue and characteristic because your daughter's going to see you doing that. And she is the one who will take the torch to the next generation, and that's that's what the whole American experiment is about.

Kyle: 1:09:50

Yeah. Well, in the spirit of doing the small thing that you can do at the moment, mine is encouraging people to try some good tequila because nothing greases the wheels with a conversation with your neighbor across the political aisle, like a good drama tequila. Uh, and I happen to be sipping some, and I wanted to ask you because you said you were writing about tequila. Um what is your favorite and what are you writing about? Wow.

Mike: 1:10:11

I like and I hate to be like the tequila snob, but I like little artisanal batches that are kind of made. Uh I I'm a big Siete Leguas is probably my favorite. It's a it's a Cuervo product. Um Cieta Leguas is actually the name of Pancho Villa's horse. It's a good uh it's uh I I like a good blanco. Yeah. I I I drink blancos. I don't I don't really much care much for the aneos. Um but yeah, I'm I'm um anything that's been you know distilled and and set aside for good good good run. Um I'm I'm a fan of no sugars in there, just give it to me straight and let's uh get on the horses and ride.

Randy: 1:10:50

Yeah. So you're so you're working on this book about the tequila wars. And tell us about the the the book you're working on.

Mike: 1:10:58

Well, one of the a lot of what I've been working on now, because I think our political system is so fractured, a lot of people are like, what can we do to kind of fix the political system? Uh in a time of misinformation and disinformation and political paralysis, all that really matters is story and narrative. The stories that we tell ourselves really matter. And one thing that's really important to me is the lack of positive aspirational characters of Mexican or Latino descent on our movie screens. And it's always one of three stereotypes. The stereotypes of Latinos are there's either an undoc you are undocumented, or you're a gangbanger, or you're a narco trafficker. Those are the three stories that Hollywood wants to write. And so in working with my agent on the on this book and talking to some Hollywood screenwriters, I wanted to tell a more epic story of uh entrepreneurs and vision and people working to kind of bend history to their will, people who were forged something grand out of nothing. And the Mexican story that uh popped up to me was the story of the Cuervo family versus the Sauza family, this rivalry that begins in the early uh mid-1800s. Uh the Cuervos have been farming agave um since the 1700s, but Sanobio Sausa, the the scion of the of the Salza dynasty, leaves the employ of Jose Cuervo and starts a rival spirit. And the story that the centuries-long story of their rivalry kind of ends during Prohibition in 1930. Uh, but a long saga of you know, employees being shot at and killed, uh, Romeo and Juliet romances, um, they were on the opposite sides of revolutionary movements, um, the prohibition, uh, the way the margarita was invented, you know, how do you how do you run tequila up through the border? Some great stuff, it's great stories. And so, you know, it just you know, people kind of um building a business out of nothing uh into this global empire.

Kyle: 1:12:54

Yeah, I've already pre-ordered it somehow. It doesn't exist yet, but seriously. Seriously. We'll have you back on to talk about that. That's amazing. Yeah.

Randy: 1:13:01

Uh Mike Madrid, can you tell our listeners where to find you podcasts, books, all the things?

Mike: 1:13:06

Yeah, if this has been of interest to you, um, I live really on my substack. It's called the Great Transformation. I call it that because I write about these topics all the time. There's collapsing institutions, how history gives us a guide because we have been through these times before as human beings. I try to use historical analogies to explain the current moment, um, as well as do a lot of political analysis, a lot of polling data, like what's happening at this moment. And then I do throw in some of my own, you know, tequila stories or stories about cemeteries or day trips that I'll take or um trips around the world to explore things. So it's kind of a mishmash of things, uh, give you a whole different perspective. If you like this interview, if you're still with us, you'll probably like the substack. If you've checked out, it doesn't really matter anyway. Um, but you can also find me, I do a Latino vote podcast with a guy named Chuck Rocha, who was Bernie Sanders' campaign manager, a Democrat and Republican talking about the Latino vote. Uh, we've been going for about four or five years. It's kind of exploded, taking on a life of its own. It's a fun place to talk about Latino vote. Um, but yeah, I'm I'm around on you know X and Blue Sky and all those places too. Awesome.

Kyle: 1:14:11

Well, thanks for talking to us. It's been a good time.

Mike: 1:14:13

Guys, thanks for reaching out. It was a real pleasure. Hope you guys had as good a time as I did. I know some of the tequila in his hand is having a good time. Absolutely.

Randy: 1:14:20

Absolutely, absolutely. We'll hopefully we'll talk again, Mike. Take care. Thanks.com slash a pastor and a philosopher, where you can get bonus content, extra perks, and a general feeling of being a good person.

Kyle: 1:14:49

Also, please rate and review the show in Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. These help new people discover the show, and we may even read your review in a future episode.

Randy: 1:14:57

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Kyle: 1:15:05

Find us on social media at PPWB podcast, and find transcripts and links to all of our episodes at Pastor and Philosopher.puzzbrown.com. See you next time. Cheers