Republicans Want to Win. Democrats Want to Be Right.

Democrats can pass huge bills and still lose the argument with the people those bills are meant to help. That’s the tension we dig into with Chuck Rocha, a longtime Democratic strategist, Bernie Sanders alum, and proud “Mexican redneck” from East Texas who learned politics through factory work and union life. He comes in hot on one theme: voters don’t just weigh policies, they decide whether they trust you, whether they feel seen, and whether your message fits their world.

We talk insider baseball on the Bernie versus Hillary primary, what changed between 2016 and 2020, and why party power almost never gives up the wheel willingly. Then we zoom out to the bigger mess: how social media algorithms profit from outrage, how safe districts make primaries the real election, and why gerrymandering and fundraising incentives push politicians toward extremes. Chuck also challenges our assumptions about “populism,” arguing that most Americans are a mix of right and left instincts, and they mostly want government to stop making life harder while still protecting basic dignity and fairness.

The practical heart of the conversation is his prescription for a new Democratic majority: root the story in work and family, speak like a real person, show cultural competency, and earn trust before you ask for votes. We also get into faith language, regional candidates, and why Chuck thinks a figure like James Talarico could shock the country in Texas.

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Transcript

Why Politics Keeps Showing Up

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 at 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. Yep, that's our jam. It's kind of where we live, what we love, all the things. But um, it feels like in these last couple of years, all of those things, spirituality, theology, philosophy, they've always spoken to the the world of politics and the things of politics because all of these things are kind of touch on, are influenced by and influence the our political life together, our the our civic life together, our shared life together. They all touch on those things and they all matter to it. And I think in this political moment that we find ourselves in, I think it's probably natural for a podcast like us to start talking a little bit more politically because of the world that we live in, right?

Kyle 1:19

Yeah, absolutely. And what we're trying to tell you here, friends, is we're no longer a pastor and philosopher walking to a bar from now on. It's a politics exclusive, walk into a voting booth. That's that's what we're about.

Randy 1:29

We'll work on the name. We'll work on the name by the way.

Kyle 1:31

I'm not fucking with you, we're not doing that. But we we are talking to another political guy. And uh we've recently had a couple conversations with Mike Madrid, uh, who go back and listen to those if you haven't heard, but he's an expert on the Latino vote. He's also um a political commentator. Yeah, classical conservative project. General Trumper, founder of the Lincoln Project, uh data guy, knows a lot about what's going on. He has his finger on the pulse of both what's happening in the Republican Party and also messaging that Democrats need to focus on. And he has a podcast, of course he does, uh, and his co-host is the guy that we're talking to today, Chuck Rocha, uh, who we didn't know anything about, I didn't know anything about him prior to this, but boy, he's a lot of fun.

Randy 2:10

He's a lot of fun. Holy cow. Uh first first of all, this is probably the most expletives you'll find uh in any possibly in any of our episodes, and and this is a short, you know, short little blast. Yeah. But Chuck is just a normal dude. He is really smart, really quick witted, um, and he's got some things to say, and I think they're they really matter. Um the fun thing is that he and Mike can have these conversations together and show that we can actually talk to each other on different sides and disagree with one another and still actually talk and learn from one another and love one another. But um the Democratic Party is in a unique situation that we're finding ourselves in. I would say unique to my lifetime, really, probably. And I'm about to be 48 years old. So Chuck has a real clear finger on the pulse of the Democratic Party. He's worked with Bernie Sanders, he's worked um with many, many, many campaigns. He's he lives in DC and consults with tons and tons of different campaigns and organizations and initiatives. Um and he has a very clear vision of what's wrong with the Democratic Party, what's wrong with our political system, and it's pretty compelling.

Kyle 3:18

It is, and as you'll see, he's very much from a working class background, and that's his focus. Yes. He's an East Texas guy and it comes through and he doesn't try to be anything else.

Randy 3:25

Yep. I happen to think that that's that's where Democrats have gotten wrong. So I'm really, really interested in arguments like Chuck has.

Kyle 3:32

So anyway, we found him compelling. We hope you do too. Let us know if you didn't. Or if you did, we're we're interested in your take.

Meeting Chuck Rocha

Kyle 3:55

Well, Chuck Rocha, welcome to a pastor and a philosopher, walking to a bar. Nice, great to be here. Now you can add Mexican redneck to that. Yeah, let's go. I like that. So you co-host a podcast with Mike Madrid, who is a previous repeat guest on our show. We, our listeners, know we are not a political podcast, but we do occasionally get political and talk about political things. And we've talked to Mike a couple of times and we got some responses like, like Mike, he has some interesting things to say, but man, I some of those conservative takes are a bit much for me.

Randy 4:26

In truth be told, both of us are left of center Kyle more than me.

Kyle 4:31

The liberal Randy is the more moderate of the two of us, I suppose. Um, and so we knew that you were uh his co-hosts on on your podcast together, and that you leaned a little more in my direction. And also that you used to work with Bernie Sanders, and we both think so that's fascinating. So we wanted to have you on to talk about some of the same stuff that we've talked with him about and get a little bit of a different take, if that's all right.

Randy 4:51

Looking forward to it. Yeah. So, Chuck, can you just tell us and our listeners about your world, what what you're doing now, how you got there, um, what what you're what you think about.

From East Texas To DC

Chuck 5:02

You know, I am currently the founder of a political consulting firm in Washington, D.C. Now, let me be clear, you can't sling a dead cat in Washington, D.C., and not hit 10 consultants. So let me explain, because my wife says that all the time, uh and I've been married to an amazing woman who changed my life two years ago, and I am 57 years old now. People hire me and hire our firm to help them win elections. That means we make TV ads, we make digital ads, we make mail pieces, we make those phone calls, we come up with the strategy of how to win. A nonprofit hires me to figure out how to get hunters and anglers to vote for this Democrat. Bernie Sanders hires me to be oversee his entire campaign and build out the state strategy. So that's what the firm does. And the firm is called Solidarity Strategies, not Chuck Roach, Inc., uh, not Mexican Rednecks are us, but um, it's solidarity strategies because that's where my origin story takes place. Uh I grew up in East Texas. That's this accent is not made up, and for those of you listening at home, I am not a white man. I am a Mexican with a country accent because this story will tell you why. Uh my mama was just 15 years old when she met my daddy, who was Mexican, and my mom is white in a Baptist church in East Texas. I would come along nine months later when my mother was 16 and my father was 19. Uh, my little sister would come along a few years later, but we grew up in a trailer house. For those of you at home, that's a mobile home. That's a house you can move around with a truck uh next door to my grandparents' house. And my dad left when I was five. They just didn't make it like most teenage kids don't. And I was raised by my white grandfather on that working farm. So uh this accent is not made up, and the calluses on my hands are still left from when I was a kid because I still worked with my hands.

