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of any purchase of $100 or more, that's promo code BRIAN. This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way.
because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai slash spotify and keep thinking. That's claud.ai slash spotify. I know this is going to be controversial, coming from me in particular. We need to revisit the Electoral College.
We need to. Revisit the point of expanding the court. To 13 justices, like we have 13 district courts. We need to. Revisit.
If they so want, statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C. Yeah, that is Kamala Harris. We'll change with the wind because she thinks that's where her party is. And that is not a surprise to my next guest, Evan Barker, the author of Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative, a former Democratic campaign operative who's worked on a myriad of campaigns. But the last one, I believe, was Kamala Harris.
Evan, welcome. Congratulations on the book. Hi, Brian. Thank you so much.
So, no, the last one was not Kamala Harris. Just a quick fact check. But I did leave the party after watching her coronation at the DNC in Chicago.
So I actually left on day three of the convention before she even spoke. I was out the door and I posted my resignation letter online in a TikTok video that I did not expect to go viral the next day.
So you said you went to bed and there were 60 followers on your TikTok account. And then when you woke up, it was like, what? It was like millions. It was crazy. I did not expect it.
So, yeah, I actually worked for the far left wing of the party. I worked with Jasmine Crockett, Abdul Al-Syed. I worked for a fundraising firm, and our clients were Ilhan Omar and Corey Bush and Jamal Pullman. And so, you know, I was actually with AOC and Bernie the very first day they ever met back in 2018.
So I kind of come from the far left, and this is the first dissident progressive tell-all. I think I'm the first person from this movement that's ever written any kind of criticizing book about that. And I know you got big backlash when you did, right? I mean, you got a lot of anger. You actually had to move.
Yeah, I did. I did, yeah.
So we were living in San Francisco. I'm originally from the middle of the country, but I moved out to the Bay Area in 2019, met a guy out here, ended up staying. And we were living in San Francisco, and we had to leave town because my articles that I wrote criticizing the Democratic Party were being passed around in moms' chats. And my son was denied entry to preschool because some moms thought I was a threat to the community because I did end up voting for Donald Trump in 2024. And we were just invited to birthday parties.
It was a very, you know, I still don't have a lot of friends. We moved 30 miles away from San Francisco. I still don't have a lot of friends, but I think it's okay. I'm at a place of peace with it these days. But at least, you know, I'm not as visible here where I live now.
So what was it about Kamala Harris? Is it the way she got the nomination? Is it about her as a cat? Candidate that bothered you, what was it? Then had you leave the party?
It was a death by a thousand cuts. I was starting to feel disillusioned before Kamala Harris, but I think that was kind of like the cherry on top. You know, I go to the DNC and I had taken some time, just a period of time, sort of away from politics after I had my son. I had a little baby boy in late 2022. And I go to the DNC and I'm giving myself.
A chance to feel re-inspired by the party, be re-inspired by her. I was hoping for an open convention, Brian. I was hoping that they would come in and that they would kind of allow this to be a time for them to reset and remake themselves and distance themselves from some of the failed policies of the Biden years. And instead, when I got there, it was just the coronation of Kamala. It was the Kamala Brat Summer Party.
And I was disgusted. And I was like, oh my God, this is even worse than I remember. You know, this is even worse. Like, I got to go. I can't do this anymore.
You know, and I wasn't even expecting to vote for Trump. I was just going to abstain. And, you know, but I did end up voting for him in 2024. There was a, and there's.
Some people, some people that have said that gone through it and said, Well, the fact is, he got a lot of blue-collar workers. The fact is, he seemed to change. And you point out that the vice president, J.D. Vance, if anyone bought the book, was a bestseller for two years.
Well, watch the movie, you see, he grew up in abject poverty.
So you can't say, Well, these rich guys have it all. The people that were liking him were the people, the reason you were probably a Democrat. And yet, even unions were open to Donald Trump. J.D. and I have a similar background, actually.
You know, I was raised in a blue-collar union, mostly blue-collar union work, construction workers' family, actually. My grandfather was an elected official in the construction workers' union in Missouri. And, you know, at the same time that I was going to visit all of these candidates in AOC's office and interact with the, you know, the children of the wealthy elite that were running Democratic politics, you know, my mom and grandma were living in a mobile home. And And so I think the class difference was a huge thing for me. And I saw, you know, people in my family slowly start to shift over time because the Democrats stopped speaking to them.
They kind of turned their backs on them. And not only did they do that, but they actively hated them. They truly did. And Democrats hate hearing me say this. But part of the reason, you know, leading up to the whole exit from the party, you know, I was at Tom Steyers' house in San Francisco, Brian.
