It’s one of America’s most popular political myths: the idea that George Washington considered the Senate necessary as a “legislative cooling saucer.” Just as tea or coffee had to be poured on the saucer to get its temperature down, the Senate was needed to reflect on legislation and be the wiser of the chambers. The idea seems more appealing today than ever, but one wonders how much the Senate still lives up to its wise reputation. With 53 seats, the Republicans are the majority, making a net gain of four seats in the 2024 election. We are in luck that one of the key architects of the victorious campaign is a guest at this year’s St.Gallen Symposium and can take us behind the scenes of the US Senate: Jason Thielman.

Jason Thielman is the Principal Founder of S2R Public Affairs. He previously served as Chief of Staff to Senator Steve Daines, a member of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. During the 2024 election cycle, he was Executive Director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), where he played a pivotal role in securing the Republican Senate majority.

Views from the Sister Republic, a University of St. Gallen podcast by Claudia Brühwiler. And welcome to another episode of Views from the Sister Republic Today live from the St. Gallen Symposium.

Well, for you it's not going to be live, but we are live at the symposium with one man who has taken the stage twice today, and that is Jason Thielman. Welcome to the podcast, Jason.

Thank you so much for inviting us opportunity to join you today.

Jason Thielman has spent a large portion of his professional career in politics, but behind the scenes most of the times or practically all of the times. Although there have been a lot of press clippings last year about your work that you were doing.

You worked for Montana Senator Steve Daines as chief of staff. You had helped him get elected first into Congress and then into the Senate.

And then you were asked to help him work towards a senatorial majority, which you achieved with four net gains.

And now you are putting all that knowledge that you gained in the Senate machinery in the campaigning machinery into strategic consultancy with S2R Public Affairs.

How did you get into politics in the first place, Jason, because you have a background not unlike most people who study here, that you did a business bachelor's and that you worked mainly in marketing, what made you go into politics?

Well, I don't recall ever being more interested in anything else than I was in politics from my youngest of days.

I remember when Ronald Reagan was sworn in when I was 4 years old and I just always had a love and interest in passion and politics and public policy.

But why then not study political science?

The way I saw politics is that political results are achieved fundamentally through marketing and business.

So I thought it was better to have an understanding of marketing and finance if you wanted to both be successful in running for office or understanding how to win office and run marketing campaigns. And then if you wanted to be successful at governing, it was far more useful to have an understanding of finance and accounting and business.

And how did you get into your first campaign?

So my freshman teacher in high school in Montana we have what we call a citizen legislature.

So most of the people who serve in the small states, state legislature do something else for a living and every two years they come together for a 90 day period to pass the state's budget and evaluate various laws and so forth. So his day job was being a high school government teacher and debate coach.

Ashley was also my debate coach for that man in high school and his terms were four year terms. So as I was a freshman, he was coming up for election and he knew I had a passion and loved politics.

So he offered to pay me to go drop literature at every door in his state senate district in rural Montana, which I couldn't have been more excited to do. And I paged for him when he was a state legislature.

I did the same thing for him again when I was a senior in high school, when he was up for election again and later in life. After I graduated from college, he ran for statewide office as the secretary of state for the state of Montana.

I went through multiple pairs of tennis shoes that turned red. I had to grow all my fingernails out because I had red underneath them for two months. But by the end of the campaign, you know, it's a. It was a.

It's a low profile race. So you don't really hire professional staff. And 20 years ago was even less of a professional industry.

I found myself managing his campaign in the final months. And when he was elected, I had graduated from college at that point in time and was working in banking and marketing.

He asked me if I'd go be his chief of staff. I said yes. 20, 24, 24 years old, two years out of college. And I was excited to do it and wasn't what I'm expecting. I wasn't.

I didn't help him because I wanted a job. I helped him because he was my beloved history teacher and I believed in him and I was just excited to help.

You mentioned one interesting position that we don't really know in I think the entirety of Europe probably. You said you paged for him. Can you explain what that means?