Randy 6:41

Okay.

Chuck 6:41

Uh I grew up like every other kid in East Texas, but I went to work in a factory. This is the big key here, y'all. I went to work in a factory where my daddy worked. He actually helped me because I started carrying on a long tradition of babies having babies, and had my son when I was 19, took full custody of him when he was three months old. And I told my dad I needed a job with healthcare. I'd worked my whole life since I was 15 to help support my mom and the family. But he got me a job in the factory, and in that factory there was a union. And I wasn't an activist. Uh, nobody in my family had ever gone to college, nobody had very few had ever graduated high school, just good factory working farm folks who just honest living, Americana. My grandfather had fought in World War II. And I joined the union because everybody else joined the union, but that was my entryway into politics, my entryway into figuring out that, oh, there may be something more than East Texas out there. And I became a union steward, uh, became a division chairman, an officer of the local, got involved in the local party. All this is not because I want to be changed the world. I wrote about this in my book called T.O. Bernie, of I did it because I didn't want to do, I didn't want to work in a factory. And being out and driving my truck, being paid to be in the factory, and I wasn't having to be in the factory, hell, it was a motivation. And when I go speak to kids now, and I'll end with this. When I go speak to kids now about my life, I start with three things. I say, uh I was I've never been to college. Uh I'm a convicted felon, and I was a teenage father. And I'm probably one of the most successful political consultants in Washington, D.C. And any one of those three things should have kept me out of politics. And I'm all three of those things. So by the grace of God and a lot of luck, I've made it. And if I can make it, and you're going to school and you're trying to live right, like there's a lot better chance that you can make it. But I think my life now is an example of that if Chuck Rocha can make it, hell anybody can make it.

Why Bernie’s Team Wanted Him

Kyle 8:28

How much of that backstory feeds into why people like Bernie Sanders have wanted to work with you?

Chuck 8:34

You know, I just think there was some commonality. I knew Bernie from my labor days. So he knew of me because I would I would end up that story would go on to be I become the national political director of the steelworkers' union when I was 29 years old. It's just crazy. And I was the last rank and file uh like guy who worked in the factory, who never went to college to become a political director of a union. So I knew Bernie. But more so than that, these are where you get to people and mentors in your life. Uh Jeff Weaver was his Bernie's first manager. And Weaver was his driver, his chief of staff in the Senate. Grew up in Vermont with him. He liked me, and he's the one who interviewed me and was like, we need more black and brown people in this, but we need more working class people involved in this as well. And he was really the one who was the pivot between me and Bernie, so much so that when that campaign was over, and I wrote about this in my book, in 2020, they both sat me down and put me in charge of finding a manager to manage the 2020 raise, and then made me the offer to actually just do it. And then I went through this whole thing in the book about, you know, I didn't think I was. I had been through all the things and I wanted to run the campaign, but I didn't want the heat of having to run the campaign because I don't know if y'all have known in the first eight minutes here, but I'm loud and mouthy, and I thought maybe that didn't go over real well sitting in the chair.

Randy 9:54

Good. I like it. Um, Chuck, which campaign was it the 20 2016 Bernie for President campaign that you were the senior advisor?

Chuck 10:02

I was on both campaigns, but on the first campaign, I was just a paid consultant. I made a lot of the mail. I helped them do a lot of the staffing and hiring because they didn't know a lot of people, and he had just run a Senate race. On the second campaign, I turned down the manager job to get the job as a senior uh advisor with Jeff. Go find a manager who was fast, who was my neighbor, by the way. Because I told them, you need a Boy Scout to sit in the chair. You need somebody who don't drink, don't cuss, don't have a criminal record. So I found a Muslim who didn't drink and had a beautiful wife who didn't even cuss. I'm like, he's perfect. I'll run the campaign. You are him to be the manager.

Randy 10:36

Okay, okay. So

What Really Happened In 2016

Randy 10:38

we've got a we've got a laundry list of questions for you, as you saw, for about the current state of the Democratic Party and politics, all that stuff. But I'm interested in the 2016 election, Bernie and Hillary. Um, can you just give us a little bit of insider baseball uh as to like did the DNC cook the books or like how did there was an epic confrontation between two movements within the Democratic Party, and it felt like the one the the candidate that the the establishment wanted just they made it happen. Is that an accurate depiction of what actually happened? What what happened in 2016 between Bernie and Hillary?

Chuck 11:14

No, it's accurate. It's how much of it's accurate, how deep did it go? Some of that will never be known. But there's there's no doubt that power don't like to give up power. And there is a big group of people that run the power in the Democratic Party, just like the Republican Party. You know, nobody does anything without Donald Trump now in the Republican Party. And Bernie was operating outside of that system. It's a lot more in vogue today, but back then it was unheard of. So there was a lot of forces working against Bernie, whether it was the delegates, the superdelegates, the convention, like it was it, but it wasn't just then, y'all, uh, Kyle, Randy, it was also in 2020, after the Super Tuesday election, there was a call made, probably by Obama from what I hear, to get folks to consolidate down. Because if five or six people stay in the 2020 race, this I can promise you, because I had the polling, is that we were fixed to be the nominee. We were gonna win every Super Tuesday state or be in the top two because I had done paid for polling in all of that. Because I was in charge with Jeff and with Faz. So I knew we were gonna win. But guess what? If I knew we were gonna win from polling, they knew we were gonna win from polling. So they shut that shit down and they got everybody to get out. And that's not bad. That's just smart politics. If you're the establishment, you want to have Joe Biden be the nominee. Elizabeth Warren wouldn't even get out when they called her. She was like, no, I'm staying in, blah, blah, blah. But because of the for Bloomberg, because Bloomberg was in in 2020, he was the he was cutting up the where it was Bloomberg 18, Bernie 22, Biden 16 or 15 in every state. So that's why that happened, because the party back then, I think the party's changed a lot now, but back then they definitely knew they couldn't control Bernie Sanders, and that was not going to be had.

