A new political action committee has launched in Arizona that aims to be for the left what Turning Point USA is on the right.
Unity Rising USA started after last year’s election; its founder says the motto is: ‘Working for working Arizonans."
Jacob George, a political science major at Arizona State University, says while he doesn’t blame former Vice President Kamala Harris for the results of the presidential election, he does think Democrats generally need to do more — including listening to understand, rather than just to respond.
George joined The Show to talk more about Unity Rising USA, starting with how he’s trying to deal with some of those issues.
Full conversation
JACOB GEORGE: I think it's very simple, and I think you're already seeing certain political leaders doing it. For example, you got Tim Waltz going out to these rural side, middle of nowhere, in the country and speaking to them, where Republicans aren't doing that, where we have Republicans bowing out of town halls. That's where we should step in and start doing it.
But also, you have Bernie Sanders going around the country doing his oligarchy tour. So different things like that is the way to go, and I think they have the right idea. And even you may not like who he brings on his podcast, but Gavin Newsom, he's bringing in Republicans and now they're listening to him. And so I think that is the way to do it if we have to understand what people are saying, and not just to respond.
For example, like we talked about the economy in the last election as just, it's great by every metric, but we didn't really understand what people were actually saying. We didn't really understand that their food prices were going up. We don't understand how their gas prices are going up or the cost of living is going up.
MARK BRODIE: Well, this is, I think, a criticism that Democrats have gotten a lot since the election. Which is, as you referenced, they were saying, “Oh, the economy's great. Look, the economy's great.” And not really understanding that people weren't feeling the economy, the people’s experience in the economy was, as you say, gas prices are up, inflation, food prices are up, like wages are not up as much as they could be.
So I guess like what is Unity Rising USA's role in trying to have those kinds of conversations and maybe get Democrats in front of voters who wouldn't normally hear from them, maybe try to raise the public perception of the Democratic Party? Which right now does not seem all that great.
GEORGE: Right. I'm sure you saw the poll that people aren't happy with the Democratic Party, and people want to be understood, they want to be heard. And I think that's where we aren't doing anything. They want somebody that's going to fight back for them. And I feel like we're a leadership party right now. I don't know who's supposed to be taking on this next election. I don't know. I think that's how most people feel.
And so, for Unity's role, I think it's simple. It's that we need to, one, we can't be afraid to be Democrats. We have to stand up. We have to speak out, and we have to throw some punches. We can no longer be this nice guy. If we want to start winning, we have to be on the offensive side and not the defensive side. And so I think our mission right now is to engage in the working party, but also kind of focus on the youth vote. We're seeing a huge shift in the youth vote going towards Republicans. And Turning Point is an example of an org that's really been doing great.
BRODIE: So let's talk about Turning Point USA, which of course is also based here in Arizona, as you are. Do you see yourself as sort of the left's version of that?
GEORGE: I mean we would like to be. It's no question that Turning Point has a huge ground game, and they have millions and millions of dollars. So yeah, we would love to counter Turning Point.
BRODIE: I want to ask you about something that you said just a moment ago, which is that you have to not be afraid to throw some punches. And, of course, that sort of harkens back to Michelle Obama's famous line, “When they go low, we go high.” It sounds like you're ready to do away with that and maybe hit back a little more. How do you do that? Like how do you try to do that in an effective way?
GEORGE: I mean, look, even Michelle Obama I think is ready to go low. I think she's given up on that herself, and that is the question — how do you do it in an effective way that you're not turning off people, but you're also giving your movement more power? And I think the way we do that is we use the same tactics they've been using.
You can look at least on like for TikTok or social media right now, we're seeing a lot of, you might have seen it like the MAGA makeup movement where all these people are pretending to do their makeup like MAGA woman, and it's not the prettiest thing, but there's stuff like that. I think that is very effective, at least in garnering the youth vote, but even when I go out to these legislative district meetings, where it's more older people, they're ready for the fight back, too. They are wanting to hear somebody fighting for them.
BRODIE: Is there a balance to be struck between some of the fighting back and maybe the zingers that candidates or others sort of on the left can use versus being for something? Because that's another criticism that Democrats have gotten over the past couple of cycles, which is, “Yes, it's fine to be against Donald Trump. It's OK to be against sort of what MAGA stands for,” but Democrats also have to be for something. Like what are you going to do if we elect you into office.
GEORGE: Exactly, we can no longer be the party that runs on “we aren't Trump.” We have to have our policies and we have to run on those policies, and they have to be effective policies. And I think the most effective policy is, as Democrats, we are more focused on, I would say social issues. And those aren't winning issues.
So if we want to talk about these social issues, we have to put an economic spin on them. For example, for climate change, instead of running on climate change is bad for the environment or, yada yada yada, we need to say, “Hey, have you noticed your home insurance premiums going up? That's because of climate change.”
When we talk about immigration, we need to talk about how immigrants are vital to the economy and how immigrants pay taxes, they keep our food prices down. So stuff like that, I think is how we're going to win back the working class and the working people.
BRODIE: So you mentioned that ideally you would like Unity Rising USA to sort of be the left's answer to Turning Point. How do you make that happen? You mentioned how much money Turning Point has and the kind of support it has on the right, in the Republican base and the events they put on and the ground game they have. What's the strategy for getting you to where that is?
GEORGE: I think the strategy is it needs to be simple. We have to have simple, effective messaging. But also there's so many different groups out there for the left side. We need to come together, and we need to have a vision and a mission and we need to run on that.
I think the way forward for us is one, yeah, we're going to have to raise a lot of money to combat them, but also take some of the things that they are doing good. We're going to be launching our high school chapters soon, where students can go in and just start a high school chapter in their school. Different stuff like that and just using what they've been using has been effective and putting our own spin on it.
