11-06-25 *INTERVIEW* Mike Nellis on the Democrats' 2025 Blue Wave

Hey, it is Ryan Seacrest here. If you love great games and a little extra excitement to your day, I got something fun for you. Chumba Casino and I have teamed up to create an exclusive online social casino game. It's called Ryan Seacrest 10K ways. It's fun and free to play. Just like all your favorites from Chumba Casino. And every spin brings 10,000 ways to keep the good times going. Check it out and play for free today at chumbac casino.com. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. CTs and Cs. by Trumpa Casino. When you experienced the PFL live, the hits are harder. The crowd is louder. The action unmatched. Ain't no more stopping these keys and pleas for well in your crime. July 25th in Washington, D.C., undefeated that the silverbacked gene fights to cement his place atop the division against the silent assassin Shemil Musayev with PFL gold on the line. The tension is building. Be there. Saturday, July 25th, live from Care First Arena. For tickets, visit pfell. info slash DC. Vital doesn't always mean visible. Across America, advanced technology is working behind the scenes, strengthening our nation. It protects our war fighters, advances life-saving healthcare, combat cyber threats, and defends the critical infrastructure that keeps our country moving. At GDIT, we power the systems that help America operate, connect, and stay secure. Every hour, every mission, every day. GDIT, behind America's invisible advantage. Happy birthday, America. It's time to celebrate and play your favorite Las Vegas casino games by American-owned SpinQuest.com. What's better than fireworks than American Pie? Hitting a black deck in the palm of your hand, and you won't lose your fingers. Over a thousand games, including slots and live dealers. And $30 point packs are on sale for 10. SpinQuest.com. Buy American players for American players. SpendQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. Old enough to have done that. I am so pleased to welcome to the show for the first time, Mike Nellis. I already feel like we're friends, even though we've never talked before, because I see him so much on my buddy Leland's show on News Nation. Leland actually was on the show yesterday. And I've been really looking forward to this because Mike is an... aggressive, unabashed, hardcore Democrat activist fundraiser who really understands the party and politics and policy. And we probably don't agree on. everything we probably agree on some stuff but there's not that many people who are strong in all of those areas like you'll get someone who's good on party politics but is really bad on policy but i i find mike good at all this stuff even if i don't agree with him he's a good analyst and a good talker so with that it's very good to have you on the show mike thanks for making time for us

Intro. Nice. So before we get into all the stuff I just said, your Twitter profile says you have raised over a billion dollars with a B for Democrats and nonprofits. How do you do that? And... Was that your profession like fundraising like previously to being so politically active or is it part of really the same thing? Yeah, I've been politically active since I got out of high school. I dropped out of college to work for Barack Obama in 2007. I grew up in Nebraska and he was running the Iowa caucus and I drove out to his first event and never really looked back. So I joke I've never had a real job. But I'm one of the sort of first people that helped build online fundraising and digital advertising for the Democratic Party. And so in the course of doing that, I've helped raise. A ton of money for candidates like a bunch of candidates you're not going to like, but Adam Schiff, Gretchen Whitmer, Cory Booker, Lauren Underwood here in the Chicagoland area, a bunch of others. I've got a great team of people that work with me. You're right. I don't like them at all. But it's not really important in the sense that. I admire your success. It's much more important. I like, you know, just the fact that you figure out how to do something and, you know, put together numbers like that. Yeah, I mean, I was going to, in a way, I was going to say, I wish you were doing it from my side, but I don't feel like I have a side, right? I'm an unaffiliated libertarian, and I don't feel like I have a side right now. Okay, so how much better were you feeling? Or are you feeling this morning versus Tuesday morning before the elections? Yeah, well, I felt pretty good Tuesday morning. I kind of got what I expected Tuesday night. I had a good sense that people were really frustrated that Democrats have done a good job to set Abigail Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill up for success. I didn't know how good the night was going to be. Like I was surprised to see Democrats defeated the super majority in the state Senate in Mississippi. I was excited to see them win two statewide races in Georgia by 30 points. It was a big night for the Democrats. And I think for me it was. We get to wash away a little bit of the stature 2024 off our backs. I'm going to make this a question. And you implied it already. But for me, I wasn't surprised that Democrats did well. I was surprised how well they did. So could you just elaborate on that a little bit? And also one specific thing, were you surprised that Jay Jones won the Attorney General's race in Virginia?