So in the legislature they'll often have interns really. So they're just people who answer the phones and deliver messages. Back then people didn't have cell phones particularly.

So you sat in a room and constituents would call and you'd write down a note and you would hand it to the senator. And there'd also be a hall where all the lobbyists and others were at legislature. None of those people could get into the floor of the legislature.

But your job would be to go page elected official and say somebody wanted to talk to you. So you'd sit in the lobby hall and they'd grab you and you'd go page him. So hence the term page.

How much does a page earn?

It was minimum, whatever minimum wage was at the Time and he had to move to the state, you know, moved to the state capitol and he found, you know, found a nice elderly couple that put me up in their booth for a couple months and couldn't have been more excited to do it.

That's a very hands on trajectory. I mean painting signs, it was not glamorous, right? Yeah, but it sounds like something very physical.

Also there's a lot of hard work. You got to silk screen them and paint them and I mean it was dirty hard work.

And how did you make the transition then from helping someone in state politics to a race for a national office?

So that really gave me a platform being, even though it was a lower tier, I was still chief of staff to staff of 50 and a budget. And that appeared before the state legislature and he ran for governor at the end of that term, which is a more high profile, serious race.

He wasn't successful, but the people that we brought in to do television and polling were involved in races nationally. So after the race, even though it wasn't successful, I actually went back into banking and finance.

But I had a relationship with them and later on when I was living in a different state, working, like I said in banking and finance, they needed someone to manage a congressional race. They're like, oh, you know, that kid didn't seem like he fell out of a turn up truck. We can't find anybody else.

Maybe we hear he's down in Colorado, maybe he'd be open to going and doing this. And that was where I got started on the federal, national level.

And how different was that then? How much more professional, how much more glamorous was it perhaps in comparison what you had experienced beforehand?

Well, it was more glamorous than painting signs at that point in time I realized you could buy them instead of having to paint them. So that's, that part was more glamorous. And it was a, you know, it was a, you know, more, more money and it was a sitting member of Congress.

So you had a larger, larger staff, a more established organization. So it was certainly a more professional. But it wasn't, you know, it wasn't remarkably different.

Now I had the value of not wanting to get the education from a second kick of a mule. Right. So I, I knew a lot more than I did. I had no business running the governor's race that I ran.

When I ran Bob Brown was his name when I was his chief of staff and ran his governor's race unsuccessfully. When I was quite young, I had no business running that race.

I really didn't know what I was doing based on my prior experience, but having done the other, I was a much savvier operator, still very green and inexperienced, but much better perspective of what works.

How big was the electoral district that we're looking at here for this race?

So geographically it was pretty big. I think it was the 13th largest congressional district in America.

So it stretched the borders of the north south borders of Colorado, encompassed about 650, 700,000 voters with kind of a wide range of issue sets from rural to more suburban areas of, of Denver that were part of it. So it was, you know, it was a, about the.

And so the next race that you will manage would then be for who is now Senator Daines, also for Congress first. What does it entail to quote unquote, run a race? I mean, what did your job really entail in the day to day business?

So, you know, much of it is fundraising. So overseeing a fundraising operation is a huge aspect of what, of what you need to do in those roles.

Managing, managing and helping the candidate, especially in the instance of that race, right. He was, you know, really a first time candidate. So you had to help train and go through issue sets.

You had to work with a team of consultants from someone who was polling and helping you navigate and understand how the electorate would understand the issues and what were the right issues to emphasize and what were the right messages. You would, you know, you worked and managed a marketing, a TV vendor, you had a direct mail vendor, you had a fundraising mail vendor.

So you had a team of consultants and then you had a team of people that worked directly, directly for the campaign. So a lot of it, really the west way I think of what does it mean to run a campaign like that?

Somebody asked you to open up a small gas station and they said you got to go raise the money, you've got to make all of your profit to recoup your investment. But that gas station is really going to be only open for one day.

So you're going to spend the next year or two years putting everything together to make sure you have the, the gas station that wins the majority of the market plurality of the market share in town on this given day. So that's really what it is. It's a startup business is what it is.