And It was right before the midterms in 2022, and I was listening to his new director lay out her strategy for the midterms. And she looks at the audience, it's all these super rich donors, you know, in San Francisco, and they're clapping at her every word like drunken seals. And she looks at them and she says that there's absolutely no point in trying to win back people like my uncle, people like the men and the women in my family that were turned away from this party and that ended up going to the GOP, that there was no point, they were gone forever, and that the future was going to be young people and people of color in Texas. At that point, I remember I turned and I looked at my husband and I was like, wow. Like, no wonder my family doesn't care about this party anymore.
No wonder most of them have switched over. Like this is their attitude. They actively hate them. They hate just normal American people. And, you know, I just kind of, it was like a constant experience for me.
And this part is coming to these slow realizations about what they really thought. You know, this, you know, it also plays into what I noticed doing this show and doing Fox and Friends and everything. We used to talk about issues separating Democrats and Republicans, conservatives against liberals.
Now I find myself saying, this is common sense. Right. It's just common sense. I don't even know what's conservative. What's common sense?
It's like you don't run into traffic and complain of getting hit by a car. There's not even hard issues. You know what? I would say a great example is this data centers. That's a debatable issue.
Okay, here's the positive, here's the negative. Then you go stem cell research.
Okay, we don't want to use aborted fetuses, but we do want the latest technology. Those are interesting debates. But when you talk about some of these issues about should we have a border, should we have a senate? Should we have a presidency? Should we have police?
Should we have prisons? Do I need to even tell you the answer to those questions? That's how crazy this debate is these days. It absolutely is. And, you know, that's kind of the book.
Obviously, I know I want Republicans to read my book. I'd also like Democrats to read my book, too. I don't know if they will because my entire book is about confronting common sense and the Democratic Party, you know, from the inside. Like that is the whole, that is like basically the thesis of this book is to try to get them to go back to being more common sense. And yes, I've left the Democratic Party, but I still think that it's good for us to have two healthy parties.
It's good for this country, Brian, that we don't have such a sick party, you know, that is pushing these like very far left, abolish prisons, open borders, let's become socialist communist. Like that is not healthy or good for this country. And so, you know, I'm hoping that I can lead some sort of quiet revolution among people that are still willing to listen. I'm not sure how many of them actually are.
So now that we have this other theme, this anti-Semitism that comes through it is definitely an anti-Israeli thing. And so now you got this El Saeed, who's the nominee over in Michigan. And here's a little of what he thinks. Let's listen to his view on Israel.
Well, I just think we need to treat Israel the way we would treat any other country who behaved the way that Israel is behaving. I understand that Netanyahu is a big reason why they've gotten so aggressive and, frankly, so bloodthirsty under his reign. But I also understand that it's impossible for us to say that we want a two-state solution while we've been aiding, arming, and abetting the very people who've been trying to foreclose on the possibility of a Palestinian state.
So he goes on basically say APAC is the enemy, and that's really you have a Democratic Party now as it gives Israel 23% approval and most of them the attitude towards Israel When you see them protesting on October 8th, The day after, before there was any movement to fix what's going on in Gaza, before you could even say genocide, they were protesting against Israel October 8th. I know. Yeah, I did. I that was such a it's like I write about in the book and and just full I have to say this, I have to say this. Um I did work for Abdul.
I did not personally ever hear him say anything anti-Semitic behind the scenes, but I completely disagree with him in not saying that there should be a two-state solution. I'm not an Israel Palestine expert, but I think that Israel has a right to exist. That being said, you know, I had friends that worked inside of the progressive movement, and after October 7th, they They wrote to me because they knew that I was feeling disaffected about identity politics and the sort of the left's obsession with oppressed versus oppressor narratives. And they felt completely lost. And they couldn't believe that people that they had helped elect would not condemn Hamas.
And I just don't understand how, you know, I think it's fine to criticize APAC. I think it's fine to criticize any government, actually. But I think it's different. It's another thing to do what they did after October 7th. And so I think that they are losing coalition groups.
And they don't understand that they might be pushing Jewish people out of the party a lot in the same way that they did, you know, like white working class people like my family members.
So, Evan, that's what I think I see as happening. Yeah. Hi, everyone. It's Brian Kilmead here. Are you tired of those uncomfortable dress shirts, especially when they bunch up under a sweater?
If so, then you must check out Collars and Co., makers of the dress collar polo. Listen up. These shirts are four-way stretch, buttery soft polos with firm dress collars on them.
So they give you the dress shirt look, but extremely comfortable polo feel. You can wear them with anything under a sweater, with a blazer, or by themselves as an elevated polo. They work for any occasion. These polos are perfect, whether it's in the office, on a golf course, or a night out. Collars and Co is exploding and have gone viral on social media thanks to the 1 million investment they received on Shark Tank from Mark Cuban and Peter Jones.