Joe Biden, his presidency on the economy. Trump won last year. The core main promise that people paid attention to was, and this is a quote, grocery prices will go down on day one when I'm president. He said that basically every day of the campaign, they ran TV ads on it. He said it on Meet the Press like a couple days after he got elected president, reelected president. And he hasn't done anything about that. Instead, he's made everything a lot more expensive and then denied that it's a problem. And that's going to drag people down. And you're right that they're going to be. highly qualified good you know not bad republicans like look i'm a partisan but if you put a good republican in front of me i can have a conversation with them might even consider voting for them every now again but You know, they're going to drag them down. I think Trump is generally speaking a net negative to the Republican Party electorally. He's bad at picking candidates. And that's why, like, Democrats should not have, like, John Fetterman shouldn't be in the Senate right now, but Trump got behind Dr. Oz instead of getting behind a normal Republican candidate. So I think it's a real problem for them that he drags them down significantly. Okay. So I will say, I think. Trump is much better right now at choosing candidates to endorse than he was in the past. He had more success, you know, a couple years ago than he did in the past. But still, my, my, what I said on my show yesterday about Trump is. And again, an election is a choice. So we have to get back to comparing to Democrats. But just looking at Republicans, in a sense, I feel like Republicans can't win with Trump there, but they also can't win without him. Because, you know, with him, they pick MAGA candidates who turn off a lot of normal people. And without him, Republicans don't turn out in the general election, like yesterday, like Tuesday. I actually disagree with that take. I think if they had run Nikki Haley in the last election, she might have won 48 states against Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. I think people were starved for a normal, relatively moderate Republican who would guide the country forward. You guys would have won back, or it's not you guys that don't want to lump you out with all the Republicans, but Republicans would have won a lot more like suburban voters in that last election, but Trump turns them off so much. So I think it's like a double-edged sword. Yes, he brings out. a lot of people that don't vote, part of the MAGA coalition, but in this last election in particular, Nikki Haley wins in a landslide in my opinion. Okay, so I should clarify, because I don't disagree with you. What I should have said was as long as Trump is on the scene, right? Because I was a Nikki Haley supporter. Actually, I was a Nikki Haley supporter. I really wanted her. I mean, she's not. It was my dad. My dad really wanted Nikki Haley. He didn't want Trump back. My dad's a huge Republican. Right. And next time, I mean, we don't know who all is going to run and whatever. But if you look at the landscape right now, if I had to pick someone, I think my guy would be probably Marco Rubio. I cannot, I cannot fathom JD Vance. All right, I want to play something for you now.

And this is something that you can imagine just sets my teeth on edge. And I want to talk about the direction of the Democratic Party after you hear this from the newly elected mayor of New York City. We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small. Okay, so in case it was hard for you to hear, Zohran Mamdani said, we're going to prove that there is no problem too big for government to solve or too small for government to care about. And that scares the bejesus out of me. How do you just your gut reaction? How do you feel about what he said? Well, I think it's, we're living through this weird moment where I think the Republican Party believes in big government and a lot more Democrats believe in smaller government than you would, then you would believe. Obviously, Mondania is not one of those. My issue here is that. I think in the last 20 years of our politics, government has withdrawn from solving any problems. And you don't have enough political leaders that are trying to solve anything and because of that everything's spiraling out of control. My assumption, Ross, and I don't know you super well, is that your expectation is community can solve it. Corporations can solve it, business and the free market can solve it. You correct me if I'm wrong about that. I think it's both. I think it's how do you get into a place where we start having this conversation of what can the government actually be useful and helpful to solve and how do we create the conditions for? society, community, business to actually solve those problems. Because I don't think corporate America is solving a lot of problems either, unless there's a ton of money to be made in it. And that's a problem, too. My viewpoint is more like this. I think you all know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help. So that's how I am, right? And just so I'm a lot older than you. My first vote for president was for Reagan in his reelection. But you probably more or less fairly characterized my viewpoint. I'm not an anarchist. So I do think that there could potentially be some legitimate role for government. For example, we were talking about food stamps because you got all this food stamp problems with the government shutdown. said, look, I would eliminate food stamps, if I could, for most people, because right now what happens is, and this sounds like an argument a leftist would make in a way, but right now what happens is a government partial subsidy of somebody's food expenses allows businesses to pay those people less. And I'm not down with that. So what I said is, is eliminate it. I don't mean if I were trying to make a practical solution, I'd say over time, eliminate it. But I could.