To what extent did you get involved into policy, actually?

Well, a lot of people love the idea of volunteering getting involved in campaigns because they want to write these thoughtful policy papers. And candidly, campaigns don't involve a lot of in depth policy conversations.

They're more about larger trends and larger overarching messaging that typically doesn't get down into as much detail as they say. The devil is in the details. Right?

So once you start breaking down into real specific polity remedies, there's, you know, the nature of it is these things, these problems are complex. So you're really actually, you know, this doesn't sound too great, but you're trying to avoid actually talking too much about detailed policy.

The time that Senator Daines spent as a Congressman was relatively short until he then already got into the race for the Senate. How different is a Senate race from a Congress race?

It's a massive difference.

In what ways?

So, you know, these data points are probably somewhat dated, but you probably, you know, the difference between an average House race in America is probably $4 million $5 million for a competitive House race, maybe $8 million. A competitive Senate race is a $200 million, $300 million effort in all states for a competitive one.

Oh, wow.

Right. Just a massive degree of scale of difference. So that's the most simple way to give you a measurement. But it goes so much beyond that.

The level of attention from press, from media, the, the scrutiny that's involved is exponentially different. A lot of people have a difficult time who ran a race for Congress, for example, they might then run for the Senate.

They oftentimes are surprised at how different the expectations and the scrutiny is in the race for Senate compared to what they viewed as a competitive or very similarly similar exercise in running for a Congressional office.

To what extent does the national party get involved, if at all?

It really, it varies. Right. So the national party shouldn't be considered to be a monolithic entity with one mothership or one mind.

That's a very big difference, actually from most European parties.

Yes.

Not that they are monolithic, but they tend to be more on the monolithic.

Side than in the US So in the US the party and races operate more sort of under a franchise model with a lot of decentralized control and much less centralized control.

And I think that's even more true with the Republican Party than it is the Democrat party, although certainly probably in comparison to Europe, much different in that regard.

So the national party tends to be most important as it relates to drawing significant resources into the race, either by the party directly or its ability to convene and credential candidates in races with the most significant. With the most significant donors. But it varies, right. When chairman.

When Senator Daines was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and I was executive director, the national party apparatus for Republican Senate races took a very aggressive, a non traditionally aggressive stance in the involvement and the involvement each one of these races and candidates.

What does that mean, aggressive involvement in that case?

But the reason they didn't was that they ended up with candidates coming out of very bruising inner party battles. So either the.

Oh, whoa.

Democrats for the.

That's a fraction. Yeah. I mean, it's still humongous perspective of.

Yeah, yeah. European from European elections. And they. And. And really anything anyone can find.

How competitive were the races for Senator Daines that you were part of? We all have an image of Montana in our minds.

I think it was now greatly shaped by the TV show Yellowstone, where we imagine a rather rugged landscape with a people that is also a bit more rug but hearty. So how hard can it be to win there as a Republican?

So two facts there. First is there have only been three Republicans ever. Remember, each state in the United States has two U.S. senators.

Why was it such a blue state?

So much of, you know, populists used to be Democrats once upon a time, and Montana was a populist libertarian state. The farmers and the mining interests and the unions all of you know, were more traditionally Democrat constituencies.

So Montana, you know, on the local level was Democrat.

Oh wow.

His reelection was very competitive.

Once elected, it's time to legislate and you were part of that team as well. Your last position was as chief of staff. What does that mean to work behind the scenes in the Senate? What were your jobs?

How big is the team of a Sen. Senator who is working on the team of a senator? Take us behind the scenes.

So the average senator has a staff of 40 to 50 people. 40 to 50, yeah, that's their some of those.

Now a lot of parliamentarians in Europe being extremely jealous.

Well you got to manage them so maybe they should be less jealous. But I'm sure that does seem like a luxury. So half of those are, you know roughly in each center might choose to organize their office differently.

Half of them are back in the in the state providing services and being accessible to the constituency and the other half are back in the D.C. office. Some of them are support staff, most are legislative or communication staff.

