🎙 Season Two Premiere: “What Did You Learn From Losing?” with Matthew Rodriguez
“A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.” – B. Franklin
In this bold launch to Season Two of The Forecast, Keegan Goudiss welcomes a longtime comrade in campaigns and conscience, Matt Rodriguez, founder of Rodriguez Strategies and one of the Democratic Party’s most seasoned strategists. What follows is no exercise in idle gossip, but a hard-eyed accounting of the state of our democracy under Trump 2.0—and the soul-searching (or lack thereof) within the Democratic Party.
They revisit lessons from the Iowa cornfields of 2002 to today’s global populist winds, asking: Have Democrats truly learned from defeat? Is anyone in the party ready to speak plainly to working people? Or is our coalition more sclerotic than spirited? Matt lays down a theory of politics that cuts deeper than the latest poll, while Keegan probes how Democrats might rescue economic messaging from elite abstraction—and reclaim voters beyond the latte belt.
Along the way: reflections on Dick Gephardt, the paradox of progress in blue states, the cost of aging leadership, and the ever-shifting sands of 2028. Also featuring: Costco as Democratic agora, Trump’s odd FDR cosplay, and why the next Dean Scream might just be overdue.