The freshman Congresswoman from Delaware has been a politics nerd from a young age. Sarah McBride had Joe Biden’s autograph on her wall growing up, interned in the Obama White House, and then was elected a Delaware State Senator. In that role, she helped pass the largest increase in the social safety net in the state’s history. McBride is known for being the first openly transgender member of Congress, and she says it’s been difficult, and lonely. But she’s in the fight to win — which she says is only possible by rejecting purity tests and welcoming everyone with good intentions to the Democratic coalition. “I think too often we find ourselves wanting the comfort of preaching to our own choir,” she says, “rather than exercising the courage to truly grow our congregation.”And before we hear from McBride, Lis Smith is here to discuss the lessons Democrats can learn from Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner and Virginia gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger about how to weather a crisis.
Want more from “The Blueprint”? On Sunday, November 2nd, Jen will lead a primetime weekend pre-election special, “The Blueprint with Jen Psaki: Decision 2025,” at 9 p.m. ET on MSNBC.
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NOTE: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Jen Psaki: Hi, everyone. It’s Jen Psaki. Thanks so much for tuning in to Episode 4 of “The Blueprint.” This is a place where we want to have discussions about the party out of power, the rising stars, the debates and people’s ideas too. You’re definitely going to want to stick around for my conversation with Congresswoman Sarah McBride. That’s coming up a little bit later. But, first, I’m going to bring back my old friend and political savant, Lis Smith. There’s a lot we’re going to dig into about what happened this week in politics.
Okay, Lis Smith, we are on Episode 4. A lot has happened since we recorded our first episode just a couple of weeks ago. I mean, in the world, because we’re in a bit of a hellscape, but also in the Maine Senate race. I mean, at that time, in our first episode, we talked a lot about the Maine Senate race and the oysterman, Graham Platner. Right? The oysterman.
Now, the oysterman is still very much in the race. He had about 800 people at a town hall on Monday night in Maine. But we’ve learned a lot about him, the things that he put on Reddit, and also his tattoo, over the last couple of weeks, including this, he referred to himself as a communist. He said, all police officers are bastards. He downplayed sexual assaults, and made comments suggesting Black people don’t leave tips. That was on Reddit.
Then a couple days later, we learned that he had a tattoo, a kind of a Nazi skull tattoo, known to us as a Totenkopf, something he has since gotten covered up, and he’s talked about this. He’s answered some questions about it. But that’s a lot to digest about a candidate, yet here’s the interesting thing, this is what I want to talk about it, which is really, do scandals matter? And has the bar been raised for whether or not scandals actually matter? Because in a poll that came out, in the period of time between the Reddit posts and the Nazi skull tattoo, that’s a lot, he was still up by 24 points in the race.
As I mentioned earlier, this week, when people did know about the Nazi skull tattoo, he had 800 people show up at a town hall in Maine. There were cars lined up. I think you and I were texting back and forth, photos, because it’s an interesting political story. So a couple years ago, this would’ve prompted not just from Democratic leaders who people don’t always care what they have to say, but from activists, from groups, calls for him to drop out. That has not happened. And it’s been interesting to me also what some Democratic leaders, and I don’t just mean Bernie Sanders, have had to say. But what struck you?
Lis Smith: Well, first of all, the thing about that poll is it wasn’t just against some random Democrat.
Jen Psaki: Yeah, a very good point.
Lis Smith: It’s against a two-term governor of Maine —
Jen Psaki: Who’s popular.
Lis Smith: — who is relatively popular.
Jen Psaki: Pretty popular. Yeah.
Lis Smith: Relatively popular. Take away the scandals, anything, that’s still completely remarkable, and it shows that there’s a lot of grassroots support for this guy. Now, will this stuff matter? I don’t know. In this post-scandal era of politics, we definitely see that on the Republican side. Donald Trump getting elected in 2016 and in 2024, with all the added baggage, right? January 6th, felony convictions, all of that. Georgia shows that Republicans have sort of moved past scandal.
Are Democrats moving that way? Maybe. We’re seeing some signs of it in the New York mayoral primary, which we’ve talked about a lot. And as you know, I previously advised Andrew Cuomo, but I’m now not a fan of his.
