The Downballot: The craziest effing story of the year (so far) (transcript)

It's only April, but the Washington Post's new report on GOP golden boy Tim Sheehy is a strong contender for the craziest political story of the year. On this week's episode of "The Downballot," co-hosts David Nir and David Beard dissect the countless contradictions in Sheehy's tales about a bullet wound that he either received in Afghanistan or in a national park three years later. The Davids also explain why the Arizona Supreme Court's appalling new ruling banning nearly all abortions could lead to two conservative justices losing their seats this fall.

Our guest this week is Sondra Goldschein, who runs the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, an organization dedicated to improving America's badly lagging "care infrastructure." Goldschein explains how issues like paid medical leave laws and greater access to childcare affect an enormous swath of the electorate—and why they're closely tied to voters' perceptions of their economic fortunes. She also highlights candidates her group is working to elect to make these policies a reality.

Subscribe to "The Downballot" wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss a show. New episodes every Thursday morning!

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

David Beard: Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.

David Nir: And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. "The Downballot" is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. Please subscribe to The Downballot on Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review.

Beard: What are we going to be covering on today's episode, Nir?

Nir: Well, in our weekly hits, we are going to be discussing the titanic fallout from the Arizona abortion ruling and why it could lead to two state Supreme Court justices losing their seats this year. Then we are talking about an absolutely wild story in Montana. It involves the GOP's golden boy Senate recruit and there is no way we have gotten to the bottom of it yet.

Then in our deep dive, we are talking to Sondra Goldschein, who is the executive director of the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy. She is going to be talking about her efforts to build support for candidates who back family-friendly policies like paid family and medical leave, and affordable elder and childcare. These are such important topics; we can't wait to discuss them also. Let's get rolling.

Nir: Without a doubt, the biggest news of the week was Arizona's conservative Supreme Court ruling that an 1864 law from back when Arizona was still a territory, decades before it became a state, that this 1864 law is valid, and that it bans nearly all abortions in the state.

Now, we already knew that Arizona voters are almost certainly going to have the chance to overturn this ruling in November because reproductive rights advocates have said they've already collected enough signatures to put a measure on the ballot that would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution. This effort had been going on while this case was pending when everyone thought it was possible that the Supreme Court would rule this way.

So that makes this ballot measure even more important. But there is another angle here as well pointed out by Daniel Nichanian who runs Bolts, which is just an invaluable site for tracking stories relating to elections and the justice system.

Daniel, I've always thought of him as Taniel. That's his Twitter handle. I know it's an Armenian version of Daniel. He's of Armenian descent. So anyway, Taniel, if you know him on Twitter, pointed out there that two of the justices who joined the majority opinion are going to be up for election this fall at the exact same time that this rights ballot measure will also be on the ballot. And these two justices, Clint Bolick and Kathryn Hackett King, are going to go before voters.

Beard: Now, these aren't normal elections like you're used to, and some people of course live in states where they know what retention elections are, but for those of us who never have, it doesn't work quite the same. Obviously, we've seen these Wisconsin Supreme Court elections that we've covered a lot where you have an opponent, there are two candidates, and the person with the most votes wins, which is how most elections go.

Instead, we have these, so-called retention elections where the justice is on the ballot but not on the ballot against someone else. The voters are presented with a yes-no style question as to whether or not they want to keep the judge in office. So if they vote yes, that means that they want to keep the judge in office for an additional term of however many years. In this case, it's six years. If they vote no, that means that they want to remove the justice. And if no one wins, then a vacancy is declared and another judge would be appointed to that seat.

Now, it's really rare for judges to lose retention elections. Obviously, they're very low salience most of the time. Most voters just go in, they vote yes because they don't know anything, and they're like, "This judge has been a judge. It's probably fine." But it's also pretty rare for a state Supreme Court to thrust itself into the national limelight like this, making such a huge ruling on such a key issue that is all across the country people have been talking about and is certainly going to raise the salience of these retention elections for these two justices extremely highly.

Nir: Yeah, absolutely, and we have seen just how salient this issue is. Republicans everywhere, but especially in Arizona have been absolutely scrambling to try to deal with the fallout from this one. Donald Trump has inserted himself into the whole situation, and it is a huge, huge mess for them. It is a massive political liability, and I could definitely see a scenario, Beard, where you've got Joe Biden at the top of the ticket running on abortion, Ruben Gallego running for the Senate on abortion, the abortion ballot measure, well, running on abortion. And then you have Bolick and Hackett King getting swept up in the mix and wind up losing. You just cannot underestimate voter anger about this issue.

