The stakes are so high right now, and there is so much misinformation online. Your job in politics was often about communication. How should Democrats communicate right now to break through the noise?
I feel like for me, when I go into any media environment, whether it be TV, radio, or whatever, I have three words in my head for every segment: calm, clear, and direct.
I have to be calm because I understand the world I live in, and I don’t want to ever be accused of getting hysterical—no matter how unfair that is.
I have to be clear because, in this moment, I believe that it is life-and-death for me to speak the truth. If Donald Trump is putting brown children in cages, we can’t beat around that bush. That is something that’s happening, and that is unacceptable.
And I have to be direct because we don’t have time to waste. I can’t be worried about offending a Trump supporter, because those people don’t care about me. We have to be direct, and we can’t be afraid to call people out.
People will ask me sometimes, “Do you ever get scared about going on national TV, and calling Donald Trump a racist? And I’m like, “No.” Because I think about my family. I think about my aunt. I think about my grandfather. I think about the fact that, when my aunt was 17, she hid from the Klan the night before the march in Selma. If she could make it through that, I can get on TV and tell the truth.
Democrats are fixated on the election right now, and for good reason. But how much do you think about where we go after the election, if Donald Trump loses? What comes after this moment?
I’ve thought about that since the moment Donald Trump was elected. I mean, I thought about it before he was elected. We need Joe Biden to win this election. But after this election, we need people in power who look like the voters to win elections. When women of color are in power, it’s not just that it looks nice, like, “Oh, good. There’s a woman of color in the photo.” It’s that women of color have lived experience that can inform their policies. I quote Representative Ayanna Pressley in the book a lot, but one thing she said sums up for me what the book is about: “The people closest to the pain need to be the closest to the power.”
I believe in identity-based politics. We have been doing identity politics the whole time. We have been doing white politics, except we just decided to call it “politics.” And it’s only when we talk about people who are not white that we call it “identity politics.” I wrote this book partially to make that really clear. America is growing beyond that, because the demographics are just creating a reality where you have to confront the identities and lived experiences of people who are not white people. And that is good.