Jen Psaki: To put it mildly.
Lis Smith: But he got 44% of the vote, and he was endorsed by people like Jim Clyburn, Bill Clinton, a lot of members of the establishment, and you never would’ve seen that before. So, yeah, I think we could be moving into a post-scandal era for Democrats as well. But one thing that I find really fascinating is how some of these establishment figures have been responding to —
Jen Psaki: Yeah.
Lis Smith: — Platner’s scandal. I have a lot of thoughts, but before I want to give them, I want to play a video of Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy on CNN this past Sunday.
(BEGIN VT)
Chris Murphy: Do you still think Platner is impressive?
Jake Tapper: Yeah, I saw that reporting. I think I’m meeting with him this upcoming week, so I’m certainly interested to hear from him about it. I mean, anytime you see something like that, you scratch your head. But I’ve also listened to him talk about the difficult time that he went through in his life, and frankly, it’s not unfamiliar to a lot of soldiers who came back from service and had a very difficult time readjusting. So he sounds like a human being to me, a human being who made mistakes, recognizes them and is very open about it.
(END VT)
Jen Psaki: Here’s what I think is very good about Chris Murphy’s response, and Chris Murphy, in general, I mean, I was working at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee when he was elected in 2006, meaning he’s been in office for almost 20 years. So he’s been around a while in Washington, but he is not a person who operates like an ostrich in politics. He doesn’t keep his head in the sand and just pretend like nothing has changed in the electorate or in issues around the country. I think that is the real difference between somebody who can evolve in the political world and thrive in it, and somebody who’s just trying to survive and hold on to kind of their rules they think that politics plays by, because politics is about moments in time, right?
Lis Smith: Are you talking about Chuck Schumer there?
Jen Psaki: Well, I may be talking about him and a few others. Though I would say for you and I, you and I have been involved in politics for a long time, right? The rules of the game of how people got elected in 2002 when I did my first campaign, or 2004 when I did my first presidential, are very different than they are now. And politics is about seeing and hearing and listening to where the electorate is, which is why I think the Maine Senate race is so interesting.
Lis Smith: What’s interesting to me too is how these people have responded, and I think there are a couple things that inform it. In 2019, Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia had this massive blackface scandal, right? Every local Virginia Democrat, every national Democrat, including Pete Buttigieg, who I was working for during his presidential race called on Ralph Northam to resign. He didn’t resign, and he ended up leaving office as one of the most popular governors in the country. I think what that episode taught us is sometimes take a beat. Let’s see how the voters are absorbing this and if they care as much as the politicians do, because voters just don’t have as much time in their lives to get upset about optics and all of these things.
But the other thing that I think is at play here is that Democrats are learning the lessons from 2024 and 2016, where a lot of voters feel like, you know, in that presidential primary in 2016, the establishment put their thumb on the scale against Bernie Sanders. And in 2024, that we just had a coronation for Kamala Harris, without any sort of contest. They’re saying, give us a choice. Don’t put your finger on the scale. Let us judge the character, the quality of these candidates. I think that’s a healthy thing for the party, and that we should not be in the business of squashing grassroots candidates.
Jen Psaki: I agree. It’s also this like letting go of some rigidity, right?
Lis Smith: Right.
Jen Psaki: And a fear of making mistakes or what you wrote in your college essay —
Lis Smith: Right.
Jen Psaki: — that is going to go public. Back in the day, it may have taken you down. The Virginia races, especially the attorney general race is also kind of a current present example of this. When we talk next week, we’ll know what happened. But tell me what you think about that one.
Lis Smith: So that one is a lot. Okay. So Virginia Attorney General candidate, Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee, was discovered to have sent text messages in 2022, saying the former GOP House speaker in Virginia should be shot. Jones later suggested that the Speaker’s children should be shot in order for the Speaker to change his political views. That’s pretty tough for those text messages to come out at any time, but especially in the weeks after Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
Now, since then, the Republican candidate for attorney general, Jason Miyares, has spent $2.8 million this month on ads. The Republican candidate for governor, Winsome Earle-Sears has spent $2.1 million on ads related to the texts.
