How can Democrats persuade more voters to like them?

**Justin Webb** (0:00)
What's the future of the American left? What happens when Donald Trump departs the stage? There's a lot of discussion about it, and we frequently talk about it on the podcast. But I'm going to talk about it now with someone who really has thought it through and knows his stuff on this, partly because he was a member of the Obama administration. He knows how Democrats can win and can govern.
But also, he thinks a lot about the future of the party and the way it's got to appeal to Americans. So, welcome to Americast with Ben Rhodes.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:33)
Americast. Americast from BBC News.

**Justin Webb** (0:36)
You hear that sound?

**Ronald Reagan** (0:38)
I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:41)
We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. This is a big cover-up and this administration is engaged in it.

**Justin Webb** (0:49)
This guy has Trump derangement syndrome.

**Barack Obama** (0:51)
I have four words for you.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:54)
Turn the volume up.

**Justin Webb** (1:01)
I'm delighted to say I'm now in a room with Ben Rhodes.
And it really makes a difference, doesn't it? Because I talked to you a dozen times down the line. You talk a lot to the British press, don't you? And you've done it for years. We should start off by saying then, it's a real pleasure to have you face to face.

**Ben Rhodes** (1:17)
In the flesh, not like upstairs in my closet so that my kids don't walk in.

**Justin Webb** (1:21)
Exactly. And we should then remind people why we talk to you so often. So under Obama, we're going back a bit now, but back in the Obama administration, I can remember just when Obama came to power and it was obvious that you were going to have a big role in the White House and you did have a role. And you had a very fancy title, didn't you? Though it allowed you to do various things. And I think that's going to be an important part of our conversation, but you were Deputy National Security Advisor? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So that focuses you on the White House under Obama. Since then, you've done a range of things. You speak a lot about the future of America. In other words, when you finished that job for Obama, you didn't go off and retire or go off and do other things and give up on the idea of America and American politics. That's important as well, isn't it?
And you've written this book called All We Say, which is a book essentially of speeches, but it's a bit more than that. And we're going to get to that as well. But really crucially as well, you're a podcaster.

**Ben Rhodes** (2:23)
I'm a podcaster.

**Justin Webb** (2:24)
And that really matters, doesn't it? Because you're still trying to make the case for the broad left in American life.

**Ben Rhodes** (2:30)
Yeah, no, it's interesting because I write books, I write for the New York Times, but the podcast, Pod Save the World, all these different things I'm doing in this era that we live in are all fundamentally interconnected because it's basically just about trying to kind of hold the line in very dark times, trying to create a kind of space that is a bit of a community for people to share ideas on the center to the left about foreign policy and politics, and also be trying to imagine what's on the other side of all this. And so you kind of have to show up everywhere, as you know, in politics and writing and podcasting, and that's what I've been doing.

**Justin Webb** (3:10)
Which is one of the things the Democrats didn't do that got wrong really in the run up to Donald Trump's second term, isn't it?

**Ben Rhodes** (3:16)
It is. I mean, we through the podcast company, I'm a pod say of the world, we're a pod say of America, we're kind of a lonely outpost of progressive media in the United States. The right wing built huge media platforms quite deliberately. The same way that we saw Victor Orban do in Hungary or Putin obviously captured the media.
There's a lack of an effort to understand that you need to create these media platforms and create these spaces for different voices, that you can't just count on your capacity to win the argument in legacy media. Also, the media we do is also mobilization. We have a dedicated effort to help people connect to and volunteer and contribute to political campaigns. It's trying to create an ecosystem that people who want to do something because of how they feel about what's happening in America, they can plug into it.