I lay out a hard-nosed, no-illusions roadmap for 2026: win the midterms—and then do the decades-long rebuild this moment demands.
Reality check: even a Democratic midterm sweep is just the starting line. The damage is deep; reconstruction will be slow, disciplined, and comprehensive across every level of government. From there, we need to spell out a governing agenda: end “life as a subscription,” prosecute regime actors and their enablers, restore post-WWII-style progressive taxation (including a 90% rate on wealth above $20M), and stop the billionaire-captured, AI-fueled extraction economy.
Chapters:
00:00 – Wake-up call for 2026
03:00 – Policy repair agenda
06:00 – Tax what captured the state
09:00 – A long-term mandate
10:00 – Remove the “cancer” of oligarchy; begin in 2026
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Music Credit: Good_B_Music
Mentioned in this episode:
Left in Exile Intro
Left in Exile Intro
Transcripts
Speaker: [:
Now, I know that everybody is excited about the momentum that democratic candidates have had since. The second iteration of the Trump regime has taken hold. We've seen massive swings in off-cycle and regional and local elections in deep red states that give us signals of what's coming. But I think everybody is getting way too excited about the prospects of a Democratic takeover of the house and potentially the Senate.
hat's been done so far is so [:
Where they're remodeling a house, the tear down process and the demolition process doesn't take too long. It's the part of rebuilding that actually takes the vast amount of work, and that's what we're looking at going forward. So when we look at what should we expect going forward.
Winning the midterms in whatever way, shape and form that looks like is only the beginning. There needs to be a sustained focus at all levels of government across the country to repair the damage that's been done. And anybody that is running that isn't speaking about that now is setting themselves up.
For a massive amount of headaches because it's not going to be something that's done overnight.
are some of the things that [:
Republican policies have turned. The simple existence of just living and survival into a subscription service. Think about what's happened to food costs. Shelter costs, healthcare costs, everything that we basically need to survive. The cost for that has gone through the roof, and it's gonna continue going through the roof.
everything that isn't nailed [:
The next Democratic administration that takes over needs to undo the damage on just those things. And what does that actually look like? When you think about rebuilding a society or a structure that works for everybody, what that means is establishing some sort of minimum level that everybody can benefit from.
When you're talking about what needs to be on the agenda for the next Democratic administrations, it needs to be focused on leveling the playing field and any Democrat that isn't running on getting rid of the life as a subscription model mindset that the Republicans have put forward should not be somebody that we are voting for.
son in this regime and their [:
A handful of frontline people paid the price for an entrenched elite class that was funding the exterminations. In both of those instances, and what we're seeing now is another version of a. Shadow genocide that's taking place.
When you look at the policies that have been put forward, eliminating USAID and a number of other agencies eliminating SNAP benefits, eliminating the a CA, all of those things come with a death toll.
unning for office that isn't [:
Should be questioned and held accountable for their reasoning for why that isn't high on their priority, but it can't just stop at regime officials.
You need to look at every business entity and billionaire who either funded this regime or capitulated to this regime. That needs to be a focus as well, because.
Dictators cannot survive without the elites funding them. So every single billionaire that lined up behind this regime and backed what they did needs to be held accountable and needs to be stripped of everything that they value to make amends for the damage that they've caused.
ed to the greatest period of [:
That. Started tapering off by the Nixon administration, and keep in mind that period of economic growth excluded large numbers of the population. Women, minorities were not included in that boom, but the tax policy that was in place at that time needs to be brought back.
And what that means.
Is that the top 1% needs to be taxed at a rate that we haven't seen in a really long time. So what does that actually look like? What this actually looks like, and what I would like to see people start advocating is that for anybody that has a net worth that is over $20 million that needs to be taxed at 90%.
e not been paying their fair [:
So in order to fix that. We need to bring back a tax policy that requires and demands that the ultra wealthy pay their fair share.
And when you look at people like Elon Musk, mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, all of those people who have contributed heavily to the Trump regime, they should be targeted first and stripped of as much of their wealth as possible to close the gap.
The fact of the matter is that. The current model of how government is structured is not working for the people. So a new model needs to be put in place where life is no longer treated as a subscription service. And if the opposition party to the Trump regime isn't willing to run on those things.
They're not [:
At this point, based on the damage that we've seen in the first year of the second Trump regime. Is so widespread and so vast that it needs an equally aggressive response To repair the damage and repairing the damage is going to take decades to accomplish. What this should signal to everybody is that the Republican party is fundamentally. Beholden to several foreign governments and foreign interests, and the billionaire class, they're not working for the American people. The evidence is there in plain sight.
You've seen this on a national scale, but you can see this at a state level scale as well. Every single red state that you see has had decades of Republican control, they're at or near the bottom in every major category related to quality of life, poor health outcomes, poor educational outcomes, poor wealth outcomes.
rounded, dust and treated as [:
Yet Republicans will run over and over again pointing the finger at Democrats and saying that Democrats are the problem when their states have been under Republican control for decades and are at the bottom of the barrel.
That's what we call a trend line. And we've seen that the trend line doesn't work, so we need a fundamental re-imagining of what. The country needs to look like, and that's gotta start at the state and local level and work at every level going up. Because what's been in place since the Nixon administration and the Reagan administration clearly isn't working for all of us.
s and the billionaire class. [:
And that process starts in 2026.
a takeover in the midterms of:
That's the only hope.
If we keep playing this game where every cycle Republicans get put back in charge. It's gonna continue to get worse, and there's gonna come a point in time where we won't get another shot to fix the damage.
lization that the Republican [:
on the same side as the American people.
They're on the same side of the UAE, of Saudi Arabia, of Russia, of the billionaire class and the oligarchs, they're not fighting for you. And the sooner the majority of the American people realize that and act accordingly, the better off we'll be.