live with having something like food stamps or we call it snap now for people who really can't help themselves, really can't work, or disabled physically, mentally, whatever. So I'm not looking for people to starve in the streets. I just don't want government to even think it could solve all the problems. But I think that's a fundamental philosophical difference between me and you or me and people to my left. Yeah, well, I think you would be surprised that you and I would probably agree on more because I actually consider myself a libertarian on a ton of different issues. Generally speaking, I want the government to leave people alone unless there's a clear public safety issue. Now, I believe in a really strong social safety net that supports people. So I do believe in universal health care, making sure everybody has access to health care. I'm a small business owner. I run. five small businesses myself, I make sure all my employees have health care. I think it's ridiculous that it's my responsibility to provide health care for my employees. I think it drags my business down. And in every other major country, small businesses don't have to do that. That's why there should be some kind of public option or access to Medicare or Medicaid, people to be able to get that on SNAP. I agree with you. I think the current way that the SNAP program works is it is subsidizing companies like Walmart and McDonald's and other businesses so that they have to pay people less. If you got rid of food stamps and phased them out over time, the result would be either a lot of people would starve or you would have to start forcing companies like Walmart to pay people a living wage. And the problem is this version of the Republican Party, they want to eliminate SNAP, but they don't want to do anything about the fact that we're subsidizing low wages for major corporations. So, and we're, again, this is kind of interesting. Like you and I'll start on the same thing and then we'll diverge a little at the end because I would not end up saying we then need to force a corporation, right? So a lot of people on my left would start with the argument that I... made that you agree with and then they would end up saying and therefore we need to increase the minimum wage and I think I'm against the very existence of a minimum wage and I do think the market will take care of it and I do think private people and charities will take care of it when the when the private market doesn't anyway let's keep going so if you're just joining we're talking with Mike Nellis you got to check out his substack at endless urgency.com and follow him on on Twitter at Mike Nellis any L-L-L-I-S. So back to party politics for a minute. Dems did really well. I don't know that, you know, the first year after a presidential cycle, that it necessarily presages a lot for next year or three years later. But I'd rather, you know, I'd rather be a Democrat than a Republican after that. But the Democratic Party still remains in polling more unpopular than Republicans. So if you were advising Democrats, and you are advising Democrats, How do you advise them to not suck so much in public perception? I think it's funny that you say not suck so much because I say that in every private meeting I have with my class. I often joke that if I just didn't have my career, I'd be an independent voter like the next day because the party drives me crazy too. So here's what I would say. I think one, Democrats have to be really careful having looked at Tuesday's results and make the assumption that we're back.

Right. I see a lot of people going, the Democratic Party is back. We got our mojo. And I'm like, no, we did it. Like, we ran good quality candidates for their districts that did better than the party brand. Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill and Zohran Mamdani for that, for that matter, ran really good campaigns that overperform the expectations of where Democrats are. The Republicans are giving us a ton to work on right now from affordability. Everything's more expensive. Donald Trump is underwater on security issues. He's underwater on crime. He's underwater at immigration. You brought up the border earlier today. I'm with you on keeping the border secure 100% with you. I'm 100% with you on removing violent criminals. I think the Democratic Party's policy on immigration has not made a lot of sense. But Donald Trump has taken it way too far with these ice raids. I live in the city of Chicago. Yesterday, there was a daycare worker who was grabbed in front of her kids and thrown into the back of an unmarked car. by unidentified ICE agents. And I don't think people like that. I don't think people want that. To me, that's the definition of fascism. That's what a fascist country does. If we heard about that happening in another country, we'd be really, really alarmed by that. We should be alarmed that it's happening in major American cities. So they're going to give us plenty of work with, plenty to talk about, but Democrats still have to. run better candidates with better messengers. Democrats have to be smarter about the kind of campaigns that we're running. We have to be smarter about how we use power and get back to delivering for people. And we have to be disciplined in the issues that we talk about. Democrats, I think to your point about the Zohran Mamdani quote, one of the things that gives me positive, there's no issue too small for the government to solve. Well, that seems to me like you're creating the conditions where the government's going to be trying to solve everybody's little problems every single day. And what I worry about is I want the Democratic Party focused on three things right now. I want them focused on affordability. I want the focus on keeping people safe. And I want the focus on rooting out corruption in this government. If they focus on those three things, both in this election and when we take power again in in 2027, when we take back the House and send it, and in 2029, we ascend to the presidency, hopefully, if things go well. If we focus on that, we're going to win and we're going to be in a good position, in my opinion. I'm tempted to bet you a beer on the Senate thing. I do think you'll take back the House. I wouldn't bet Senate's tough, so I'm not putting any money on that. Yeah. Okay. You know, so one last thing. I got about a minute left here. So I like your list of things. If I were a Democrat, I would like your list of things there. So. I think, though, that part of the problem from the Zohran Mamdani wing is that they think they can make things cheaper by making them free. But that's when things are most expensive, right? So when Zohran Mamdani says, you know, I'm going to freeze your rent, or I'm going to make buses free, or we're going to have government-owned grocery stores. All of those things are either going to fail outright or be so expensive that they're going to cause either tax increases or budget cuts in other areas. And you were talking about this in your conversation with Don Lemon as if these are sort of new ideas that haven't been tried and people should be open to bucking the establishment and trying new things. But all of these things have been tried and they almost always fail wherever they're tried. So I'll give you the last 29 seconds because I like prime numbers.

