Daily Kos' The Brief

Is California a bellwether for the epic incoming 2022 cycle, or is it its own blue bubble, with its own dynamics divorced from the rest of purple America? To discuss this topic, today’s guest on The Brief is Nick Rathod. He is the founder of the State Innovation Exchange, a progressive answer to ALEC—the right-wing group that writes model conservative legislation for state legislators to adopt.

Markos and Kerry talk with Jodi Hicks, CEO and President of Planned Parenthood California to talk about the awful Texas law, how it may have helped Democrats during the California recall election, and her experiences on the ground with voters facing a radicalized Supreme Court and Republican Party.

September promises to be exhaustingly jam-packed. What can Democrats actually accomplish in a Senate where their margin of error is zero? Meanwhile, Texas has just passed the nation’s most restrictive anti-abortion law, and the Supreme Court allowed it to be enforced while the law works its way up the court system. For the second half of the show, Elie Mystal will join us. He is the justice correspondent for The Nation. and one of the most interesting and fun guests in the biz. If only this topic was fun.

At 20 years, it was America’s longest war. So what now Republicans are trying to take advantage of Biden’s slide in the polls to stop what’s left of his legislative agenda. They’ll try to make an issue of it in the 2022 and 2024 elections. Will it work? Today’s guest is Jon Soltz. Soltz did two tours of duty in Iraq and is the chairman of VoteVets—the nation’s top progressive veterans’ rights organization.

This week we talk to former Democratic presidential candidate, mayor of San Antonio, and Obama-era secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Julián Castro. Castro has recently been pounding Gov. Abbott's lack of leadership on the pandemic among other failures such as the "big freeze" of February 2021. We'll unpack the current state of COVID-19, voting rights, and electoral politics in Texas with Castro—as well as whether he's positioning himself to run against Abbott next year!

A brief summary of this episode

Today, we will explore what to expect both politically and legally as the process unfolds with two experts in the field, Daily Kos Elections redistricting analyst and gerrymandering savant Stephen Wolf, and Simone Leeper, legal counsel at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. The Center also just launched PlanScore.org, a free online tool to help voting rights advocates measure partisan gerrymandering and demand fair maps.

Longtime Daily Kos readers might remember Emily Cain, as she was a Daily Kos-backed candidate for Maine’s 2nd congressional district in 2014 and 2016—the swingy rural Maine district that Democrats currently hold, but was won by Donald Trump in both his presidential races. We’ll talk to Cain about Emily’s List 2022 recruitment efforts, our chances to hold Congress, the importance of women when it comes to winning, and the double standards that women candidates and elected officials (like Vice President Kamala Harris') face.

On this week's The Brief we replay our episode with Matt Hildreth, the Executive Director of RuralOrganizing.org, a national "boldly progressive and proudly rural" organization based in Columbus, Ohio, working locally and nationally to build a rural America that is empowered, thriving, and fair. And Daily Kos communications director, Carolyn Fiddler to discuss state legislatures and whether or not the Republican Party is salvageable.

Democrats have long considered the rural vote as completely unchangeable. Are we wrong about that? Are rural values aligned with those of the Democratic Party? How can we change our messaging to appeal to rural voters without losing our progressive ideals? J.D. Scholten and John Ray join us in conversation on how the fight for rural America is far from over.