So the people whose job it is to be the in depth policy experts helping draft legislation, helping interpret legislation, helping prepare, prepare the Senator for hearings and for meetings and putting together the coalitions to help them successfully implement legislation. The job of the chief of staff is to oversee that process.

Most people, you know, the chief is, you know again different senators give different levels of authority and trust to their chiefs of staff.

Senator Daines and I went back from the very beginning so I have, you know, enjoyed a great deal of trust and confidence that I could execute what he wanted done.

So mayence, you know I did most of the hiring, the managing of staff, reviewed most of you know, most comments that would go out under his name, most releases speeches and do the initial evaluation of how he would likely fall down on any piece of legislation.

So there's a lot of managing of external constituencies in that part of that ultimately feeds into your reelection, but it's also just dealing with a lot of the key people, both in the state and nationally, who are looking to achieve something through the center and understanding how to balance, understanding what pieces of information need to flow to him and what decisions he needs to be part of and what decisions you and the staff can manage so you can help him keep focused on his larger objectives.

So you're kind of gatekeeper also.

Yeah, huge part of it is certainly being gatekeeper. Right. So a chief of staff has got a job managing down, but then they also have a huge job of managing up.

And to what extent do you now get more involved in policy now as chief of staff?

Do you get, you've already said that you're looking essentially at all speeches that he's giving, looking at all communities, communications from the office, etc. So to what extent does that have a policy component?

Well, I mean, you're, you're pretty, you're also involved in looking at every piece of legislation he might, might be sponsoring, looking at what questions and, and objectives he's going to be pushing, an individual hearing. So it's a, you know, it's a pretty massive, it's a pretty massive job.

Now fortunately, I would say one of my greatest strengths that was really instilled in me by the center, as somebody who came from the private sector, is he trained me to be really good at hiring a team and building a team.

So in my final years as a chief of staff, I did a lot less of those things because we had a loyal staff, a well trained staff that had the judgment and the tact and the wisdom to really do most of those things with nominal oversight and review by someone like me or the senator.

What amount of time would you spend in the home state and what amount of time in D.C. so most of.

My time was in D.C. but I'd get back to the home state probably close to every month.

And then when we were in election cycle, I would really move back to the state for a period, usually six months or eight months preceding the election.

That's a long time.

Ask my wife.

You've also mentioned that you would anyway maintain an office back in Montana during the entire time. Have I think you said 20 staff members back there who would, as you phrased it, provide services to the constituents.

Now we are in a system where in very few countries parliamentarians would have an office that would be accessible to constituents, et cetera. So what kind of services would you provide? Is it just information that you would have an open Ear to people's worries. What are we talking about?

It's all those things and more. So they usually have multiple offices spread across the state with an effort to make sure you're as accessible to constituents as possible.

So one of the. It's not what people necessarily perceive as the sexiest part of job, but often is one of the most rewarding and meaningful parts of the job.

People often, this might be a surprise, but find government not responsive to their problems or concerns or issues.

So it might be a veteran who earned a medal that was never presented or given to them for their service, maybe decades ago, and it got caught in the military bureaucracy. It might be a veteran who is eligible for disability payments or a spouse of a deceased veteran.

And for some reason, the bureaucracy is not managing the paperwork correctly.

So might be somebody trying to get a passport out of a country or, you know, I once negotiated the release of a US Citizen who is deaf and who got stuck in a rural Chinese prison.

Oh, my.

So there are things like that. Also, you know, once had a parent whose son died in China and they couldn't get the. They couldn't get the body out.

Oh, God.

So there are a range of these issues, but oftentimes it's someone having a challenge with government, sometimes a foreign government, usually. Usually the U.S. government. And the bureaucracy simply is not being responsive to providing the services that they're supposed to.

So they'll go to their senator and their senator will shake up the bureaucracy and make sure that they're taken care of and given the services that they're entitled to as a citizen. So that's a huge part of it. A lot of it, too, is going out the center. You know, people want the Senate to hear from the center.

They want to get updates on what's going on in government, how legislative policies are going to impact them.