Randy 12:54

Can you really quickly tell us how the party's changed in the last six years?

Chuck 12:58

It's just different. Once you get your ass whooped, like we've got our ass whooped, especially with working people, even the establishment Democrats are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got to do something different, or we're really, we can't become the party of just white, over-educated professors and liberals. We without we'll never win an election. Yeah. So they know that now. So they've invited in much more working class folks who know, not a bunch, but more than they ever had. So you see the rise of a grand platinum or you see room for James Tallerico, you see the guy in Nebraska running, you see a bunch of congressional folks like Vandy, Randy Viecas in the Central Valley. So the American public and polling has pushed the party to try to come back some. They got a long way to go. And I work for a lot of them, and so I think they're doing the right thing. But it's not a perfect analogy, but it's much better than it used to be. And the a lot of the folks that are in power have either died, aged out, and are not around anymore. There's no more Obama Clinton.

Randy 13:54

Mm-hmm. Leading up to 2020, then, let's say early 20, like 2012, 2015, 2016, certainly, all that. Were you, did you see what the Democratic Party had become and that it had become a party of, you know, overeducated white elites? Or was this kind of just like a it just happened?

Chuck 14:14

Part of it is there. I joined the party in 1990 when I had went to work in that factory because my factory had was going to get shut down and shipped overseas. Like I'm we made small radio passenger tires in my factory. And you can get a lot of them in a shipping crate from China. So they had been telling us they're going to shut your job down. And we had a great plant. There was like 1,500 men and women working in my plant. So I that's how I got involved in politics is I was like, oh, there's a thing here. So I'm making a long story to say that I joined the party because I was anti these trade deals. I joined the party because we'd been in wars and I didn't like my money being spent overseas when I thought it could be being spent better in my community. And I thought the system was rigged for rich people. Who does that sound like? It sounds like Donald Trump. It sounds like Bernie Sanders. This is where you start seeing the waffling of the electorate. I didn't see it. Now, I knew when we ran in 16 that white working class men liked Bernie Sanders and hated Hillary Clinton. Yes. Now I think it had a lot to do with her husband and NAFTA. That's why I didn't like the Clintons. It wasn't nothing personal. I just had seen my job actually shut down in my dad's factory shipped overseas where I had worked. So it was very personal for me. But the thing that I learned in 2020 is that those white working class men, not all of them, but this were from our polling, they liked Joe Biden and part of them liked Bernie. So we had lost half of that because working Joe from Delaware was not a bad brand, and it was better than Donald Trump. So this white working class, poor middle class, it was moving around some. But we I just didn't know that it would, I didn't know that it would stay with Republicans as long as it had, and that we would lose culturally around like God, we would lose like around being country and rule and all of those things is what we have to get back to, or we're gonna be out of power for a long time.

Randy 16:05

Okay.

Kyle 16:06

Yeah. So what's the feeling today in the party? Sort of an insider take here on because it does feel to me, as a total outsider, that there is still that tension between the moderate establishment and the progressive wing, but that it has changed and that the moderate establishment has had to take notice of uh how many people are now interested in that progressive wing, including people who voted for Trump. That's one of the things that we talked with Mike about, uh, is that a lot of Latinos who voted for Trump also voted for Mamdani. And they seem to be really interested in that kind of uh Bernie style progressive tape. Uh the the the populist economic thing. Um, so how much has it given away has it given way? And connected to that, do you think that are we likely to see a progressive shift in the actual national platform by the time of the next election?

Populism And Cultural Competency

Chuck 16:50

I don't know if you're gonna see it shift that much. There's definitely something going on in the electorate because people are pissed. They're still trying to figure out who they want to blame. It's easy to blame the incumbents, that's why Republicans are on the downside right now, because they're in charge of everything. It's easy to blame things on them. But I don't think that it means it's a renaissance for people on the left or the liberals. I just think it's an opportunity because what I've learned in 36 years, boys, of running campaigns is that there's a through line. And the through line is that people, for the most part, get a get along on 60, 70% of the issues. We just highlight the 10 or 20 that make us want to hate each other because of the algorithms on our phone. We believe folks should make a living wage. We believe folks should have health care. We believe that, you know, we shouldn't be sending our boys overseas to fight for things that don't have to do with America. You know, we understand we do have to protect our homeland. There shouldn't be a secure border, but there should be a robust way for folks to become a citizen if they, you know, do these things the right way. And if they've come here for asylum, if they're, you know, all these things are things we should get along with. Now, do we call those liberal ideas? Do we call those progressive ideas? Do we call them populists? That's the new thing in my work is populism. You know, is that this gruff guy from Maine is a populist? Well, he sounds a little bit like a little bit of all the above or other folks. So I think that between now and the presidential of 28 are going to tell us a lot about our politics.

Randy 18:16

Now you seem a little skeptical of the populist obsession and movement. What's your what's your take? What's your take on politics going populist or you know, Trump being a populist warrior, or the Democrats need to be more of a populist party?