We’re seeing it show up in the polls. In September, Jones was leading Miyares, 51 to 45. Now, the same pollster finds Jones down 5 points and the race tied at 46 46. Meanwhile, the Democratic candidate for governor, Abigail Spanberger, continues to lead her opponent by double digits, 54 to 42. And here’s an ad from the Republican candidate for governor, Winsome Earle-Sears that I want you to see, Jen.
(BEGIN VT)
Reporter: We start with breaking news from the campaign trail.
Reporter: Jay Jones is under fire tonight.
Reporter: Jay Jones is under fire.
Reporter: Jay Jones is under fire after messages he sent in 2022, saying former Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert should be shot.
Unidentified Woman: I’m excited about this ticket.
(END VT)
Jen Psaki: Okay. I mean, first of all, I’m a Virginian. Winsome Earle-Sears is not going to become the governor of Virginia, and I will buy everybody in the bureau coffee next week if she becomes the governor of Virginia. But the thing about her strategy, which is so telling here, is, first, she had this kind of very anti-trans-focused strategy on the air, that I guess she took a page out of the playbook from 2024 and thought, this is how I’m going to defeat Abigail Spanberger. And then she abruptly shifted it to try to tie Abigail Spanberger to the attorney general candidate’s text messages from a few years ago.
I never thought I would quote Barbara Comstock, but here we are. Here we are in 2025, she said, what? You’re going to blame a woman for a guy’s problems? That’s what she basically said about it, and she’s right. It hasn’t worked. It doesn’t work. It’s not working. Spanberger is still far ahead in this race, which is quite telling.
But it strikes me, and I know we’ve been talking about kind of scandals and what they mean through the course of this conversation. But, to me, it’s not just that Trump has sort of numbed everyone to scandal, and I say that as somebody who lived through the tan suit debacle of whatever year that was when Barack Obama dared to wear a tan suit to the White House briefing room, and everybody lost their minds.
But beyond that, also, we’re in a moment where the world is scary out there, and everybody feels their rights are under threat for good reason, including our rights to participate in the process of voting and having our voices heard. And you know what, maybe who the attorney general is in Virginia, a state that is a very purple state matters more, matters that they’re not so leaning Trump more than what their text messages were a couple of years ago. We’ll see if that’s the case. We’ll see in a week. But, to me, that’s one of the telling things about this moment.
Lis Smith: Right. Voters have a choice. What team matters more to you? The texts or Trump? I think it’s going to be Trump. But I would just say, as someone who worked in Virginia, that’s one of those states that does care a lot about decorum and civility. So, good to see it hurting Jones a bit.
Jen Psaki: No doubt, it will hurt him. We will see what will happen. I don’t know what side I’m going to bet on this for. Next week, Lis, we’re going to be in New York together because I’ll be in New York for the election coverage the night before. So I’ll buy you coffee either way.
Lis Smith: Or maybe you could come to Phebe’s, the Bengals bar down by me. We could watch them beat the Bears, because if they don’t beat the Bears, I’m not sure if I’m going to show up for this podcast taping next week.
Jen Psaki: Oh, well, okay. Come on, Joe Flacco. We still root for you, even though you’re a geriatric in football terms, but we still root for you. All right, Lis Smith.
Lis Smith: Thanks, Jen.
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Jen Psaki: Next up is my conversation with Sarah McBride, a congresswoman from the state of Delaware and kind of my former coworker. Stick around.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
Jen Psaki: My guest this week is the freshman congressman from Delaware, Sarah McBride. She is, of course, the first trans member of Congress. But she also, 15 years ago, was an intern in the Obama White House, when I was the traveling press secretary for the Obama reelection campaign.
Now, since then, she has done a lot. She was a state Senator in Delaware. She helped pass the largest increase in social safety net for the people of Delaware, in the state Senate. She’s been a big advocate for healthcare, and she’s been very vocal about the impact of the government shutdown. But I wanted to talk to her also about the party, the Democratic Party, where it’s gone, what’s gone wrong, and most importantly, where it goes from here.
