Hey everyone, I'm David Chalian, and CNN's Washington Bureau Chief and Political Director, and welcome to the CNN Political Briefing.

Instead of an administration working to advance America's highest ideals, we are witnessing the wholesale abandonment of those ideals.

On Wednesday night, Kamala Harris gave her first major speech since leaving office. She slammed President Trump's terrorist policy as "reckless" and warned of a possible constitutional crisis.

The one check, the one balance, the one power that must not fail is the voice of the people.

'Her speech comes at an inflection point for her own political future and for the future of her party. What's next? This week, I'm joined by someone who's asking that very question and has some thoughts on why Democrats are facing an uphill battle. Rob Flaherty was a deputy campaign manager for Harris's 2024 presidential campaign. He was doing much the same role when it was the Biden campaign. And before he went to the campaign, he ran digital strategy for the Biden White House. I saw an essay Rob wrote this week for the New York Times, and it stirred up a lot of chatter in political circles. He writes about why the fundamental challenge for Democrats is reaching, "opt-out voters." That's how he describes the large swath of Americans who don't trust politics, politicians, or mainstream media. People who tune out political news, but still absorb messaging about politics through the culture they consume. Rob joins me now to dive deeper on his theory for why Democrats are failing to reach these Americans and what his party can do about it. Rob, thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate it.

David, thanks for having me.

'So I was fascinated when I read your piece in the New York Times this week about so-called "opt-out voters," as you called them, and the Democratic Party's challenge with them. So let's just start defining who do you consider the universe of opt- out voters?

'Yeah, totally. I mean, these are voters. It's less demographic. We're used to cutting up political folks by demographics. This is more by media consumption. These are folks who don't pay attention to politics, don't pay attention to the news. And this is a divide that a lot of data has borne out since, and these are voters who are sort of self-selecting out of the institutions of politics, self- selecting out of mainstream media, self selecting out of participating in the civic process, all of this stuff, these are folks who feel like they're not reflected by the system as it is and are pissed off at it.

And are they available politically to both parties?

Yeah, I mean, it's sort of funny both campaigns sort of spotted this problem. It was funny at the Harvard Conference, which, for those who don't know, it's this sort of hazing ritual where they make the losers get in a room with the winners for five hours.

It's not hazing! It's good for history.

Great for history! And great for the bar tab of the hotel bar. But anyway, no, I mean, like, you know, we were calling them persuade to participate voters. They were calling him disaffected Democrats. These are voters who are definitely available to both parties. And I think Democrats often think of a swing voter as someone who swings between Republican and Democrat. I think this is like more complicated. This is sort of voters who swing between tuning in and tuning out, and they are available. They just believe the system isn't working, and the party that defends the system is gonna have the hardest time winning them.

'And clearly, in 2024, the Democrats were seen as the party defending the system. But, as you said, this was not just something you learned after the fact. I mean, Rob, I remember coming to Wilmington and being in a conversation with you in January of 2024, where you identified this universe as the thing that the entire campaign is going to be built to reach and communicate to, and that that is going to be the ballgame. And if I remember correctly, at the time, you remember it was just as the Republicans were getting into the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, first and foremost, you were thinking, these voters aren't aware yet that Donald Trump is actually like on the precipice of being the Republican nominee again and fully back in the arena, despite the fact that Donald Trump had been a dominant force in the headlines and the news for all these things. But again, these voters wouldn't necessarily be paying attention to that. And you were like, well, they're going to need to wake up to the fact of Donald Trump. That's one way that we, the Democrats, are going to have a chance to start communicating with them when they realize that Donald Trump is there, and we'll. paint him as a threat. But you went on to say that like you had done deep studies in media consumption, and you found this universe of voters that you knew were gonna be consequential. So I guess my question was, what went wrong? I don't mean what went in the whole campaign, I'm not here to do a campaign analysis, but like what in your plan, knowing that this universe existed, to communicate and reach to these people who are opt-out voters, what didn't go according to that plan to reach them?

It's a good and fair question, and I think part of the thing that I'm trying to grapple with, because I think that it is easy after a campaign that lost to be like everything was a disaster.