Chuck 18:34

I'm all about talking to folks about things that they like. And that's the populism in me that I think we should do more of. We should make the Democratic Party fucking fun again. Like let's do some nice shit, right? We used to be the party of parties and smoking and drinking and all the good old stuff. Uh we become the party of uh hall monitors. We become the party of telling you what you should and shouldn't care about because we're the smart people. And I put that for those of you at home not listening in Bunny Ears air quotes, because the part of the populism that triggers me a little bit, Randy, is that the consultant class of people advising all of these folks really haven't changed. And most of them, all of them have a degree, and the majority of them have a master's degree. It don't make them bad people, but they hadn't touched grass in a long time. And a lot of them live in New York and Washington. Yep. Now that doesn't mean that they don't love working class people. It doesn't mean that their policies are wrong. All the things, but they don't know how to show up, let's call it cultural competency. Wearing this hat and having this accent gives me a certain demeanor around cultural competency of rednecks and white folks and all of that. But there's a cultural competency with all of this stuff. Regular people are populist, but they don't think of themselves as populist. They think of, I just want people to stay out of my way. I don't want my taxes to be too high, but I also don't want black people killed in the street because they're black. Everything I just described in that one sentence is a little right and a little left, and that's where most folks are. And that's if they've got a let's go Brandon flag on their boat, or if they have a Bernie Sanders tattoo on their forearm. They're like, we should be able to do these things. It's the consultant class, the elite class of both parties who think they know everything and they try to teach voters when voters here recently have been teaching them by saying, no, no, no, no. We may have voted for Donald Trump, but we're over that shit. Do we need to defund the police? Let's have that argument. But I just want I want crime taken care of in my streets, but I don't want them killing little black boys just because they're black. Like, can we do some of this shit and use some common sense?

Kyle 20:44

So you you mentioned Plattner, he's a good example. So I've heard a lot of talk about uh we need more regional plurality in the Democratic Party. We need to run candidates that will work where they are, like, and that means running different kinds of campaigns in different places, right? And so that's how somebody like Plattner gets all that money spent on him in Maine where he would never be considered in a different place and probably would never be considered nationally. So, how do you think a strategy like that is going to work out when you start to talk about things like party cohesion and presenting sort of a unified voice to the country at the national level, which the Democrats have really struggled with?

Chuck 21:16

I think having more regular people involved in campaigns at whatever level is a good thing if they can actually be a part of the decision making. A lot of times we I used to call it brown coating, when we'd put a Latino in charge of a Latino district, but they had no power, there was still a group of elite consultants, elite being elite around education, and have wrote a lot of theses and and books around the working middle class. It triggers me, but that's funny because that's what they really do. Uh, if Graham Platner or somebody like him wants to run, it's very rare that somebody gets the opportunity to do that because it takes so much money. Because the system is so eat up with money, it's Hard for a regular person to break through. Bernie Sanders was the first one to really do that in 2015. I wrote it, we wrote a budget for $30 million, and we thought, well, if we ever raise 30 million, it'd be crazy. And we spent almost 300 million. So the people were showing you that they're mad. And they're showing you that they're mad now. But how do we react to that? The left, quote unquote, the activist class of the left, thinks that it's about all of these grandiose ideas. And part of that is true. What people don't realize is that none of them know the answer, but everybody's got a little part of the solution. There's a lot of folks who who are organizers on the left who've never been workers on the left. And they think everybody should be like them and because we're we're writing for the, we're fighting for the righteous cause. And they may be, but they've forgotten about the workers who are working. I call them union organizers who've never been in a union or been a worker, but they're organizers because they're for social justice. And I keep putting my hands up because they're good people and they're fighting for the right cause. They just haven't been in touch with many folks in cowboy hats who actually have calluses very much in their life to understand how to really get that message to the land, like Graham Platner does with all of his faults, with a crazy tattoo on his chest, with him sending text messages, with him and his wife, even with all of that, he's still fucking winning. Excuse my language. He's still freaking winning. Because that's how mad people are, to make my

The 2028 Candidate Problem

Chuck 23:22

point.

Randy 23:22

So what does what does a presidential candidate in 2028 look like for the Democrats who would resemble what you're talking about, who speaks the language of the people, who can give that platform that all the elites are championing, but actually has touched grass and actually can resonate with working class and middle class people. Trust.

Chuck 23:43

Like people thought Donald Trump was crazy, but they knew he was crazy, and that's why they liked him. They were so desperate for something different because the Democrats had let him down, had promised him everything, and really never delivered on it. They knew Republicans were a little crazy or go a little too far, maybe a little racist. I'm not saying they're all racist, but have a little racist tendencies. And that's what turns people off. So winning the trust back for a Democrat is big. You need somebody who, when he talks, that's what people like saying this about Bernie, but people trusted Bernie in the same way. They knew he was a little left democratic socialist. What does that mean? But what he meant, he'd been saying for 30 years, they trusted him. The trust in the party right now is gone. So you got to have somebody when they say, we're going to lift up work in families, we're going to root our message around families again. We're going to talk about hope and talk about building the American dream that our forefathers started building. All of that sounds good, but if you don't ever trust the messenger, it doesn't matter. So you need somebody who's populist, who talks about the things that we're talking about, who can deliver it. It's a special thing. Barack Obama had it. Bill Clinton had it. You know, these folks who have it when they talk to John Ossoff is good on a stump to make people believe it. I remember my mama telling me, you know, when Bill Clinton talks to us on the TV, I sometimes think he's just talking to me. Yes. That's special. Yep. That is special. Like you need somebody who can do that, but then also can, you know, is a fighter and all the things. So me and Mike Madrid, and I know I saw this in some of the questions, we differ on this. Mike thinks it's just about policy, but that's because Mike went to Georgetown. I think it's more about delivery and about actually showing up and having a conversation. I think the policy comes different. I think somebody's got to like you and trust you first. Mike don't disagree with that, but Mike thinks that people vote for people because of their policies. And I said, I'm my pushback to him all the time is well, then why the hell did we get Donald Trump? Yes. Where was his policy? If it was about policy, Elizabeth Warren would have been the president. Remember, she got a policy for that. She had a whole book of policy, but nobody liked her.

Randy 25:47

Yep. Yeah.

Policy Wins And Messaging Failures

Randy 25:48

Can I even ask her, even push back a little bit on this notion of the Democrats let the working class down? Trump got elected in 2016 after eight years of Obama. Obama, just for one example, Obama got pat through major, major healthcare reform that the working class had been waiting for for decades. I don't see how this narrative of the Democrats letting the working class down has been based on reality. I feel like it can be based on messaging and the words we use and the language that we speak and the it it sounds elite, but when it comes down to it, I think, and tell me if I'm crazy, but still democratic policies are more friendly to working class people.