Beard: Yeah, we've seen that voters are smart about this. In Ohio, of course, as we've talked about, voters had to stop one ballot measure that was going to change the threshold and then pass a different ballot measure on a different election ballot to actually enshrine abortion rights into the Constitution. And they did that easily. Overwhelmingly, voters knew what they were doing there and voted in what seemed like might be a complex election. So the idea that people are going to understand, oh, these are justices who voted for this and I can get rid of them, I could very easily see that happening.

Nir: So now if these two justices were to lose, Democratic governor Katie Hobbs would get to appoint replacements, which would be fantastic of course. However, there are several caveats here. Hobbs would have to pick replacements from a list submitted by a body called the Commission on Appellate Court Appointments. If you haven't heard of this body and you probably haven't, it's going to play a very important role in Arizona's future. The problem is that this commission is supposed to be politically diverse with members from all different parts of the state and all different political parties. But Hobbs's predecessor, Republican Doug Ducey, managed to stack the commission by adding "independents" who actually have ties to the GOP. I mean, one of these appointees is the son-in-law of a former Republican president of the state Senate. I mean, come on.

Beard: And Ducey was one of these Republicans having a "I never thought the leopards would eat my face" moment in the wake of this ruling where he tweeted out that like, "I can't believe that the Supreme Court made this ruling. This is not what was intended." I'm like, well, they're your appointments and it's your commission that makes up the list. So maybe look at yourself a little bit here.

Nir: Yeah, no kidding. In fact, five of the justices on Arizona's seven-member court or appointed by Doug Ducey, the opinion was actually four-two. The two dissenters, believe it or not, were appointees of Jan Brewer, who was Ducey's predecessor, not exactly known for her political moderation. The seventh justice, actually another Ducey appointee, recused himself because he had said absolutely bonkers things about Planned Parenthood. Bill Montgomery, in 2015, said that Planned Parenthood, which was involved in this case, "encourages the very behavior that leads to STDs and abortions. Their business model relies on it."

And then he went even crazier in 2017. He said, Planned Parenthood is responsible for the greatest generational genocide known to man. I mean, these are actually common sentiments, very common sentiments, comparing abortion to genocide or to slavery, saying it's worse than slavery among conservatives. They don't usually get surfaced, but this ultimately was enough to force Montgomery off the case. Of course, it still was a four-two majority, and we're still dealing with the outcome here.

Hobbs, the governor now, will have a chance to appoint some new members, but there is a further problem, which is that appointments have to be approved by the state Senate, which right now is narrowly controlled by Republicans. But the good news is that the entire state Senate is also up for election this fall, and these absolute bozos are refusing to pass any legislation to undo the court's ban. In fact, on Wednesday in the Senate, they literally pulled a bill from consideration. So they are doing themselves absolutely no favors here, and I think probably every election on the ballot in Arizona this year in some way, shape, or form is going to implicate abortion rights.

Beard: And this commission and what Ducey and Republicans did with this commission is a classic Republican tactic of wanting to sort of hide the power in ways that make it difficult for voters to change your influence, which is why it's these two layers. So it's like it's not the legislature that you vote on, it's not the governor that you vote on. It's this commission that's stacked with appointees that then constrains whoever is the governor into forcing these more conservative appointees. But fortunately, like you said, if Arizona is able to elect a Democratic state Senate, they would be able to fix this commission and put some real independents who would hopefully create better lists for Governor Hobbs to choose from.

Nir: Ultimately, I really like these retention elections for us. Who knows if anyone will actually spend any money to oust these two justices, but if they do, it could be a lot of fun. I mean, you could imagine running some seriously harsh negative ads against the incumbents and what can they do to fight back? It's not like they can run negative ads in reverse. I mean, maybe they could run ads, say shadowy out-of-state interests, blah, blah, blah, but they don't have an opponent to point to, and they're also constrained by usual judicial ethics that require them to basically typically run a more soft-pedaled kind of message. So yeah, I really hope that someone takes Taniel's advice to heart here and just goes all out trying to nuke these guys.

