Democrats have a branding problem. Joe Walsh and Yemisi Egbewole think they know why.

They took very different roads into the Democratic Party. Walsh was a Tea Party congressman who campaigned for Donald Trump in 2016. Egbewole ran communications in Joe Biden's White House — and now she's a political commentator on Fox News.

They both have ideas about why the Democratic Party feels so out of touch to many red-state voters, and thoughts on how to win them back. Sarah McCammon spoke with them live on stage in Charleston, South Carolina earlier this year.

IN THIS EPISODE:
00:00 — Cold open

00:26 — Two roads into the party

02:19 — What turns gettable voters off

04:54 — Crime down 35% means nothing

07:23 — The online left monster

10:10 — Authenticity vs. fighting

11:18 — Why there's no going back to Obama

14:14 — Independent media is where voters are

16:42 — Going into enemy territory

17:58 — Win purple, own purple

19:03 — The national brand problem

23:27 — Ultimate advice for democratswhats

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Bobby Pulido spent thirty years building a career as a Tejano music star. Now he's running for Congress in South Texas, in one of the poorest parts of the state, trying to unseat a Republican incumbent.

Pulido's opponent mocked his music career, saying the election wasn't about who you want performing at your niece's quinceañera. So he turned that dig into four thousand invitations to quinceañeras and other celebrations across Texas.

Pulido thinks the key to flipping the district is to keep showing up in unconventional places. Sarah McCammon spoke with him in Washington, D.C.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 — Cold open

01:15 — The dig, flipped into 4,000 invitations

04:38 — Trust beats policy / ranch halls

07:47 — What "Tejano" means

12:25 — Immigration, up close

18:16 — Why Hispanic voters moved right

21:46 — The gender gap and purity tests

24:50 — Faith and the "godless" label

27:19 — Rural respect over money

30:31 — Why a Democrat / social media's cancer

32:38 — Celebrity: weakness or strength

36:06 — Why leave the stage for Congress

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Nikki Budzinski is the kind of Democrat a lot of people say the party needs more of — a reluctant politician who came up in the labor movement and now represents a sprawling district in downstate Illinois. But she'd be the first to tell you her party has lost touch with the voters she grew up around.

She was born in Peoria, moved around as a kid, and landed back in the heartland. She likes to say she's one of the few members of Congress who's spent time on the kill floor of a meatpacking plant. And she just won her primary by more than 50 points against a challenger who said she wasn't progressive enough.

Now Budzinski represents a district that stretches from a college town to steel mills and soybean fields — and she's trying to answer a question her party can't afford to get wrong: how do Democrats win back working people who've stopped believing the party is fighting for them?

00:00 — Cold open
1:44 — Peoria roots and a working-class inheritance
4:00 — The kill floor in Kentucky
7:03 — A $15 wage won across the table
12:56 — On why she Democrats lost the working class
15:50 — Voting to deny ICE new money
21:46 — Workhorse, not show horse
25:10 — Money in politics and governing with power
32:16 — Her grandfather's American dream

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