Chuck 26:32

Joe Biden passed more pro-worker legislation, literally saved the Teamsters' pension. Right. Single-handedly saved the Teamsters' pension and did more for the environment, more for green energy, and all the things that are create so many more jobs than anything Donald Trump will ever do. Why then, when I was making all of the ads for the midterm elections, I was told to make every ad about democracy or choice because we had just lost the decision at the Supreme Court about a woman's right to choose. And that's what every commercial was about instead of the things that Joe Biden had done or the Democrats in Congress at that point that actually helped people have more jobs or do. The other thing we do as a smart party is we do things like create an infrastructure bill. Remember the infrastructure bill that now that people don't feel that immediately, but that's gonna help America for a long time, rebuild bridges and roads. But regular folks were struggling with just regular stuff. Almost said a bad word again. Regular stuff. And we never talked about showing up and saying, this is about your family, it's about your work, and it's about your kids and about taking care of them. That's what this is about. And I'm gonna do these things to do that. But instead, we talked about, again, important issues, which is a woman losing their basic right of their body, about our democracy being under attack because of what Donald Trump had done with the Supreme Court, or about what other states had done around whatever the other social issue of the day was. And because our party had lost focus on workers and families, we talked about all that other shit for not just one cycle, but many cycles. And dudes like me who drive big old pickup trucks were like, they forgot about me, and Donald Trump said he's gonna bring back manufacturing jobs and make America great again. And he didn't believe none of that shit, but he was saying it at every rally. So it's a messaging problem. This is me in the Mike Madrid debate. I was like, if I tell you enough times I'm Jesus Christ, you'll think that I was up on the mound giving a sermon. If I tell you enough. That's what Donald Trump does. That's his philosophy in life, is an old country saying, which is if you lie long enough about having a horse, eventually somebody will buy you a saddle, whether you have a horse or not. And that's all he has been doing. But he's smart in that way. And Democrats hate when I say this, especially on TV, that he understands because he's been on TV of how to do this show. Yeah. And he's good at this show. Democrats are too proud for a show. We're like, we can't do that. And then our lawyers, who we have binders of lawyers, will say, you can't say it exactly that way on the TV commercial when the Republican lawyers, now this is my business, will say, put that shit up, we'll pay the fine, we'll figure this stuff out later. But say that they're all for this trans, this, or this, that, or this, whatever, whether it's true or not. It's it's loosely based in fact, so I'm not saying they're completely wrong. Yeah. I'm just saying this is the difference in the way the two parties are built. Republicans want to win at all costs. Democrats want to be right.

Randy 29:30

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There it is. Boom.

Chuck 29:33

I need to write that shit down. Yeah, yeah.

Randy 29:35

Are people are Democrats in power listening to that?

Chuck 29:38

Oh, hell no. I ain't never been to college. Let me recap. I'm a convicted felon and I'm a teenage father. And I wear this cowboy hat and talk shit all the time. So some of them do. So much so that a group of people wanted me to be the DNC chair when the last chairmanship became open after bat. You know, and I said, eh, maybe, maybe I could use that to get the party back focused on workers and families and faith and all the things that I've grew up with. But then I realized that the job to speak is just it's a horrible job because all you do is raise money and you have to deal with an executive committee at the DNC and all the things. And I was like, I can do more help on the outside by helping the DCC, by helping House Majority Pack, by helping people who have real money who want to win elections, talking about workers. So some people do listen to me, but there's a power structure that is changing. Because back in the day it was all the Clinton consultants, and then it was all of the uh Obama consultants, and they're still around, they're still a bunch of folks. But America's changing and our leadership is changing within the party. And the next four or five years is really going to be a big determining factor. And more people are listening to me, and I get to be on TV and all the things. But there's a group of people who feel like they have been forgotten about, who are just trying to make it every day. And these are folks that are bank tellers, middle management companies, they're scared to death about AI coming in. They're, if they had a little manufacturing job, they're worried about it going over the seas, they're worried about tariffs. There's all of this anxiety. And I use my fist like this because this is the world, this is the electorate. This is the electorate, my fist. And it's like another fist wrapped around that anxiety with like, if you're a Latino and the ice anxiety of them being in your neighborhood. If you're a farmer, it's the anxiety of the tariffs. If you're a doctor, it's the anxiety of that rural hospital shutting. So that's like this anxiety out there, and you're seeing this backlash now. I know you and Mike talked about this with Latino voters, but that's just one example of a lot of anxiety that's out there that gives opportunity for populism, worker whatever you want to call it. I don't know the fancy word, but for folks to act

Algorithms And Gerrymandered Incentives

Chuck 31:46

up.

Randy 31:46

You said you said a few minutes ago, Republicans want to win and Democrats want to be right. All right. I'm gonna write that down. That's damn good. That is damn good. Um That I mean reminds me of a question I had for you, which it which is basically Republicans in the last probably 15 years seem to just not care about decorum, not care about the right way to do things. They just kind of will skirt the edges in order to maintain power. I saw it in in Wisconsin, for instance. We had a lame duck session before our Democratic governor got elected, you know, took took power, he was elected. And in in the in-between lame duck session, they they changed a shit ton of laws to make him way less powerful than his Republican predecessors. Some dirty stuff, right? They've gerrymandered um the our districts to to hold on to power for way longer than they should have. On the national level, we see President Trump calling for gerrymandering state after state after state, getting angry at states that won't do it, right? There's so Republicans in general, I'm just gonna generalize and say they are willing to do the dirty work it takes to in order to win. Democrats, it seems like, want to take the high road, which I respect, to be honest with you. Like I respect saying we're not gonna compromise our values, we're not gonna end the filibuster, we're not gonna, you know, gerrymander, we're not gonna do all that dirty business and politics, we're gonna try to do things the right way. That's this is my take on it. Now I know that there's probably some conservatives listening who think that I'm talking absolute bullshit right now. But this is the way I see it. If that's correct in some way, shape, or form, Chuck, do you think Democrats do you think it's a tenable position to say we want to be right, we want to do things the right way, we want to take the high road while we continue to lose election after election, or is it time to fight fire with fire?