Beard: Yeah, this will definitely be something that we want to keep an eye on throughout the rest of the year. But I think we should really talk about one of the craziest stories of the year so far, and something I'm keeping in mind for the craziest story of the year when we get to "The Downballot" awards at the end of the year, even though it's only April.

Nir: Oh yeah, absolutely. No, no. Please make a note of this one, Beard. This truly is one of the absolute craziest political stories in a while. And of course, it's about a Republican, but this is not about some MAGA rando that DC Republicans are trying to make go away or wish didn't exist or is running in some unimportant race. This is about one of the GOP's most celebrated Senate recruits, former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, who is also a wealthy businessman, and he's running against Jon Tester in Montana.

So here's the background. In response to this incredible deep dive investigation by the Washington Post that came out over the weekend, Sheehy is now claiming that he made up a story about getting shot in the arm at a national park in 2015 in order to conceal his failure to report an alleged bullet wound he received in Afghanistan three years earlier in what was possibly an incident of friendly fire. I realized that even that summary already sounds super complex. I definitely recommend people look for this article. We'll link it in the show notes.

But from there, Sheehy went to a hospital to receive treatment for some sort of injury. This was after a family trip to Glacier National Park, which is in Montana, and at the hospital he told a park ranger that he'd been hurt when his revolver went off after being dropped. But this piece by reporter Liz Goodwin raises so, so, so many questions about all of Sheehy's claims. It's almost hard to know where to begin.

Beard: So yeah, there's a ton of questions here. In particular, the reporter talked to a military policy expert and that expert said that it was "highly unlikely that a civilian hospital would report a year's old bullet wound to the Navy," and also added that Sheehy would have little reason to be worried about any sort of probe triggered by explaining this to the hospital staff.

He also wrote this in his memoir that came out last year that had several different stories about his injuries in Afghanistan. At one point he said he received multiple bullet wounds, but at another point, he said that he was shot just one time, which how could you keep track of that? The editor really should be staying on top of this. Now he's claiming he wasn't wounded, but he was technically hit by a round in a separate incident, which I guess you can be hit by a bullet and not wounded, but that seems again, incredibly, incredibly strange.

Nir: Yeah, I have no idea what it means to be "technically hit by a bullet". I mean, that was his phrase.

The other thing is that he now claims that at the national park, he had slipped on some ice and was worried he'd broken his arm. But like, dude, we've all watched Law and Order. If you go to the hospital and you've got a broken arm or a possibly broken arm, but you tell them that you were shot, what are you talking about? We know those injuries don't look anything like one another. I mean, I've broken my arm; it sucked. It did not resemble a bullet wound in any way, shape, or form. How could you possibly fool a doctor? I mean, how is this story even possible at all?

Beard: And if you take Sheehy's explanation that it was an old bullet wound that happened to also be in the arm that he hurt, then he goes to the hospital. If he had just told them, "Oh, it's an old bullet wound, I'm a veteran," that shouldn't raise anything. They would be like, "Okay, then let's fix the arm injury that you just had," and just be aware that there's a bullet wound. But the fact that they then called in the park ranger certainly implies that they seem to have reason to believe that it was a bullet wound from a recent time when he was in the park. Otherwise, they wouldn't have called the park ranger.

Nir: That's a really, really good point because, of course, Sheehy did tell them, "Oh yeah, I shot myself because the gun fell," even though it's basically impossible for this kind of weapon to just go off simply by being dropped on the ground. So yeah, that's a really good point. Maybe he fooled the doctor because there wasn't anything to fool. Maybe he did actually have a fresh bullet wound from that day in the national park. I mean, who the hell knows? But this whole story, it just feels like whatever the myth is about Tim Sheehy, that it's starting to unravel.

And we have seen this time and time and time again with these candidates that Republicans are so excited about and they think of these amazing bios and they're the perfect fit for whatever district or state we're talking about. And then the story just starts to come apart and it doesn't hold up. In fact, VoteVets, which helps to elect progressive Democratic veterans, is already running an ad; they're spending some real money on a couple hundred thousand dollars questioning the whole story, and it just makes Sheehy look like a fraud.