Thank you. Yeah, I don't think that's a fair characterization of it because what I would say is like one, there's plenty of cities in America that provide free transportation to people. So I don't think a free bus idea is like the worst idea is like the worst idea, like the worst idea. There's plenty of city in the New York that don't have a grocery store right now. And if you don't like the idea of putting a government run or a government subsidized grocery store in that neighborhood, come up with another idea proposed that. Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Lee-Wa did not have any. ideas to solve that problem. And this is part of the problem is, yes, you might not like So Ron Mangani's ideas. I don't agree with all of them either. He's not from my wing of the Democratic Party, but at least he's proposing some new and different stuff relative to what both establishments in both political parties do. So I'm okay if they subsidize a grocery store and see how it does. It's okay if it fails. Interesting. Yeah, look, I'm really torn as a guy whose son's middle name is Rand. I feel like we're living through Atlas Shrugged, you know, and that mindset without getting too Randian is kind of like sometimes things need to get much, much worse than you think they can get before voters wake up and make things better. And part of me, like I'm trying to decide whether I wish Zohran Mamdani's success, because it is a great city and the city where I was born, or whether I wish him to fail so people learn once and for... all that his ideas are are not just wrong but reprehensible so so we'll see we'll see we'll see we'll see I want him to succeed, but I want every politician to succeed. Like, I hope Donald Trump would make grocery prices cheaper, too, because I got to manage my household budget. Fortunately, where we are. Yeah, so would I. I will say, and I mentioned this on the show yesterday, is very, very smart of him to campaign on that because it was a pain point for everybody, grocery prices. But in reality, it's not a thing a president can do almost anything about. So it puts himself in a really tough situation. And it's smart of you guys to say, well, Trump promised that. And if he doesn't get grocery prices down, then you should oppose him and other Republicans. It's very smart of you guys because Trump really doesn't have anything he can do to get grocery prices down. It's the market. It's the weather. It's all kinds of things. So anyway, look, Mike Nellis is... He's driving it up significantly with the tariffs. Yes, no doubt. No doubt. I hate the tariffs. Hate them. Mike Nellis is one of the most important and influential Democrat fundraisers. And... And I don't think activist is quite the right word, consultant in the country. What do you call yourself? What do you call yourself? I just say democratic strategist. Strategist, there you go, strategist. That's a better word. Consultant sound is a little bit insulting. I take that back. Strategist. Mike Nellis on Twitter and Endlessurgency.com. Great to talk to you for the first time. Thanks, Ross. I enjoyed this a lot. Okay, me too. We'll be right back on KOA.

Drew McIntyre here from WWE. Weilding the Claymore can be a life of chaos. When I'm not dominating in the ring, Chumba Casino is how this warrior takes a wee break. With hundreds of online social games and new weekly releases, there's always something fresh to try. And those daily boosts, next level. Even my free time feels like Valhalla. So when life feels like a battle, kick up your feet, have some fun, and let's chumba. No purchase necessary. VGW Group, voidware prohibited by law, CTs and Cs, 21 Plus, sponsored by Chumba Casino. When you experienced the PFL live, the hits are harder. The crowd is louder. The action unmatched. Ain't no more stopping these teens and cleans for well when you cry. July 25th in Washington, D.C., undefeated that the silverbacked gene fights to cement his place atop the division against the silent assassin Shemil Musayev with PFL gold on the line. The tension is building. Be there. Saturday, July 25th, live from Care First Arena. For tickets, visit pfell. info slash DC. Vital doesn't always mean visible. Across America, advanced technology is working behind the scenes, strengthening our nation. It protects our war fighters, advances life-saving healthcare, combat cyber threats, and defends the critical infrastructure that keeps our country moving. At GDIT, we power the systems that help America operate, connect, and stay secure. Every hour, every mission, every day. GDIT, behind America's invisible advantage.

Hey guys, Lady Luck here. Are you going on any road trips this summer? I know I'm going to be going on a bunch of road trips. And being that I'm going to be passenger princess, I love playing on SpinQuest.com. SpinQuest has all of my favorite slot games, live blackjack, live craps. Head on over to SpinQuest right now and get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.