Chuck 33:34

I I think it's a little bit of both, because I think that's how folks look at it. I think folks want a fighter if they're fighting for the justice cause. You know, they want somebody who's going to fight, but they've got to like you. People forget about the golden rule of politics is that folks have to like and trust you before that mail piece is ever gonna work, before that digital ad is gonna work. And a lot of what you described, Randy, the fault, the fault with all of that stuff is this phone that I'm holding up, which is the difference between the elections we're having now and the elections I ran 10, 20, 25 years ago. Before the phone and before algorithms, and before these all the things that uh is it diffurcated, it sliced up our media consumption, right? Um, we now have people making money off of dividing in people and making them hate each other. Then they're fed the hate to make us hate because we like that thing, right? If there's a guy saying, let's go, Brandon, we don't need these folks telling us how to act or what we can say, then they are fed more of that to make them stay on their device longer. That ain't democracy. That's not fighting back. That's us having to figure out new strategies to take on a social media and an algorithm world, and now, for God forsakes, AI to try to do some of the things you're talking about. How do we fight back and what are the scenarios we used to fight back? But then also, how do we also show that we're better than them and that we have some decorum? Yes, and that we have some values. Yes, because a lot of what we've seen is the lack of those values, whether it's folks enriching themselves that really makes people mad, uh, or whether it's the gerrymandering. And I'll stop with this on the gerrymandering. Is gerrymandering at its whole is what's wrong with our democracy almost as much as everything except social media and algorithms. And my point is this there's 435 congressional seats in America, and you can see the map behind me, they're all over there on the map. There's a lot of red there. A lot of red. 400 of them are safe. And what do you mean safe, Chuck? Well, they've been drawn by state legislatures to be very safe. Republican seats, about half of them, about 200 of them. And about 200 of them in blue states were drawn to make it very safe for Democrats. And that's what they do and what politicians do. But think about this, Randy and Kyle. But what that means if you are in a safe district, you can never be beat by the opposing party because there's just so many more of your party in your district, and that's how it's drawn to be safe. The only way you can win, I'm excuse me, the only way you can lose, my God, is in a primary. Because in a primary, there's lots of Democrats that vote in Democratic primaries in the Democratic district, same with Republicans in a Republican district. So you're rewarded by running to the left and running as far to the left in the Democratic primary, because that's all that shows up to vote. Same with MAGA and the right. You get the craziest of the right. And then when they're sent to DC, it's to their now with the phone and the clicks and the fundraising, to their advantage to fight the other side with every fiber of their being, because they're rewarded by showing that because they're going to be winning that safe seat. When the old days, when uh when there was 150 marginal seats, folks look for a compromise and figured out how to get things done. Now, there's only about 30 to 40 seats that are marginal. What I mean by marginal, girls and boys, is a seat that can flip back from Democrat to Republican that has a pretty equal amount of Democrats and Republicans, plus or minus five or six or seven uh points for all you super nerds at home.

Randy 37:08

So what's the answer then, Chuck? I mean, because that's a compelling argument, is the answer then to take, you know, districting away from politicians and into a nonpartisan blah, blah, blah. What's the answer to that?

Chuck 37:20

I think we're gonna, you're gonna see a visceral shift back uh in the next elections by the Democrats. They're gonna do what the Republicans just did, to your point, without caring about any of this shit. Some would argue to your point about fighting. They just took away all these seats in Florida, they took away all these seats in Alabama, they've taken away all these seats with the social, with the civil rights movement, uh, with civil rights legislation in the Supreme Court. I'm not doing it right. So because we're gonna end up losing eight or nine seats because of the civil rights piece of the Supreme Court ruling, Democrats in Illinois and New York and other places are gonna do what California did and draw more Democratic seats in the middle. Then we're gonna go into a regular redistricting year after a presidential election, which is 3032. And I think people will be so sick of what they've been seeing with Democrats and Republicans both doing this, that there will be a new push for folks to try to have nonpartisan committees to do some of this stuff, but it's gonna be hard to get politicians not to be

System Reform And FDR Lessons

Chuck 38:21

political.

Kyle 38:21

Yeah, I'm just gonna say I think I can uh predict your answer to my next question then because it's related to that. So I've been hearing recently more proposals and more discussion of proposals that I would consider sort of drastic. Like there's an appetite now, it seems, to talk about things that even five years ago, even three years ago, people weren't talking about. Um and I'm thinking of things like fundamentally restructuring the American political system. So it's everything from what you're talking about with gerrymandering and ways to fix it. Um, but like FDR level, let's re-let's let's rethink what the Supreme Court should be. Let's go back to some of those ideas of like the truly progressive, truly powerful presidents on the liberal side from the past, but even more extreme than that. So people, it's commonplace now to talk about wealth taxes, they're being passed as we speak, campaign finance reform, um packing the court, abolishing the electoral college, or if we can't do that, bypassing the electoral college by forming this you know conglomerate of states, proportional representation, ranked choice voting, all this stuff, making that nationalized, um, making DC a state, on and on and on, all the way up to like let's increase the size of the house. They did that before, why can't we do it now? And even I've there's some proposals, and I heard this on like a major like news podcast um pr promoting lautocra, which is just let's just get rid of elections, let's just do this the way we do jury duty, let's make it random, which I kind of find appealing in some ways, but like the very extreme stuff is now seemingly on the table for conversation. So um, how I don't know what what do you feel like the actual likelihood is for any of that stuff to happen? Because it seems like some of that stuff, some of it's extreme, I realize, but some of that stuff has to happen. Like the Senate restructuring has to happen at some point. The like the Supreme Court, that can't continue, the size of the house, that can't continue. So like some of this stuff has to happen. Is it likely to happen in time to make any real difference?

Randy 40:14

And my my tack on question to that would be do working class people give a shit about any of that?

Kyle 40:19

Yeah, exactly. Like how much of it, because I we're pissed off and we're gonna vote for the the the guy that says the things in the most trustworthy way about economics, but how much does that voter understand what lies behind that guy actually being able to do anything about that, which is all it's and it also ties into what algorithm you're getting fed every day to see which side of this thing could really make you mad or not. Yeah.