Beard: And we've seen this happen to Republicans time and again, their bench is either crazies like Matt Rosendale, who they did everything possible to make sure that he didn't run. He is that representative who said he was going to run and then dropped out and all of that because he is too far-right and he'd already lost to Tester once before. Or they have people who are bailing on the Republican Party; they don't want to be part of this MAGA party anymore. And so then they turn to these rich guys. And that's the Republican's answer to so many candidate vacancies is like, what we need is a rich guy because then we don't have to raise as much money. He can handle himself. And sure, if he's rich, he's got to be a good candidate. That seems to be the view of the GOP is that if someone is rich, they're good at things, so there'll be a good candidate.

And we've seen time and again that that is not the case, that having somebody who's run for elected office before who's served in elected office before is a great way to know that they'll be a good candidate for higher office. And Republicans have just run so far away from that in a lot of these, particularly the competitive Senate seats.

Nir: And Sheehy, man, that whole rich guy thing you just mentioned Beard, he's not just a rich guy; he's also the rich guy war hero. But it seems like both halves of this story are starting to collapse. So Sheehy's company is called Bridger Aerospace, and it's an aerial firefighting company, but a brand new story in the Montana Free Press said that Bridger is "deeply in debt, hemorrhaging cash, and at risk of failing to meet its financial obligations in the coming year". Now, I'm sure Tim Sheehy's family is not about to go hungry here, but basically, the stories he's told about serving in Afghanistan and the stories he's told about being a successful businessman, all of this is coming into question. I mean, maybe Matt Rosendale would've been the better choice.

Beard: Oh God, have we fallen that low for the Montana Republican Party that they actually wished Matt Rosendale would've gotten in after all? Wow.

Nir: Yeah. It's like I'm imagining one of those super obnoxious billboards on the side of the road with Matt Rosendale's face and it says "miss me" once he's gone.

Beard: Wow. But the biggest thing for me is I do not think this story is over.

Nir: No way.

Beard: It would shock me if there were not more revelations about this between now and November because a lot of people, journalists, Democratic opposition researchers, all sorts of folks are going to be looking for the truth here. And I don't think we have the truth here because it doesn't make sense.

Nir: Well, that does it for our weekly hits. Coming up on our deep dive, we are talking with Sondra Goldschein who runs the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, which focuses on helping elect candidates who want to improve America's care infrastructure, including family and medical leave and affordable elder and childcare. It is a very interesting discussion on a critically important topic. So please stay with us after the break.

Nir: Joining us on The Downballot this week is Sondra Goldschein, who is the executive director of the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy — which focuses on building grassroots support for family-friendly policies — and also the CFFE PAC, which focuses on electing candidates who support those sorts of policies, including paid family leave, paid medical leave, and affordable elder and childcare. Sondra, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Sondra Goldschein: Thank you, David, for having me.

Nir: Oh, it's our pleasure. So why don't you start off by telling us about the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy and how you came to be executive director of the organization?

Goldschein: Sure. So at the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, as we just heard you talk about, we envision a country in which everyone can take care of themselves and their families and also be economically secure. And that is just not the case for many people today. And a big reason for that is that our economy is not set up for today's family. It's based on this outdated notion that you have one parent who's staying at home, another parent who's going to work, and that child care begins at the age of five. That's not how families function these days.

And then we've got these rising costs that surround caregiving. Childcare costs are astronomical and it's getting harder and harder to find high-quality care. Most people don't have access to paid leave, and there's really no system in place that helps people afford to take care of their loved ones at home, especially when they're aging or disabled. And so we find that people are routinely forced to choose between caring for their loved ones and earning a living.

And to your question about how I got involved in this, this work is really personal to me. Throughout my working life, it has always been a challenge to both work and take care of my family. Right now, I am the mother of two young children, Abigail and Jonah, and I rely on a very complex network of family and paid caregivers to try to make all of it work.

And it's not just caring for children. At the beginning of my career and when my mother was at the end of her life, it was really only by the grace of my supervisor that I was able to spend her final weeks with her in the hospital without worrying about losing my job. So that's my experience, and everyone really has a personal experience with how tough it is to manage caregiving and earn a living.

You'd be really hard-pressed these days to find a kitchen table where these financial challenges aren't being discussed. And we know how to solve this crisis, but we don't have enough people in office who prioritize this agenda even though it's so critical, not just for every family, but also for our overall economy. And so as you said at the top, my organization, the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy is really focused on electing candidates that support this agenda in states across the country.