'And, to be clear, I'm really not even asking, like, all the things of the campaign, like I'm not trying to do a total post-mortem here, yeah.

'I do think you have to grapple with the fact that in the states where we ran program, it was a significantly closer race than the places where we didn't. And so that does show that between the campaign, the outside groups, you know, we demonstrated the ability to move a lot of these voters, but not enough. I do think that the question that we kind of need to grapple with, sits beyond the campaign. I mean, it's this thing about voters to communicate via culture or sort of get their information via culture who sort of have different pipelines, there are different pipelines to reach them. Those were not necessarily like available to us. And they're not the kind of thing a campaign can build. And so part of this is like, we gotta go build those things. And that exists from, that needs to start now and before there's even a nominee. That needs to start as a 30-year project like it has been on the right. And so that is one thing. I do think it is easy for, I'm sure there are people listening to this who are like, of course the campaign guy is like, well, it wasn't the campaign's fault. I do think, I do think there are like a number of things that we could have done more of, you know, for example, I think we underappreciated the degree to which frequency mattered with sort of media appearances and doing more of that. Would have been good both on the Biden side and in the Harris side. You know, we talked a big game about how we would organize people's friends and family and communicate through that. I don't think we ever built a great system to do that. And then, you know, I think that look there was a massive media event in the middle that changed the dynamic of the race in a pretty significant way and sort of raised the then Biden campaigns worst negatives, and so, you know, those things sort of scramble all of it. It's not that these voters love Donald Trump. It's that they hate the system, and Trump sort of ended up being indicative of blowing up the system.

'In your New York Times piece, you identify the problem a lot. You do offer some solutions, and we'll get to those in a second, but you say that the GOP is focused on achieving long-term cultural change. We're focused, meaning your party, the Democrats, on short-term political gain. What do you mean? You don't believe Democrats are pursuing long- term cultural change?

In the way that it needs to happen and the way it happens now, I don't think we are. And, by the way, I think Democrats, I take Democrats as a party, but really there's sort of a broader ideological project at work here. The sort of key point for me in making this case is the sense that the traditional institutions that have shaped culture, the print media and cable, sorry.

No offense taken. No, seriously, I read your piece. I know you wrote this piece for Democrats. I want you to know I passed this piece around to my colleagues here because I think it speaks to our business as well. It's not just about, yeah.

'No, no totally. But it's, you know, we communicate through traditional mainstream press: Hollywood, academia, all these things that are in the right-wing conspiracy about the left controlling. It's not as clear cut as that, but those are the institutions that people are fleeing. And the right just so happens to have built through philanthropy, through economic incentives, all of these things, these really strong methods, I call them pipelines, these sort of places to catch people when they are feeling like the system isn't reflecting what they want. You know, I think that a lot of money goes towards advertising and still should, by the way, I think ads work. But like we need to be investing in this stuff and building the ability to have this conversation about the values of the center left and the left in order to be able to have a really productive Democratic campaign.

Well, because you say, right, that it's, and I think that's what you're getting at now, it's not just a communication problem, as you said, like the left owns where voters used to be, the right owns where the voters are going. It is also a brand problem as you identify. How does the brand problem get fixed?

Yeah, I mean, it's a couple of things like one, I think that there's like, I mean I didn't even really go into this in the piece so this is sort of breaking new ground, but I do think there is like a fundamental like weak versus strong argument that has sort of entered the cultural ethos, and I sort of feel like the thing that the internet has done; the thing that social has done is sort of raised the bar of what people expect from the people they hear from. They expect authenticity, they expect sort of a relationship with folks. I mean, that's the incentives in media, right? And I think that there's this sense of the Democratic party talks a big game, but they aren't delivering for me in ways that I can feel. They go and talk a big game about why we need to protect democracy, but, I don't know, like that's pretty high up the Maslov's hierarchy of needs. And to the extent that they're talking about economics, it's great, but they don't necessarily, and we've seen evidently, on an evidentiary basis, the ability to make a dent on that, but it's in ways that people both go over people's heads and then when they happen, can't feel the difference anyway. And so I think that we've sort of backed ourselves into being this party of the system, and people see the system as broken. And so there is this element of, you know, yes, we have to present a hopeful vision for what the future can look like for a country that is more economically fair, where people get left alone if they're not hurting anyone. We have to do all of that. We have to draw really strongly the contrast with who we're not and show that we're fighting for it. And like, we need to kind of be able to demonstrate that, you know, we really mean what we say and then get it done. I mean, this is the thing is like, I think that the party's sort of trust bank with the American people has been depleted, like we are in debt.