Chuck 40:40

Um James Tallerico, when I worked for Taller Rico, is one of our clients, uh, says that you know, this you're never going to change the system as long as you're operating in the same system. The system is broken. And the system don't work for working families, it don't work for what we're talking about. And he kind of lays out some of his big ideas to your point, Kyle, which is like getting money out of politics, figuring out a real way to stop unlimited flow of capital and to affect elections. He talks about um, oh, he talks about like being able to trade stocks and and and why are people getting rich when they're in office? Like he doesn't mind folks making a living wage. He goes, he said, give them all a raise. He said, instead of paying $170,000 a year, pay them all $250, but don't allow them to trade stocks. Like we want people to make a living wage and have health care and have two houses. Look, I don't mean two houses. You have to live in DC, you have to live in East Texas if you're the congressman. You gotta have a place in each, it gets expensive. I live in D.C. So he's saying, I ain't against people making money, I'm against people getting rich. Yeah, and so those kind of things I think we can actually get some agreement on, right? And uh, Randy, to your point, is that most folks, you know, they just want the government to stay out of their lives and they don't want them to add more hardships to their lives. And and Kyle to your point, if you would have told me 10 years ago, 12 years ago, that we'd have a president who just knocked down the east wing of the White House because he felt like it and he wanted to build a big ballroom, I would have said there's no way the Congress wouldn't allow it. Somebody else wouldn't allow it, or that Donald Trump would put his name on the Kennedy Center. Like those kind of things are so far-fetched from reality in my mind a couple years ago to where I no longer tell people who give me hypotheticals like you just gave me that it's not possible. Now, I'm not saying we elect a Democrat who comes in and runs rush shot over our court and our legislative system like Donald Trump has. But it did prove that the institutions are still strong and there's been some checks on him. But that things are possible when you have, I don't know, the guts to do it, you know, in in big fashions. It was funny that you said what you said, Kyle, because I've become a student of history because I never went to school. So I never learned about these things that folks learn about in colleges. So I watch a lot of documentaries, and last night I watched a three-part series over two days, not just last night, but uh FDR. Yeah and all the things that FDR did and why he did them and the timing of doing them. And I was just shell-shocked. I kept saying this would never happen with Facebook and Instagram out there, like doing this and fighting, right? And when he went into World War II and all the things that he dealt with there, and like I was like, oh, this country has come through some shit. Yes. So like we we can do this again.

Randy 43:32

And probably was able to do those massive reforms because it was on just after the Great Depression and World War II, nationally shaping events,

Faith Language And Winning Texas

Randy 43:43

right? You mentioned um you mentioned James Telarico, you work for James Tellerico, you're a Texas guy. Do you think James Tellerico has a shot in Texas?

Chuck 43:51

You know, I'm not one of those guys who've been saying that Beto was gonna win or that Colin Alred was the second coming. But James Tellerico is different, it ain't just because he called. The Bible and I grew up. I know this is kind of a religious podcast when it wants to be, uh, in a Baptist church. I I I was I was saved uh by the grace of God. I was baptized. Uh I went to Bible school. I did Sunday school. I was part of a bus ministry in rural East Texas, where I grew up, because that's how I went to church, because my mom and daddy didn't go, so the bus would pick me up at this little church and we go to Dixie Baptist Church. So when he talks about faith and the way that he talks about faith, sometimes it's just that he's talking about it and he talks enough about it to where you're like, oh, he knows his shit, like that is in the Bible. Oh, this is yeah, this is not no bullshit. He ain't trying to, there's a lot of politicians who quote a Bible verse, and you know Donald Trump that they ain't never really read the Bible. Um and so I think that's one of the things. Remember when I said they have to like you and trust you? If you talk about the Bible enough and folks know who know the Bible and religion are like, oh yeah, he probably went, he's some kind of theologian, went and studied it. Well, his view may not be my view, but he is he has the Christian values, if you will. That gets you a lot of a few points in Texas. And then when you're running against the most flawed candidate, maybe besides Donald Trump, then you start setting up the perfected, like the perfect storm. And then the last of that is in all these elections, guys, but since Donald Trump's been elected, there's been a R plus, I mean a D plus double digit swing in special elections. That don't mean the regular elections will be double because there's less folks who vote in a special election or an off-year election. But if you just got half of that in Texas, Beto just lost by 2.6%. You win Texas if you get half of what the national average had been, and I'm being uh generous.

Randy 45:41

So you in other words, do you think Tel Rico can win? Do you think he will win?

Chuck 45:46

I do think he'll win. I think that he's going to shock the world. I think he's gonna win by pointing.

Kyle 45:50

Do you think he would have won I don't know how to phrase that in the future tense if Trump hadn't put his thumb on the scale for Corning?

Chuck 45:57

I we have let's just say that there's polling out there where he was performing well against both, and I think he could have beat either one. I do think it's easier to beat Paxton because he's just got he's there's enough people in the Corning world, not all of them, not a majority of them, but you boys sitting here, they spent a hundred million dollars calling Paxton and John Corning the ugliest names in the world. And there's a lot of John Corny people who live in the suburbs who are not MAGA, who want to keep their taxes low, want to just live their life, who are like, you know, this kid don't look like he's crazy. Sure, he may have said some crazy shit back in the day when he was a young state rep, but he knows the Bible. He's talking about family, he's talking about faith, he's talking about what we got to do to get ahead, and like, hell, I'll vote for him. You'd only need one or two points of that corn and vote to move over, and this is over.

Randy 46:52

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chuck 46:54

Just because we're in the year we're in, in an off-year election. If it was a presidential election, totally a different ballgame.

Randy 46:59

Okay.

Kyle 46:59

Yeah. Your lips, God's ears.

A Unifying Vision Built On Family

Kyle 47:02

So I hear all the time, and lots of ink has been spilled about this in the last few years, of uh Democratic sort of uh pundit types talking about the absence of a unifying positive vision for not just the Democratic Party, but like anything that's not MAGA. So you call it the the liberal coalition, call it whatever you want, just just reason-based politics, right? There there is no thing that unifies it and gives it a clear, communicable, elevator speech style. This is what we are to the average voter. Whereas with the right, their vision is chaotic, it's cruel, but it's clear. Everybody knows what it is. And you can sum it up in a couple, you know, short phrases. So, what what what do you think that vision should be, and how do you think it should be communicated to the average voter?