Okay, Congresswoman Sarah McBride, I am so happy to see you. I feel like we have an overlapping world because of your Delaware connection and background, which I have my own, through the Biden world, of course. But, also, tell me if I’m getting this right, I think in 2012, you were an intern in the White House?
Sarah McBride: Yes. I interned in the Obama White House in the Office of Public Engagement in the fall of 2012.
Jen Psaki: I consider myself a big political nerd, but I was not an early political nerd, I would say. You were a very early political nerd, and I say that in a loving way. I read this thing about you that former President Biden gave you a sheet from a briefing book and signed it for you. Tell me more about that, and do you still have it?
Sarah McBride: So, first of all, thank you for outing me. I was insufferable from a young age. I’ve broken the first rule of politics, which is to pretend like you just like woke up one morning and suddenly —
Jen Psaki: Were called to it?
Sarah McBride: — decided that politics was of interest to you and, you know, you stumbled into the Oval Office. No. I’ve been interested in politics for most of my life. I think, in many ways, just to put it in context for me, the interest in politics that I found as a young person was really rooted in this crisis of hope that I had as a young person, as I became aware of who I am and how so much of the world was not ready for me. I saw that politics was the place where you could make the most amount of change for the most number of people and the most number of ways possible. And I found hope in that story and that possibility. And so, I was hooked from a really young age.
Obviously, as you know, in Delaware, everyone is dated, made it, or related. You run into your elected officials at the grocery store or at a restaurant. One night, when I was 10 or 11, I was out at a pizza restaurant in Wilmington, and the giant of Delaware politics, Joe Biden, walks in. He could see my eyes light up and he came over, and my parents introduced me. He took out the schedule for that day. I remember the schedule had a, I believe, foreign relations nomination hearing for Ambassador Pickering.
Jen Psaki: This is really nerdy.
Sarah McBride: Yeah.
Jen Psaki: Yeah.
Sarah McBride: Well, it was up on my wall for several years. And he took out a piece of paper and wrote what I’m sure he wrote to every eager 10-year-old, “Remember me when you’re president,” and signed it Joe Biden. I had it on my wall for several years. My mother is a chronic trasher of any extraneous things. So my fear is that she probably threw it away at some point when I was in college.
Jen Psaki: Oh, I relate to that. But if your mother is listening, pull that out because it’s such a good relic. One of the things that struck me is the weight that’s been on your shoulders from being the first. That’s an honor. I know you’ve talked about it, but it’s also a weight, and I just wonder how that sat with you and what’s been the most challenging for you.
Sarah McBride: I will always say and start with the fact that I feel immense gratitude. I am living a life that seemed so impossible to me as that 10 or 11-year-old, that it was incomprehensible. And the fact that I have had, throughout my life, opportunities and responsibilities of being a first in so many different spaces, it reinforces how lucky I am, how lucky I am to live a life of purpose, of meaning, and to have opportunities that I never dreamed would be possible as a young person, and opportunities that, by definition, are not yet afforded to so many people like me around this country. And so, I am really grateful.
It is hard to be a first. It is hard to be the only one in a space. It’s hard to recognize and know and navigate that there are often, in the short term, seemingly contradictory responsibilities. But what I have come to the conclusion, over the last several years, of being a first in the state Senate and a first in Congress is that in the long term, I do not fulfill my responsibility to any community I’m a part of, unless I am, first and foremost, fulfilling my responsibility to the constituents who have elected me to represent them and serve them. I think that that is true for any first, and I think that that’s particularly true for me as a first, when there is so much toxicity around trans people in our politics right now, from the Republicans.
I genuinely believe that the public benefits from seeing a trans person who is a whole person, and in this case, a member of Congress who is effectively working on all of the issues that matter, and maintaining their capacity to deliver for their constituents. But, truthfully, it’s a lonely position, especially in this moment. I’ve mentioned that I don’t know that there is an example of someone who’s been a first in federal office, and the district that they represent isn’t significantly, or even with a majority, made up of that same identity. And that presents a real challenge, and I know that there are people in my own community who want to see me fight in ways that feel more viscerally comforting to them. That’s feedback I hear. But I know what I’m here to do, and I believe I know how to do it.