So since the center can't cover all of these events and functions, staff will go and give remarks and answer questions on their behalf and then take their concerns back to D.C.

saying, I visited with this particular company or this particular individual, and they have these concerns over this potential tax policy that you may not have appreciated or realized would impact them in this way. So we want to make sure you understand this.

Okay. Really interesting. That's different from the job profile of our parliamentarians, but they also do not have 50 people in their staff.

When you're in D.C. to what extent does the staff of a Republican senator at all interact with the other side?

To what extent would you exchange viewpoints, discuss matters with staff of Democratic senators a great deal.

So the nature of the checks and balances system in the government of the United States, this wasn't in the Constitution, but it's how the Senate developed and it's certainly in the spirit of what the founding fathers in the United States have in mind with the Senate of the Senate being the body that would react more thoughtfully, show more discernment and process in making decisions and passing policy is unless you have a super majority, you can't, with the exception of a few pieces of what you would refer to as privileged legislation, tax cuts would fall under this description. You can't do so without 60 votes out of the 100.

So most legislation, if you're going to be successful, there's been very few times in history that when Republicans have never had 60 votes in the US Senate and Democrats have only had it on it's filibuster. Right. So it's enough votes to overcome the filibuster so you could advance to a vote of legislation.

Not to get too drawn out in process, but Democrats have had sufficient votes not to need Republicans to pass legislation, including appropriations, only three times in history. Once during fdr, once during LBJ and the other time during Obama.

So this of course is when Social Security was passed, is when LBJ's Great Society in Medicare and Medicaid were created, in Obama, when Obamacare, the quasi nationalization of US Health care.

So when you've had these massive partisan policy outcomes have only, you know, rarely can occur and under our system because to get anything through the US Senate, typically speaking, you have to have a Republican and Democrat. So very long way of answering your question.

If you want to successfully pass legislation, the first thing you do is you call a Democrat Senate office office.

You start negotiating and figuring out how do we work together to come to a compromise of introducing legislation that would then have a realistic chance of becoming law. Now that's not true in the House. If you're a Congressman in the U.S.

house of Representatives, you're going to have, unless you're in the minority party, you're rarely going to have much purpose or need of interacting or working with somebody on the other party. On the Senate side, you can't pass most pieces of legislation unless you are talking and actively engaging with somebody of the opposite party.

So you would say those who say that there is so much gridlock and very little conversations across the aisle are just not seeing what is actually happening.

Well, I would say there's a lot of gridlock. I think that's accurate part of that, frankly, is what our founding fathers say. Is that a feature or a bug in the United States?

It's intended to make it difficult to pass and build consensus around legislature, Although I think probably by most standards that's more so more true today than it has been through probably the most of the last century in American politics. But there's a great deal of conversation that goes on.

But it's increasingly difficult to build sufficient consensus that you can win enough votes from the other side to pass something, although it happens virtually probably every week, oftentimes on smaller lessons. Sexy, interesting issues.

But, you know, the first piece of legislation that passed, I think, in the first week, two weeks, was actually a piece of immigration policy, the Lincoln Riley act, you know, targeting illegal immigrants, creating violent crimes, passed with more than seven.

It took at least seven Democrats, I think 10 Democrats, maybe 15 Democrats crossed over to join Republicans in passing that piece of legislation, which was bipartisan.

So I said initially that you are in part responsible for the massive gain. Well, I would say they were a lot more substantial than we expected. In the last senatorial races in November, you had four net gains.

And when you joined us at the symposium a year ago, you were still saying that, well, you need at least one to be fine as long as you win the presidency. So you went beyond that.

Had politics, had campaigning changed substantially since your first race until you were really overlooking all senatorial races of the Republicans?

I'd say dramatically. Right. So someone who might want to loves running, which I do. I love running political campaigns. When I first started would be.

There certainly were some, but it would be difficult to make a living running campaigns and doing that as your primary work.

They've become so much larger, so much more expensive, so much more sophisticated operations that the industry, I suppose, of political campaigns and political work has expanded dramatically from those early years.

