How DSA progressives and centrist Dems can both win (with Sen. Adam Schiff)

**Dasha Burns** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:02)
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**Adam Schiff** (0:15)
We're gonna have to work to win that trust back. We're gonna have to be proposing things that are bold. It is going to be completely inadequate to say, well, if you elect Democrats, we will take you back to the status quo before Donald Trump.

**Dasha Burns** (0:33)
Hello, hello, and welcome to The Conversation. I'm Dasha Burns. And every week on the show, I sit down with some of the most compelling and sometimes unexpected power players in Washington and beyond. And this week, we are beyond. I am coming to you from POLITICO's Sacramento Summit here in a hotel room right now. But I sat down earlier with California Senator Adam Schiff for a live taping of The Conversation. Now Schiff is exactly who I wanted to talk to about the duality of the Democratic Party going into the midterms. On the one hand, he serves California, one of the most progressive states in the nation. Case in point, California has a billionaire wealth tax on the ballot in November.
At the same time, Schiff himself comes from a pretty mainstream brand of the Democratic Party. So as the debate between progressive versus establishment Democrats plays out in the primaries, Schiff and I talked about which playbook he thinks will be more successful in the midterms and what it says about the direction of the Democratic Party, what a winning coalition looks like long term. If you're curious about those questions too, we'll have plenty more interviews you'd be interested in this election season. So make sure you're subscribed to the show. And now here's my conversation with Adam Schiff.
Senator Adam Schiff, thank you so much for joining the conversation live here in Sacramento.

**Adam Schiff** (1:53)
Great to be with you.

**Dasha Burns** (1:55)
California is actually my home state. I grew up in San Diego. My husband's from LA. We already had plenty of Los Angeles gossip backstage that we will not rehash here.
But I do want to talk to you about both California and California's place in the big picture for the Democratic Party, because there's kind of a lot going on for Democrats right now. We in Washington have been watching very closely some of these primaries. You had progressive Abdul El-Sayed just beat establishment-backed Democrat in Michigan. Dozens of DSA-backed candidates are winning primaries across the country. Today is election day and Wisconsin Democrats might nominate Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong for governor. Here in California, though, voters nominated the most establishment credentialed Democrat in a crowded governor's field. You'll hear from Javier Becerra in a moment here. San Francisco just handed its moderate mayor a clean sweep.
Is this one Democratic party right now? What's going on, Senator?

**Adam Schiff** (3:02)
It is one Democratic party, and I think if we want to be in the majority, we're going to have to be a big tent party.
I would much rather have that diverse in our party than have it outside the party. I don't think you can extrapolate too much from the results because they're all over the map. A mainstream, moderate, all over the literally, mainstream, moderate candidate, just one in Hawaii, others one in Iowa and New Jersey and Virginia, and then you had very progressive and DSA candidates went elsewhere. Very hard to generalize except this. I think the common denominator is people are, for a very good reason, deeply dissatisfied with the status quo, and they're looking for candidates of middle, left, right, that were willing to challenge the status quo, that have bold ideas for how to move the country forward, for addressing what I think is the central challenge facing the country, and that is that people are working hard and they still can't get by.
And candidates that have an answer to what needs to be done about that are doing very well. Those that don't or seem to be incrementalist in nature are not doing very well. And to me, that is really the common denominator.

**Dasha Burns** (4:18)
Well, it's interesting to have this conversation in California because we've seen this insurgent left rise in swing states, like Michigan and Wisconsin, of course, New York, which is a blue state. But in California, which I think for a lot of folks, both that live here and that look from the outside in, is such a bastion of progressivism. And yet, in this moment where there's this debate and this turn to the left among parts of the party, that hasn't really happened here. The bluest state in the country seems actually to be running kind of in the opposite direction of some of the country's most covered progressive breakthroughs. Do you think that Democratic voters here have been resistant to that for some reason? And why do you think that is?