Beard: So around paid family leave and paid medical leave specifically, obviously this is something that's been a longstanding issue in America specifically. A lot of other Western countries have very good paid family and paid medical leave, and there are some places in America that have started to develop some good policies, but most of the country still doesn't. Have we seen differences in terms of places that have it, and how those have been successes and has that influenced the overall campaign on those issues?

Goldschein: Yeah, I mean the care movement that's been working for decades to pass policies like paid family and medical leave is really a good example of how important the work in states is, and how different your access to benefits is depending on where it is that you live. And so we haven't really seen federal action in this area, but we have seen 13 states that have passed federal paid family and medical leave laws, thanks in large part to the election of Democrats who champion this policy.

And as a more recent example, in states that have Democratic trifectas like Minnesota, we've seen bold investments in childcare recently to make sure that all working families have access to affordable care. And so if you live in a state that's invested in what we would call 'care infrastructure,' which supports your ability to both earn a living and to take care of yourself and your loved ones, then you're in a much better place than you would be in other states across the country where you have to rely on what your employer decides to give you. And so that's why at CFFE, at the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, we're really focused on getting some change at the federal level so that it doesn't matter where you live in terms of whether you are given the tools and opportunities to take care of yourself and your family and earn a living.

Nir: Sondra, a couple of minutes ago you said that you'd be hard-pressed to find a kitchen table where these issues don't come up. And that's really striking because of course that's the case. And even if you're not dealing with these sorts of issues right now, almost every adult at some point in their life is going to have to face problems like this. Yet at the same time, we don't tend to see these issues get the kind of national attention in political campaigns that you might expect them to given their salience. So why do you think that is and how have you specifically worked to raise the salience of these issues so that they are a deeper part of the national conversation?

Goldschein: I think the key is that the solutions to these challenges are really for most people, about lowering costs of living, which look at any survey and you'll see that economic security and the high cost of living is top of mind for voters in every corner of this country. And it's top of mind across race, across place, across age, and across gender. We've got inflation at a 40-year high and 72% of voters are living paycheck to paycheck. So these conversations around the kitchen table are about how to make ends meet. Voters are looking for candidates who are going to champion those issues like affordable childcare and paid family and medical leave that directly affect them and their families and their pocketbooks.

So a big part of our program at the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy is our canvass, and that's where we go door to door and talk to voters about what's at stake in the election. As I said, the care agenda is squarely meeting these financial concerns, and that's what voters mean when they say the economy is top of mind. They're not thinking about the GDP or other measures of the economic health of this country. They're thinking about their own individual family's budgets. And so in our conversations with voters across the country, we really can see them easily connect the dots between the care agenda and financial savings for their own lives.

Nir: I would really love to hear more about that Sondra, the canvassing and the stuff that you're hearing on doors and the kinds of conversations that you're having with actual voters.

Goldschein: Yeah. One of the canvassers that we recently spoke with is a woman named Shelly. And Shelly had an out-of-state job offer that would help her career, but in order to take the job, she was going to have to leave her aging parents back at home, but there were no affordable at-home nursing options. So Shelly, when we talked to her at the door, was really still wrestling with the decision between her own livelihood and taking care of her parents. And this is a decision that really no person should have to make.

And so when we meet folks like Shelly at the door and we hear their stories, we're able to talk to them about where the candidate stands on the policies that relate to that exact challenge. And then for Shelly, that would be talking about the importance of federal investments that lower the cost of in-home care. These conversations that we have with voters really help them break through the noise and see that who they support in an election impacts their family's budget, which as I said before, we know is always top of mind in an election.

And so we're finding that when we talk to voters, regardless of where they are, these kitchen table economic issues are really top of mind. And when we engage them and really explore what is their specific financial challenge, we're able to really help them connect those dots between the ways that policy can support their ability to both earn a living and take care of their family.

Beard: I want to go back a little bit when we were talking about sort of the issues and on the doors persuading people about these issues. And I know for paid family and medical leave, it's something that pulls very, very highly, everyone's by and large for it, and I think you often run into folks in states that don't have it on the books who are like, "Oh, I'm in a white-collar job or something where I get paid decently. I have this and my friends have this." So maybe it's something they're pro, but it's very, very low salience for them. So if you're on the doors and you run into somebody like this who's like, "Oh, sure, I favor that, but I care about other things." How do you talk to that person about the importance of having a state or federal paid family and medical leave act as opposed to just their company having it as a policy?