To what extent were you collaborating with the presidential campaign?

I mean, almost daily.

So, you know, the single most important aspect of having a successful outcome in our Senate races was our ability to coordinate and collaborate with the President and his campaign team. So it was necessary in solving the primary issue that I referenced earlier.

And that more than any other factor was responsible for our ability to be successful and that again, it was just very important that we had a great working relationship with the President to solve those problems.

Political scientists claim in the data also observed that there has been a great degree of nationalization of American politics, so that in a lot of states you could essentially run on the same issues that there aren't that many local regional issues that are driving voters, et cetera.

Is that also something you've observed or do you still see that it means something else to run as a senator in Montana versus running in Idaho or Florida?

There certainly is differentiation that occurs more and further.

While the race and the issues are certainly very nationalized, the quality of the candidate matters because you know, you're always going to have a candidate for president under almost every circumstance is going to receive more votes than your candidate for other for Senate office or congressional office on that, on that same ballot. Much of that is people just, they care about who's president, they care less about the other.

So they simply, you know, what we call an undervote, they simply don't vote on it. But you still have sufficient crossover vote that you can change the outcome of these elections. In addition, you have third party spoilers, right?

So they might vote for the Republican or Democrat candidate for president. They might not like the Senate candidate. So then they'll vote for a Green Party or a Libertarian Party, you know, none of whom will prevail.

But when you're having these elections decided by such narrow margins, 20,000 people, you know, out of 3 or 3 million votes can easily change the outcome of one of these lower ballot races.

We've talked about this on the stage, but I'd still like to take this conversation also onto the podcast, namely, what made you win bigger than you expected last year? Because as said in spring, you were still saying, well, we need at least one win. We were looking at the polling number. A lot of races look tight.

The presidential race looked very tight.

So to what extent were you in the end, just, just lucky and to what extent were you just on point with regards to what really mattered to your voters?

Well, I think anyone with any degree of situational and self awareness has to appreciate at the aftermath of an election. There always is involved an important element of timing.

So, you know, certainly to a degree, I would say, you know, my timing was like that bird without a beak, impeccable to be in the, in the situation that we were in. But we made a lot of our own luck as well.

Most importantly was making sure that we had these Candidates that wouldn't be so flawed or so broke or damaged that they would have serious underperformance of how the national ticket was likely to resolve itself in many of these states. So again, that was probably one of the most critical elements.

And then from zooming out from a more macro picture of what we talked about, that we talked about earlier in the seminar today, is there is some meaningful change in movement and realignment of the political parties in the United States. So still very closely decided elections.

I imagine they'll be very closely decided elections for some time to come that will narrowly be decided between one party or the other.

But what is very significant is where this realignment is occurring and the overlay of that alignment, especially in our Senate races and also on the path to 270 electoral votes.

So you're seeing working class voters across racial lines voting and higher levels for Republicans than they ever have previously and really ever previously. Reagan duplicated something similar to this in his two electoral victories. That would be the closest modern comparison.

Now Democrats are increasing their performance with those in the top 20%. So you almost see an exact flip here.

Those earning in the top 20% of income earners and top 20% of educational obtainment have become dramatically more Democrat in their voting behavior, whereas those in the bottom 20% have become dramatically more Republican in their voting behavior. What becomes important to that is where these people live.

So people, the Democrats are continuing to do better on the coast where you have people more likely to earn more and more likely to have higher educational attainment.

And Republicans are now doing better in what we call the Rust Belt states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and increasing their margins also in states like Montana, Ohio, West Virginia, all of whom were states that not too long ago actually were more reliably Democrat states. Both West Virginia and Montana for most of the 21st century and or 20th century rather, were reliably hard blue Democrat states.

So you've seen a real change in voters in those groups move and that really has a change in the electoral landscape of where you're going to win and lose and how you're going to win and lose. So Democrats always call these states the blue wall states.

Crumbled totally.

