SAM DINGMAN: Late last year, I spoke to a political organizer named Zee Cohen-Sanchez, who was pitching her organization, National Ground Game, as the “Turning Point of the Left.”
At the time, Cohen-Sanchez offered her theory of the case for how Democrats should reclaim their political influence. To whit: avoid talking about hot-button issues, and focus on affordability.
But that, of course, is just one idea, and since that conversation, I’ve been interested in how others on the left are attempting to meet the moment.
And to that end, I recently sat down with Abigail Jackson, the digital director at Progress Arizona, and the host of the Nothing Left Unsaid podcast. Nothing Left Unsaid is entering its second season, which launches this week, and I wanted to get Jackson’s take on why the project feels like the right way to galvanize progressive energy.
We began by talking about Jackson's childhood in Sierra Vista. She told me that the major military and Border Patrol presence there pushed her politics to the left from an early age. She felt that migrants were being routinely abused by authorities, and, among other things, she wondered why government resources weren’t being funneled into the public education system instead.
Jackson was vocal about all this back in high school. She stuck to her beliefs, she told me, even though it didn’t exactly make her popular.
ABIGAIL JACKSON: I definitely had some very specific labels that have had been thrown on me, particularly during high school, as, like, "the feminist." And you can insert, you know, whatever word of choice after that.
DINGMAN: Words we can't say on public radio, but that you could say on the podcast.
JACKSON: Right, exactly. Which. So, yeah, it was definitely not cool. I was very much felt kind of alone there in a lot of my thinking.
DINGMAN: Well, one of the reasons I'm interested in this is that things obviously have evolved a bit since President [Donald] Trump took office for the second time. But there was so much conversation shortly after he was elected and leading up to the inauguration in the early kind of days of his second term, about how "uncool" being on the left politically had become.
And I wonder what you made of that moment. Was that familiar?
JACKSON: Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, one thing that the right does is they've got kind of like a whole culture behind their side. ... To them, it's very cool to be, you know, dunking on libs and whatever. And we need to show that it's actually cool to have values. It's actually cool to stand up for people.
These are the things that make us strong and make our community strong. And actually the ones that are on the right are the weak ones.
DINGMAN: Let's talk a little bit about how you're doing that in podcast form. What have you made of the conversation around podcasts and the role they have come to play politically over the last few years?
Because I remember in 2016, after Trump was elected the first time, podcasting was very much a bastion of the left. It was very much a place for people to go seek out what they viewed as sanity. And it seems like that has shifted.
JACKSON: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that on the right, you know, groups like Turning Point or Joe Rogan, they've been very successful at bringing their ideas into the mainstream. We can see now all these policies that they have talked about for so long on their podcasts, like taking away health care funding to triple ICE's budget, attacking trans kids, things like that.
They've really used these mediums like podcasts and brought those to people. I definitely saw an opportunity to talk about things a little more naturally in a less scripted talking-point way. I think people want to be entertained. That's obvious. And pop culture is something that we do all day, all the time. Politics is something that some people do some of the time, but these political decisions affect us on the day to day. And it's about making those connections between those things in a way that kind of hooks people and entertains them.
DINGMAN: So talk about how you're approaching that challenge on Nothing Left Unsaid.
JACKSON: You know, we, we talk a lot about politics on Nothing Left Unsaid. But we also talk about culture, we talk about food, we talk about music, we talk about reality TV. And we try to make those connections to what is going on in politics.
So, you know, when we're talking about, like, "Oh, this is my favorite coffee shop." Well, it's also important to mention, like, why is coffee so expensive right now? Trump's tariffs have something to do with that.
DINGMAN: It feels, Abigail, like you're gesturing at a sort of big idea here, which is that the prescription for the left to communicate with young people in a way that the right has done successfully is to talk to them like people rather than like voters.
JACKSON: Exactly. I mean, people are tired of politics, and understandably so. But I think one example of the, the way that the right is doing this, for example, is the Make America Healthy Again movement. We've got all these "lifestyle" — you can't see my quotation mark, my quotes.
DINGMAN: Yes, you're doing scare quotes with your fingers.
JACKSON: But these lifestyle influencers that are seemingly innocuous and they're talking about how to make this recipe or whatever. But really they're delivering subliminal political messaging, and at times it's not so subliminal. But, yeah, talking to people like they're people, like being very real about the frustration and the anger that people are feeling. And not being afraid to name things for what they are.
DINGMAN: But how do you think about the challenge of doing that when it comes to something like, you brought up trans rights. These are things that you also are, you know, unabashedly in favor of in the podcast itself.
JACKSON: I think we're never going to beat the right by pretending to be like the right light and shying away from talking about those things.
... They're gonna say what they want and they're going to say unapologetically. The last thing that we should do is cede any ground on those topics. We will literally never win by being the Republicans but a little better. We need to offer something completely different. And that is really what everyday people want.
DINGMAN: I mean, do you think of the mission you have on the podcast as like using the tactics of the right against their own ideology?
JACKSON: I mean, being reasonable has — "reasonable" — hasn't really gotten us anywhere. Democrats have been doing the same thing for the last few decades, and we are in the second year of Trump's second term.
His regime is kidnapping 5-year-olds from their driveways. They're murdering, you know, nurses and moms in front of our faces, you know. And that's just what they're doing on camera in broad daylight. So the time to kind of dance around these issues is not here. And that's not what people want. People are out in the streets increasing every single day, standing up against these policies.
Democrats kind of hiding behind the same stuff that we have been is not working. And that's why we're here. And we need to be bold, and we can't apologize for that. And definitely the right doesn't, what they are doing is not reasonable. Like, let's be clear.
DINGMAN: Last question for you. We were talking a little bit ago about this idea of you having personal experience with being a progressive, not necessarily being cool. There were times in recent history where in terms of things like, you know, internet clout and stuff like that, it was cool. Now, we've been going through this period where, you know, at least in the aggregate perception of people in power being woke is "not cool."
We hear people in power in Democratic establishment circles saying things like, "We need to make being a Democrat cool again." Do you agree with that?
JACKSON: I mean, I think caring about people and standing up for people is always cool and has always been cool. What we have on the right is a bunch of weak bullies, essentially. And they, you know, they're like the mean kids on the playground, in the lunchroom. And those people were never cool either.
So, it's about showcasing the power that we have when we do show up for people that when we are in community. The feelings of belonging and togetherness that you get when you show up in these spaces that are centered around that is so unlike — I mean, I don't spend a lot of time in right wing circles/ But from what I can see, is so unlike their, you know, perception of cool, which feels honestly so empty, so soulless.
And to the Democrats that are pushing that narrative, too, I say, like, grow a backbone. I don't know — if that's what you're more worried about when you're in elected office, then I think maybe, like, that's not the most important thing.
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