Chuck 47:46

It should be rooted in two things. It should be rooted in work and family. These are the two things that it's basic necessity everybody wants to do. You only reason you work, nobody works because they love their work and that's all they want to do. They work because they got to have money to take care of their family. So if you rooted around family and work, you start there and everything builds off of it. There's a health care angle, there's a child care angle, there's a senior citizens angle when your old folks, your mom and dad like mine have to move back in with you. Whatever that is, you rooted in what we're going to do to protect working families and make sure everybody can have a job, everybody can make money, and that we just level the playing field for everybody. The only we're not against anybody getting rich. Long as we level the playing field and they're not getting more advantages than us. If they create a better widget, they work harder than us. I want to take the weekends off and just make 50 grand a year, 80 grand, whatever it is, then that's but leveling the playing field and making things fair in the value set of a working family scenario, that's what you talk about. And you live there. Everything else grows from there. We want to talk about the environment, we want to talk about women, we want to talk about men, you want to talk about gays, you want to talk about whatever you want to talk about. Start with the family. Start with providing for your family. Start about providing and being with your family. Like we, when's the last time you saw a Democrat say the word family? Unless it was connected to working families or this thing or that. No, it's who we are. And faith is in there a lot, right? Like lots of families, and faith is a centerpiece of their lives. Like, this is where Democrats have to get into. When I tell people there's two things you have to do to be a politician to win. You have to tell people why they should fire the person in charge who's there now, and why they should hire you. Right now, it's easy to say why they should fire them because you can say that they're Donald Trump or that they have some connection to that crazy shit they're doing over there. The next step is harder for Democrats because some of what voters want to hear is that Democrats have been wrong because they've seen the message change, or to Randy's point, they never even heard the message. But say, we want to get back to focus to where this party used to be when my mama was alive, my mama who raised me, which was Democrats are the party of workers, and Republicans are the party of bosses. And when I asked my mama when I came home from Union Hall that first day when I got hired, when I said, Mama, they asked me to be a part of the union, and they asked me to sign a voter registration card, and I put that I was a Democrat because everybody else did. Are we Democrats? And she said, baby, we lived through the Great Depression. Of course we're Democrats, but we hope to make enough money one day to be a Republican.

Randy 50:16

That's how it used to be. That's how it used to be, yes. Uh, I mean, you kind of answered my my last question, but I still want to ask him when when we had Mike on last time, he said something to the effect of, you know, most of the voters in this country are completely solidified who they're going to be voting for. The you have the working class and rural folks are going to be voting for Republicans, and then the liberal, urban, and even suburban white elites are going to be voting for the Democrats. That's just the way it is. And everyone's fighting for this small slice in between. That again, that's not how I grew up. That's not the re the political world that I grew up in. I grew up in a world in which working class voters overwhelmingly supported Democrats, and there's many reasons for that. Um how do Mike doesn't think that working class voters will go back to the Democratic side. Do you think that's true? And if not, how do the Democrats get the working class back?

Chuck 51:16

The working class are getting screwed so bad by this administration and this Congress, they're gonna come back. Not all of them. I'll agree with Mike that they won't all come back. But a big group of them have already started coming back, and those are Latino working class. There's been a giant swing back to the left by Latinos because they're aggravated. Now they're a more swingier group. I'm sure Mike talked about that because on average, boys, they're 12 years younger than a regular voter. Regular being a black or a white voter. They're more transient, they rent, they don't have a desktop computer, all the things that make them hard to talk to, that's why they're more swingy and they're just younger, and younger votes are like that. So there's a chance they come back. And Democrats, if they are smart, and they are smart, they're smart enough to know that there's not a future in majorities of any size unless you get workers back on you. Like they may have everything else wrong. They may be the hall monitors, they may love to be right, but they're smart. And they're smart enough to know that they have to have a working class message and they need to have a working class agenda for the long term for this party, because there's there's only so many master's degrees you can hand out, and there's a lot more of us who don't have them than do have them. So it almost will be at a necessity. And a lot of them get that now, and they've realized that they've strayed and they're trying to figure out their ways. I think that they won't all be perfect. They won't half of them even be good, but acknowledging you have a problem to begin with is a big part of that.

Training New Leaders And Closing CTAs

Randy 52:43

Chuck Rocha, we're grateful for the work you do and uh thankful for the time you were willing to spend with us. It's been a really wonderful conversation. Love to talk to you again sometime uh relatively soon.

Kyle 52:54

Maybe after Telurico wins.

Chuck 52:56

That'd be awesome. You know, I like to leave with this, and I will tell my my story that Solidarity and my firm have hired, trained, and mentored 135 young brown and black kids to get them involved in politics. All of them working class kids. All of them went to community college, some of them hadn't graduated college, many of them immigrants, Docker recipients, TPS recipients. And I don't say that to say, oh, great for Chuck, and oh, social, I'm not virtue signaling shit here. I'm telling folks that if I can do that, then lots of folks out there in the campaign world who want to change something can do that because that's how you start changing the way campaigns are run. There wasn't a lot of high-paid New York City consultants working for Bernie. There wasn't even those kind of people working for AOCs or working for other folks like that who've made a lot of big social change. And this is not just about progressive versus mod or anything else. I hate all of those uh labels. But America is still one of the greatest places, if not the greatest place in the world to have an opportunity to make change. It's like turning a big battleship, but we will turn this thing. I want folks to know, don't give up because it's very frustrating out there right now. Because I have seen change. I've been a part of change, and change is a beautiful thing, and I think change is a coming.

Randy 54:06

Let's go. Uh, Chuck, if our listeners want to hear more of you or read more of you, what do they read? What do they what do they listen to? Where do they find you?

Chuck 54:15

Uh follow my social medias. It's at Chuck Roach on the Twitter of the X and the others. Uh, Mike and me have the podcast called the Latino Vote Podcast. Once a week, I do a Substack show. You'll like this. It's called the Roach Revolution. You can join the revolution at the Substack there. And uh, you know, just catch me around. I'm on TV every day, normally on one station or another with a cowboy hat on, talking shit about Republicans.

Randy 54:39

Thanks again, Shad.

Chuck 54:40

You'll be good.

Randy 54:51

Thanks for listening to a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar. We hope you're enjoying these conversations. Help us continue to create compelling content and reach a wider audience by supporting us at patreon.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 55:07

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Randy 55:15

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Kyle 55:23

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