Jen Psaki: The way you just described people in your community, who want you to fight in a different way than you may be wanting to fight, right? You’re the target of all of the ire in Congress, of the Nancy Maces of the world and others. But you also have the weight of representing a community that wants you to be everything they want you to be, which I think reminds me it’s very different obviously. But I obviously worked for Barack Obama for 10 years and it reminds me, in some ways, of this weight that he felt in a different way.
This conversation and the whole podcast is meant to be forward-looking about the Democratic Party. But one of the things I find there to be a hangover with is the 2024 election a little bit, so I want us to spend just one moment on that, because you hear a lot of people, I’m sure, I can’t even imagine how many people you’ve heard this from, who say that a big contributor to Kamal Harris’ loss was the over 20 million in anti-trans attack ads spent against her and her lack of response, her response that people didn’t find satisfactory. What do you make of that? What do you think of that?
Sarah McBride: I think there are two critical lessons from that election and from the relative success of that particular ad that ran in battleground media markets, including in Delaware while I was running for Congress, because we’re in the Philadelphia media market.
(BEGIN VT)
Reporter: Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners.
Kamala Harris: Surgery —
Unidentified Man: For prisoners.
Kamala Harris: — for prisoners, every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access.
Reporter: It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Even the liberal media was shocked, Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens.
Kamala Harris: Every transgender inmate would have access.
Reporter: Kamala is for they, them. President Trump is for you.
Donald Trump: I’m Donald J. Trump and I approve this message.
(END VT)
Sarah McBride: The first is that there was not a sufficient response and I get why they made the decision that they did hindsight is 20/20. But I do believe that if you are able to respond to those attacks more explicitly, it is pretty powerful and neutralizing them. I think we’re seeing it right now in Virginia, by Abigail Spanberger, who I think is more directly responding to the right-wing obsession with cultural war issues and trans issues, in particular.
I think that Democrats historically have, at least in the last couple of years, not done a good job of responding. And I think part of that, quite frankly, is rooted in a discomfort that Democrats have around talking about trans issues and this fear that they’ll never be able to get it right, that they won’t be able to strike a balance that meets voters where they are, while still honoring the community. I think that that’s a false choice. I think you can defend trans people and meet voters where they are at the same time. Indeed, trans folks need that in this moment. They need Democrats to effectively respond.
But, the second thing I would say is the reason why that ad was, I think, powerful for some voters, and I think the data shows that for some voters, it was. I’m not going to pretend like it wasn’t. It was less about the trans-specific content of the ad, and more about the fact that it reinforced the sense that Democrats aren’t focused on economic issues. And whether that is true or not, whether that is a byproduct of a Republican-manufactured caricature or not, it is a real perception that we have to grapple with.
I think our party has to do a better job of both centering bold economic policy that meets the needs of the American people, that acknowledges the economic pain, the financial pain that so many people are dealing with, and provides solutions for that. But I also think that even if we do that, we also have to communicate that we are welcoming to people who maybe hold a fundamental belief that trans people are worthy of being treated with dignity and respect, but disagree with some Democrats on extracurricular programs, or other aspects of trans rights on more specific policy front.
We do have to communicate to those folks that are still on a journey, not people who are dedicated to opposing trans rights, but people who are still on a journey or have a mix and range of feelings on particular policy issues, that they’re welcomed into our coalition. Because if we don’t communicate that to them, even if we are talking and focusing on economic policy, a voter will say, well, even if you’re not talking about these issues or prioritizing them in your messaging, if you’re filtering who can be part of your coalition based on these issues, I’m not dumb, I’m going to presume that that then is a priority issue for you. And so, I think we have to talk about them. We have to talk about them in a way that defends trans people, but meets voters where they are. And we have to make explicitly clear that voters who have a range of positions on particular policies related to trans rights, they are welcomed in our coalition. I think our community, my community has to understand that that’s not the end of a conversation. That’s the beginning of a conversation.