You don't have to worry about collars that flop down and spread out. They stay firm and sharp all. Day. It's an amazing array of sweaters, quarter zips, pants, and outerwear. If you're looking for the performance dress shirt or polo that looks great all day, check out collarsandco.com.
Use promo code Brian for 15% off of any purchase of $100 or more. That's promo code Brian. This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. your job, your kids, where it's going.
Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way. because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai slash spotify and keep thinking. That's claud.ai slash spotify. Evan Barker, our guest.
And if you're not watching the stream, just know that she has a book out called Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative and wants to make her party better. But is it safe to say you've left the party? Yeah, I'm an independent at this point. You're an independent. By the way, Joe Manchin, you should call him because he's starting an independent political movement.
I like Joe. That'd be awesome. Yeah. So, yeah.
So he's out there.
So you would have a home there.
So. Why is it? Because you said you were there when AOC met Bernie Sanders. Do you think it was a mistake, Evan? to let Bernie Sanders into the party at all because he never said I'm a Democrat.
No, I don't think it was. I don't. I think I actually think Bernie represent. I think Bernie, the problem with Bernie is that he. He's just kind of allowed his movement to be hijacked by the far left as well.
If you look at Bernie in 2015, he was not as crazy as he is today. He believed in immigration enforcement. He said that mass illegal immigration was a Koch brothers scheme to harm the working class. He was moderate on guns. He wasn't obsessed with identity politics.
I think that he made a trade with people like AOC and with Ilhan Omar and those types of people. And also, by the way, Bernie's a Zionist. Like he supports the Israel. I think he's a quiet Zionist these days. He's really quiet.
I've never heard that. Yes, he is. He is. But he actually, no, if you go back in 2018, he had a very different viewpoint on Israel than he does now. And so I think he's kind of been hijacked as well.
He's been co-opted. And I think that he kind of very stupidly made this decision that he thought he could make his movement expand by allowing people like AOC and Ilhan to define his movement, when in reality, he's just made it.
so that his movement could never expand. I always felt like they looked up to him. They did, but they really are the message bearers now. They're the ones that are moving it forward. And so I think, you know, if Bernie had stayed Bernie in 2016, I think it would be a very different Democratic Party, but that's not what happened.
Like all of these other progressives came in and they brought all of these other crazy ideas with them. And it completely, you know, first, I like to say, first, the Democratic Party screwed Bernie and then the progressives screwed Bernie. Of course, Bernie allowed it to happen. But yeah, I mean he's changed as well. He has evolved.
He and I think that's part of the reason that my field members who supported him, Brian, ended up voting for Donald Trump. You know, in 2016, there were people that were supporting Bernie against Hillary and then went to Trump because he used to have more common sense positions.
So Evan Barker, before I let you go, can you name three candidates that you hope are merge in 28 on your former party?
Well, it's hard because I like some on the Republican Party too. But I love Josh Hawley. We're both from Missouri. I think he's amazing. My former party, I don't know.
That's a lot. You heard Josh Hawley runs. Senator Hawley runs. Yes. I think he's great.
I really, really like him. I think he gets it. I think he understands the populist thing. I think he's, I hope he reads my book someday. It would be very cool.
But yes, Josh Hawley, I think J.D. Vance could be promising. On the left, it's hard. I like Marie Glusen-Camp Perez. She's in Washington, probably couldn't run for president.
But she, to me, represents what I would like the direction of the Democratic Party to go to in the future. But she's more common sense on a lot of issues, but at the same time, she focuses on economics. You know, she voted for border security and she voted against defunding ICE. She voted against.
some of the trans stuff with minors. You know, she's gotten in a lot of trouble with her party. But I really, really like her and I identify with her. I would like to see more Democratic candidates like her. You know what's so interesting?
You look at the resume.
So if you look at Governor Bashir, who's in a Republican state and is successful, and Governor Shapiro, who's in a purple state and is successful. If they came out strongly against some of the extreme behaviors, I would say, okay, these guys are candidates, but instead, Senator Kelly, too. They just meld in with them, refuse to condemn them. We're a Big Tent party. Totally.
That to me is not what I would do if I want the Democratic nomination. Yeah, I like Shapiro, too. I forgot about him. But yes, I think you're right. I think they need to come out more forcefully.
But the problem is the staff capture. I talk about this in my book, is that a lot of these establishment politicians that are more moderate, their staff members, people don't realize this, are actually aligned with people like Zoron. And so they are often pressuring, and the consultants are pressuring their candidates. To go more to the left on issues that they otherwise wouldn't. Yep.
And it's like they're captured on all sides, Brian.
So interesting. Yeah. So pick up her book, Nothing Left, Confessions of a Democratic Operative. Evan, we'll talk again. Thanks so much.
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