Goldschein: Yeah, so that's a really good question and it brings me back to how we design our canvassing programs and the stories that we're able to get from meeting and talking to people all over the country. And so our canvassing programs are really flexible. At the end of the day, we are working to elect Democrats and we want to do so in a way that really centers the care agenda in our messaging. And we're really flexible about which part of the care agenda.

So if we're talking to somebody at the doors and for whatever reason, paid family and medical leave doesn't resonate, there's going to be some other part of this policy agenda that does. And so if they have access, they're lucky enough to have access to paid family and medical leave, they're probably facing a challenge around providing care for aging parents or figuring it out, like I have to every day, like how are we actually taking care of our kids in a safe and affordable way?

And so at the doors, we're really narrowing in on what's top of mind for them. But in a lot of other of our communications, particularly our communications outside of elections and around the year, we are taking on that challenge of helping folks see the importance of care infrastructure, which may include policies that address challenges that they're not necessarily facing. And so when we meet somebody who has a really compelling story when we're speaking to them, we'll follow up with them after we have that initial conversation and see whether that's a story that they want to tell. And then if they do and we can make it happen, we'll work with them on putting that story together, writing an op-ed, speaking out at a community event, and really sharing their personal story about why a policy like paid family and medical leave is really important to them. And we find that when people hear those stories in the words of their neighbors, it's really persuasive.

And so building a movement for an agenda like this takes a lot of work. It takes work in an election and it takes a lot of work outside of the election. And I think that's why our program can be so impactful. We're working year-round to keep these issues front and center and to do so in a way that really centers personal experiences, which I think is so much more effective than anything else that anyone could hear.

Beard: So when you're doing these canvases, one of the things that we've recently learned about is we talked with Daria Dawson from America Votes last week. We talked about how they play traffic cop and help different organizations find the best voters for that organization to talk to. How do you all find your voters? As you said, this is an issue that can affect almost every adult in the country, but it may affect them at different times, and it may be that at this point their issue isn't number one, even if it's something they care about. So how do you go about finding the voters that are the best for your organization to canvas and to do this organizing with?

Goldschein: Yeah, so first I want to express my appreciation for America Votes and Daria's leadership. AV is a very important partner of ours, and it's an understatement to say that we do our work better because of the work that they put in. So I just want to start off with an appreciation for America Votes.

Nir: Absolutely.

Goldschein: And to your question on targeting, as you said, the issues we champion, like paid leave and affordable child care are incredibly popular with broad swaths of the American public. And because of that, we cast a really wide net in our program targeting both tried and true democratic supporters and also voters who need more persuasion. So we don't limit our voter universes based on age, race, or gender, specifically because of the broad appeal these issues have.

And so when we're in a community, we're talking to basically everyone because these issues are so resonant. And the communities we choose, we're looking for areas in coordination with America Votes that have large quantities of both base and persuadable voters. Often that means we find ourselves in the suburbs, but not exclusively. This is really, as you said, a message that resonates and works with a lot of different voters. And so we're just really looking to talk to as many voters as we can, as many times as we can, as early as we can.

Beard: And as a way to do that, you've recently announced that your organization's PAC is planning to spend $40 million on the 2024 campaign, which makes sense. Extremely, extremely important election this year, as we all know. And you're initially focused on six states that you listed out, Georgia, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin. So can you go into a little bit as to the reasoning and thinking behind focusing on those states as your initial priorities?

Goldschein: Yeah, sure. To win on this agenda, what we need are Democrats in control of Congress and the White House. There is a clear contrast between what each party stands for. Republicans are focused on taking away women's rights and corporate giveaways while Democrats have the back of working families. And so we're in the battleground states that will decide who wins the presidency and who controls Congress and where we know that our kitchen table economic focus and our large-scale field program can really make a difference in the outcome of the election. So in addition to the states that you mentioned, we're also going to be talking to voters in Ohio and Michigan this cycle.

Beard: One thing I wanted to circle back to is talking a little bit about how candidates are using these issues in their campaigns. So how have you seen, particularly as you mentioned with the cost of living and how these issues are so impacting that, how have you seen candidates raising these issues and presenting proposals to work on this front?