Jen Psaki: Part of the line is where do you draw the line, right? And this is one of the things I think people struggle with, because I’ve seen people and I’ve called this out a bit, overreact into what they think the weight of that ad or the weight of the issue overall was. I think you also touched on something so important, there is a fear about talking about issues around trans rights in the wrong way, right? Using the wrong words or the wrong language, and people being canceled, in some way, for that. And change to me, positive change is acceptance and equality. But that doesn’t mean it happens overnight. So what does that look like for trans rights and for trans people who don’t feel like they always have a voice, right?
Sarah McBride: Yeah.
Jen Psaki: But see this playing out in the political world.
Sarah McBride: Look, I think that people’s grace and patience has been abused over the history of our country, but the course correction to that cannot be to eliminate all grace from our politics. Grace is necessary for people to grow. Grace is necessary for people to feel confident and comfortable speaking out in defense, even if they don’t feel like they have all of the talking points or all of the language down. But grace is also necessary to create the space for people to change their own positions.
Jen Psaki: Like a bridge, like giving people a bridge to walk over.
Sarah McBride: Yes. And you know, where would we be in our politics if in 2004 or in 2008, for that matter, we said to everyone, if you aren’t a hundred percent supportive of marriage equality, you have no place in our coalition? Not only would we have lost that election, but we would’ve stunted the conversation that was happening in an effective way, that ultimately opened hearts and changed minds.
I think one of the problems in our coalition that’s developed over the last decade or so is we’ve started to treat welcoming people into our coalition. We’ve started to treat our own relationships with people as a tool to either reward or punish people for their positions. We’ve seen this trend in our coalition, that if you have a position that I find to be offensive or hurtful, I cut you off. And not only is that performative allyship that takes off the burden from the ally of actually educating someone, it also stops the necessary conversation from happening. And it undermines our ability to coalition build because it conditions us to then think that welcoming someone in and being in relationship with someone automatically then means we’re condoning everything they think or believe. That can’t be our mindset here. We have to recognize that change-making requires conversation, and it’s not always easy and it’s not always fair, but it’s definitely worth it.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Jen Psaki: We’ll take a quick break. And on the other side, more from my conversation with Congresswoman Sarah McBride.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
Jen Psaki: There is a version of this around very different issues, of course, happening in the Maine Senate race, where there is a candidate, Graham Platner, who’s unquestionably, incredibly talented and is sparking a bit of a movement in Maine, who has said some questionable and offensive things on Reddit, who has a tattoo that most people would find quite offensive, has apologized, has explained it.
I’m not necessarily asking you unless you want to share what you think of who should win in that primary. But it’s sort of a bigger question about, as a party, how should the party think about who they welcome in as candidates, as people who are a part of it. Because you’re right, I mean, some of the history within the Democratic Party has been if you aren’t with me on these 99 issues, you are not welcome to the party. This may be different than that. But what do you make of that?
Sarah McBride: First of all, I’ll just say I genuinely think that Maine voters should be the ones that are making this decision and can decide for themselves who is best able to take on Susan Collins, and then hopefully represent them in the United States Senate. But I will say a couple things. One, when we talk about rejecting purity politics, I don’t think that that’s just rejecting purity politics from the left toward the center, right? It’s not just rejecting purity politics when a person has a more moderate position than us.
I think it also means rejecting purity politics from the center toward the left. I think that we are seeing right now in our politics, in a lot of places, the establishment using identity politics to say your position on this particular issue, your position on Israel and Palestine, your position on X, Y, and Z policy means that you shouldn’t serve. I think that that’s equally as dangerous in building a big tent because it has to go both ways.
The second thing is I do believe that we have to have more space in our coalition for forgiveness. And I do think there’s something powerful in demonstrating that we are welcoming in voters, and in some cases, even candidates who have evolved themselves, who have said things or done things that they regret in their past, that they have genuinely grown from and changed from. I will say I initially thought on this particular point, with the Reddit post, that maybe that was an opportunity for us to show the public that we are a party that welcomes people who haven’t always been perfect on all of the issues, or even to this day might not even be perfect on all of the issues, or speak perfectly on all of the issues.