As we looked at all these 100 day polls, you know, Trump obviously in a rough position with the American public, but it's not like a binary thing where therefore the Democrats benefit from that. The Democrats, as you said, also have depleted that trust bank. We're going to take a quick break. We're gonna have a lot more with Rob Flaherty in just a moment. So Rob, just picking up on what you were saying right before the break, as I'm listening to you, I know these are not thoughts that just occurred to you in the aftermath of the campaign. Like in the midst of a campaign, which like is an insane experience, I understand, if you're having these thoughts of, we are being seen as the defenders of the institutions, which is not where the American people are, take me inside. If you're seeing all of this, like, where can you point to an example of like course correction that that took place to address that?

I mean, look I think there's like a couple of things here, which is...

Other than swapping your candidate. I realize that was a course correction, yeah

'Look, like, the significant majority of what we spent our advertising dollars on was middle class economics, rooting the vice president in her very legitimate middle class roots that people saw and didn't know about her. And you know, a series of economic policies that would benefit that, you know, benefit them. And look, again, we were able to sort of fight these issues to a draw. I mean, on economics, it was starting to get close at the end. We even kind of overtook him on economic favorability. And again, in the states where we advertised, like, we were able to sort of move the needle. The issue is the places where we didn't, and that perception being difficult to overcome. You know, I will say, like, another thing that was interesting was, and this is like, this is Rob's view. I don't think this is going to be like, you know, everyone agrees. Like, the Project 2025 was a really effective negative message for us for a few reasons. One, it started on social. It came from other people. And then the campaign made it into something that tested well. But the thing that I think was effective about it was it was the system. It's a conspiracy. It was self-discovery. People could find, Oh God, there's these people who are going to come in and change the government and use the levers of power and all that stuff. And it was a really good negative. It was one that, I mean, the Trump campaign said it to us at the hazing ritual of, you know, you all moved away from it. And so I do think like that kind of message and it sort of starts from a place of where people already are is an effective thing.

'One more, what I call sort of you identifying a problem is you write in the piece: "We are now seeing a generation of 70-year-olds who called for the departure of an 81-year-old failed to understand how anyone under 60 gets information about the world." That is pretty damning and that gets at the heart of a generational reckoning that we see sort of brewing inside your party.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think one of the fundamental truths about the media environment that we're in, and I fall into it, and we all fall into is sort of thinking that the information environment that you live in is everyone else's. And it is hard to imagine, for example, for me. That the vast majority of YouTube is consumed on a television screen while people are sitting on a couch. Like that is the vast of majority of how people watch YouTube. I think that is insane, right? There are entire cultural conversations that are blowing up my group chats that I have no idea what the heck they are, right? Like that it just, like, life. And I think that is true for people who don't live in this media ecosystem. You can't imagine what it is like to get most of your information from YouTube and TikTok and your friends. Because you read the papers. I mean, you might read a literal paper. And so that is hard, and it makes it really hard to adjust to the incentives of the moment. It makes it really hard be fluent in the media appearances you need to do in the moment, and it makes it hard to, you know, prioritize it. And so all of those things are a challenge. Is it generational? You know, there are older people who do understand this and are working at it. There are younger people who don't. I think it is more a willingness to be innovative and take shots and try different things and exposure to it that makes a difference.

Yeah, I mean, you reference Bernie Sanders showing up at Coachella while out on his "Fighting Oligarchy" tour.

Yeah. And that's, this is what I mean. I mean, I said this somewhere else. It's like, I would take a political figure who is good at doing stuff offline that generates attention but has absolutely no game online than I would someone who is extremely good at talking on TikTok. Like at the end of the day, there is like a substance matters thing. And that why you're seeing Van Hollen and Booker and Bernie and AOC get rewarded for taking these sort of bold stands and driving that conflict.

