There’s a thoughtful interview on the New York Times web site … ‘The Interview’ Feb 15, 2025, Lulu Garcia-Navarro in conversation with Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona …
Senator Gallego:
“The base Democratic voter wants to be rich. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And so our job is to expose when there are abuses by, quote-unquote, the rich, the wealthy, the powerful. Then that’s how we get those people that want to aspire to that to vote for Democrats.”
Lulu Garcia-Navarro:
“So Elon Musk, Donald Trump, are these the people who have actually figured out how to connect with the working class?”
Senator Gallego:
“Yes. Yeah. We just had an election that proved that. I mean — ”
Lulu Garcia-Navarro:
“Why?”
Senator Gallego:
“Well, I think because they both are two things that I think a lot of Democratic politicians are. No. 1, they actually understand, quote-unquote, the consumer. Right? And because they are engaged in, every day, one way or the other, trying to talk to the consumer. And in this case, it’s the voter, right?”
Lulu Garcia-Navarro:
“That’s so interesting. They’re salesmen, essentially.”
Senator Gallego:
“Yeah, exactly.”
Lulu Garcia-Navarro
“And they understand who the client is.”
Senator Gallego:
“Mm-hmm. The client’s the voter. And they don’t care. By the way, that’s the other thing that’s — they don’t care how they get the sale done. Right? This is why you saw during the campaign, Trump said, You know what? No tax on tips. We’re not going to tax your security, all this kind of stuff. And on the other side, people were like, Well, that’s really going to do something and do an imbalance to the budget deficit. What did Donald Trump care? He just wanted to win, right? What does Elon Musk want to do? He just wants to win, right? He knows where the voter is, and he’ll get there however he can get there. But they’re closer to the ground, to where the base voter is, than to some of us Democrats.”