Goldschein: I'm going to go back to 2022 just for a second. So 2022, we ran a $20 million program where we knocked on 1.6 million doors across four states. And one of those states was Pennsylvania, and that's in the collar counties of Philadelphia, which are the Philadelphia suburbs. We knocked on over 686,000 doors, and we talked to voters about where Candidate Fetterman and Candidate Oz stood on caregiving policies like child care that will lower costs for working families. And so we weren't surprised at the end of that race that Senator Fetterman recognized the salience of child care. We ran a really big and visible canvassing program in those suburbs that helped decide the outcome of the election. And so he made childcare part of his closing argument to voters. And we saw that in almost all of the states that we ran these really big programs. We're demonstrating to candidates, in addition to talking to voters that embracing the care agenda is part of a winning political narrative.

So you don't have to look further than the top of the ticket to see more evidence of this. On Tuesday, President Biden wrapped himself around the care agenda when he spoke at a rally about all of the actions that his administration has taken to lower the cost of caregiving. We've been seeing President Biden use every opportunity that he can to express his support for the care agenda, both in words like at the rally and in action, when we look at the budget and all of the executive orders that he's issued. So he knows from his personal experience, caring for his family and maintaining a job that families in our economy need this, but he also knows that this is going to help him win. So we are really expecting in this cycle to see candidates continue to understand that supporting these policies that help families earn a living and take care of loved ones or children or whomever it is, is part of a winning political narrative.

Nir: So Sondra, let's say that winning political narrative does deliver some big wins for Democrats. Democrats hold the White House, hold the Senate in a post-Joe Manchin and post-Kyrsten Sinema world, and flip the House. Describe for us your specific wish list, and feel free to get as into the weeds on your preferred legislation as possible. What would these laws passed by Democrats at the federal level actually look like?

Goldschein: Yeah, I mean, I think we would want to see all of the pillars of the care agenda moving forward. We've got nearly three-quarters of working people that do not have paid leave. And so we need a paid family and medical leave bill to pass.

As I said, we've got a childcare crisis in this country. There was federal funding that expired in the fall that will close its estimated 70,000 childcare programs costing more than 3 million kids their childcare. So we need to see substantial investments in childcare to stabilize that sector.

And the other piece I want to mention is that we've got an elder care system that's scattered, difficult to access, and really expensive. And this stat always blows my mind. There is somebody turning 65 every eight seconds in this country. And so we need to be investing in accessible and affordable care for the aging as well as the disabled right away. And these pillars of the care agenda are what make up care infrastructure. And it really recognizes the fact that for our economy to thrive, for families to thrive, we've got to recognize that having an affordable caregiving system in place is just as important for people to work as it is to have roads and transit system. This is a core part of infrastructure. And so we need to see substantial investments from Congress that will be signed by President Biden, who could not say more times that he will gladly sign this legislation and we can really move away from that old system that I was talking about and into something that recognizes what families need to thrive.

Nir: You mentioned John Fetterman a few minutes ago. Are there any other favorite candidates who are on your watch list this cycle?

Goldschein: Yes, definitely. So there are a lot of Democrats who are running, and I can focus on other Senate races. We've got Sherrod Brown who has been a long champion of working families, and so key to send back to DC to really continue to advocate for this agenda. We've got Senator Bob Casey, who's been a dedicated champion for care policies. And I also want to lift up Senator Tammy Baldwin, a longtime supporter of a lot of the policies that we've been talking about today. And it's critical that we send all three of them back and reelect all three of them so we can secure that Senate majority and get to that Democratic trifecta that is necessary to get the care agenda over the finish line.

Nir: Well, we have been talking with Sondra Goldschein, who is the executive director of the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy. Sondra, before we let you go, where can Downballot listeners learn more about CFFE and where can they find your organization online and you online?

Goldschein: Excellent. So there's a lot of information on our program online at familyfriendlyeconomy.org. There you can read more about the stories that we're hearing from folks across the country, the programs that we're running in battleground states this cycle, and there's even a way to contribute to our 2024 electoral program as well. I can be found on Twitter at @SGoldschein, that's G-O-L-D-S-C-H-E-I-N, or shall I say X. And I'd love to stay in touch with both of you as our program develops over the cycle and we start to hear from more and more voters about what's top of mind.

Nir: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for coming onto "The Downballot" today.

Goldschein: Oh, it was a pleasure. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today.

Beard: That's all from us this week. Thanks to Sondra Goldschein for joining us. "The Downballot" comes out every Thursday everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to "The Downballot" and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our editor Drew Roderick, and we'll be back next week with a new episode.