You say driving that conflict. I mean, talk about the attention economy and how you see conflict a part of that.

Yeah, I mean, it's the shortcut to generating attention. It is not the only way. But there is a sense, look, I think voters think Democrats are full of shit, but picking a fight shows you care. It shows that you stand for something. It shows you're willing to go and deliver. I think we are penalized as much for any kind of policy thing is it is, as we were penalized for, like, a general sense that we're, like kind of weenies, you know? And so conflict, you, know, drives attention narratively, but it also, by the way, like look, the way that algorithms shape everything that we do, I mean, that is what drives clicks. It's what drives reach. It's what drives attention. And ultimately, you know, attention is what drives reach to the voters that we are going to need.

So, we've touched on all three kind of solutions that you've put into your piece, the driving attention. You said that "if we're not hope merchants, we're nothing at all." That you believe that you gotta present a message of hope. I want to go back to the first solution that you offer and that you referenced when we started talking, which is the infrastructure piece.

Yeah.

So in your dream of vision, you think that these campaign donors, high dollar donors who like fund all that television advertising you're talking about that made a difference in the battleground states, but not difference enough, obviously, in the battleground states, that they should create an ecosystem on the left unto its own. Do you envision that looking like what has been built on the right or something different?

'I think it necessarily has to be something different. I mean, there's like a few things here, which is like my general, like you have to think about culture now as like a honeycomb of subcultures, right? You know, I talk about it in the piece as like, a city with different neighborhoods, but you know, there are just different corners of the internet that people live in. And yes, we have to reach those folks. We have to also have a strong base from which to operate. And so we need, you know center left that lives online and part of the center left media that lives online. Part of the problem with that is center-left news consumers or media consumers are like, yo, MSNBC and CNN and the Times and NPR will do me just fine. And so there's less of the seeking out that the right has. The right, because there's audience demand, gets to build this profitable ecosystem. We just don't have that. I think the audience is there. But these things don't just happen in a vacuum. I mean, you look at how YouTube, how TikTok, how all of these folks sort of fund, built pandemic creator ecosystems, they pump money into it for a really long time before it was profitable. I think that does need to happen. We need to sort of start that. And then from there, you know, once you have the strong base, you can kind of find the folks who are, you know, building those pipelines into culture. And you also, by the way, like, yes, there's the building, there's also the going to the places where people already are. I mean, that's the other thing. You know, you saw Buttigieg do this with Flagrant last week, those kinds of things of just like, yes, we can build it, and I think people will come over time, but we also have like a two and four year time horizon where we gotta go deal with this. So we have to kind of deal with the world as it is.

'But I feel like, I mean, I assume you see the Buttigieg-Flagrant thing as a successful outing, but I feel like Democrats, a lot of Democratic elected officials are like oh, I'll just do a podcast and then I'll be all set here. But - not that I'm suggesting that's what Buttigig was doing or like, you know, how many cringe videos is Chuck Schumer going to put out on his Instagram feed acting like a fighter, but like, that's never going to work authentically for who he is.

Well, I mean, that goes back to my point which is, earlier, which is like, I don't, if the takeaway from this cycle is like campaigns need to spend more on digital and do vertical video I think that's a miss I think the thing is like, you've got to do stuff offline that plays well online and then you will get rewarded online. I don't think doing the tiny mic videos, but not having substance to sell makes a huge difference. That being said, there are not a lot of places to go. There's what candidates need to do and there's what you need to to disseminate cultural narratives that make it easier for candidates to move. And those things are very different. And I think that we are so focused on the latter that we're missing the much bigger and challenging problems in the former.

Rob Flaherty, thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me, David.

That's it for this week's edition of the CNN Political Briefing. Remember, you can reach out to us with your questions about Trump's new administration. Our contact information is in the show notes. CNN Political Briefing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Emily Williams. Our senior producer is Dan Bloom. Dan Dzula is our technical director and Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. Support from Alex Manassari, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Laini Steinhardt, Jameis Andrist, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.