And a lot of people are looking at the Democratic Party and are doubtful whether it can really rebuild not, not a blue wall, but really an electoral success. In four years you have managed Republican races and overseen them and brought, as goes the name of your company strategy to results.

Thank you for saying that again.

Well, I'm not sponsored by you, but maybe we can talk about that later.

We still need a business model for this podcast, but if you were to advise the Democratic Party, who do you think would make a good presidential candidate for them? Because everyone asks me, who can they send into the presidential race in four years? So who would you put your money on?

I would put my money on the individual that can try to reconnect and re emphasize their connection with the working class. Working class voter. So part of this is a larger branding issue, but when you have a nominee, they're able to really redefine the brand of the party.

So I don't know who I would specifically name. I think they have a challenge.

If you look at some of the obvious frontrunners, you know, Governor Newsom from California, you know, very wealthy and slick hair and sort of the poster child for kind of the new Democrat Party, that appeals to the top 20%, but not so much to the bottom 20%.

Well, he's trying to be a Bro Park Costa now, so maybe that might change things. But if you're looking at other people that might have less of these barriers, like Gretchen Whitmer, would you put your money on someone like that?

You know, I, I wouldn't, but that's probably closer than Gavin Newsom in that regard. I think a governor.

I can't think of somebody they have in the Senate that makes a good representation of an ability to connect with the working class voter.

I think probably more likely they're going to find success in one of their governors who've had to rebrand their politics to allow them to be successful in a state.

Maybe we have someone to talk about next year when you're coming again, hopefully.

I hope so. It's like a privilege to come last year and again this year.

So maybe we have more names than on the table. Because the problem is really, when you're looking at polls, who are people really identifying with?

The Democratic Party, you have as top names Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders. And you're like, that's not gonna make a national majority.

No, I don't think so. And those polls right now, they're just, those are the names they've heard. They're kind of really meaningless noise at this stage of the game.

Thank you so much, Jason, for taking us behind the scenes of successful campaigns as well as behind the scenes of the same.

I could do so with unsuccessful ones too. I'm glad you didn't go into that.

That might be the next edition. How to lose.

I lost before I won. Yeah.

Now, to conclude, I'm often asked by people, what should we listen, watch or read to get a better understanding of American politics? Now you, as someone who has done politics as a living, what are your go to sources?

So I think it's important to have as many diverse sources as possible.

So I think in understanding the current party in power, publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times are going to ill equip you for giving a good perspective of American politics or how domestic politics are perceived within the United States. Although I read all three. We usually read all three of those newspapers every day.

But additionally, I think it's really important actually to monitor and look at some of the social media personalities who are popular with both constituencies on the right and the left to get sort of an unfiltered perspective of what they have to say. Obviously, Fox News is still the most dominant, dominant source of news within the United States, although less so than it used to be.

But the business of news now, for better or worse, has been partially democratized, which I would say is for better and less filtered, less editorial control or judgment. But the other piece of that is that everyone now is playing for an audience.

So that doesn't help you with sponsorships because you're just trying to provide content.

No, that was foreign.

Thoughtful, right? Yeah.

Our government wouldn't appreciate kind of shenanigan. But you said social media personality. So who are your favorite podcasters?

You know, Joe Rogan.

I don't know if these are my favorite or not, but these are people that I think are, you know, offer important voices to listen to to have a better understanding of, of American politics.

But people like Joe Rogan's podcast, Alex Brushewicz, who's credited with having really aligned the presidential campaign around doing more podcasts and engaging and turning the youth vote to a Republican vote in the most recent election. People like that, I think are important to get a voice and a perspective. Now, I'm not suggesting these people are unbiased, of course they're.

I think the reality is now is everyone's biased.

So what you need to do is listen to as many biased people as you can from across the various spectrum so you can find you can make your own judgment and determination over which arguments make sense.

That's a fantastic note to close on. Thank you so much, Jason, for your insights and I hope to have you back here again. Me too would be great. And thank you to all our listeners.

We hope to have you back again as well. And with that I wish you ufieda losse views from the Sister Republic. A University of St. Gallen podcast by Claudia Pruvilla.