Obviously, I think that the more recent news around the tattoo raise more fundamental questions that Maine voters have to grapple with. But I think the fundamental truth remains that we have to reject purity politics in all of its forms, whether it’s coming from the left toward the center, or from the center to the left, and just ground our perspective in goodwill and good intentions.
We don’t have to welcome in people who are committed to bigotry or hatred. But we should welcome in people who are coming to a conversation in good faith, with goodwill and an openness to listen and be curious and not judgmental. And we certainly have to welcome in people who have evolved and changed, even if they say things that if they were saying it today, we would say, no, that’s unacceptable. But maybe they said it 5, 10, 15 years ago and they’ve genuinely changed from there.
Jen Psaki: I think it’s an important discussion for people to have, about who you welcome back in, what you welcome back in. I mean, even, obviously, the voters of Georgia will decide, but Jeff Duncan was a former Republican. Do you say you can’t run as a Democrat if he wants to be a Democrat? I don’t think so. But there’s interesting debates around this, across the country.
You read [ph] this analogy. You kind of loved this and I hope I get it right. You were talking about the conversations out there about identity and rights of people who may not understand or be hostile, and how it’s difficult, but something that a lot of LGBTQ people and kids have already understood on an instinctive level because of what they’ve experienced.
You know, it’s very easy for upper middle class, like white people on the coast to say, oh, you should never tolerate. Right? And you said, “Do we summon the ruthless survival skills of an LGBTQ kid in Florida or South Dakota who doesn’t have the luxury of prioritizing purity and perfection over goodwill and good intentions.” We’ve been talking about this a bit, but if there’s a lesson that the Democratic Party can learn from some of these kids and what these kids have experienced and have had to navigate in neighborhoods, in communities and schools where they might feel outcast, but have to find a path forward.
Sarah McBride: Yeah. I really do believe that there are so many lessons for our party from whether it’s a young LGBTQ person who’s having to live in and navigate spaces that aren’t as accepting or sort of perfect in both language and policy as maybe Brooklyn or San Francisco, or even for that matter, much of Delaware. We have a lot to learn from them.
Those young people, when they’re going to school, their principal might mess up on pronouns. Their principal might not totally get it on some particular policy needs, but maybe that principal is their last line of defense against the bullies who are harassing that student at school. Their family might not always say the right thing or get everything, but they’re welcoming their child in. And that’s not to say that we should just accept that reality as it is permanently, but we also have to recognize where the world is and how we can best change it.
I have had to change a lot of hearts and minds over the years. I’ve had to convince a lot of people of a lot of different things. From my own life to my own work, I have never successfully changed a person’s mind, personally or politically, by telling them from the start that they’re a bigot, by shaming them, and by telling them that all of their concerns are irrational, unfounded and wrong, and they should be ashamed for even having those questions or concerns.
The other thing I think we learn, as a party, is from the marriage equality movement. We learn that when we create a little bit more space in our tent, when we welcome imperfect allies, when we meet voters where they are, when we allow for evolution and actually model that evolution for the country, it can transform public opinion at a rate that no one anticipates. And yes, the rights of a minority should never objectively have to depend on public opinion. But nothing is truly sustainable without public opinion. And with it, nothing is impossible.
Jen Psaki: One of the things I’ve heard, I can’t even imagine how many times you’ve heard, is that if the people who want to be allies of the trans community are not pushing and advocating, you’ve sort of answered this question, but I just want to push you a little bit more on it, and are not saying you can use pronouns. Pronouns are not hard to use. You should be advocating for every kid to be able to play in the sport, with the gender of who they are. And if we’re not pushing for it, you’re giving people license out there to not be as aggressive, not push for change. I know you’ve heard this, but what do you say to people?
Sarah McBride: One, I think it misunderstands human nature and human behavior. If we demand perfection from the start, if we demand perfection in word and in deed from the start, then we are going to have a really, really morally pure club at the gulag we’ve been sent off to.
Right now, it’s a five-alarm fire for our country and for so many marginalized communities in this country, including trans people. The priority right now has to be stopping the attacks. We have to be clear-eyed about what’s at stake right now. We have to be clear-eyed about what the work is before us in this moment. What is the battle before us in this moment? And as someone who’s trying to fight for all of my constituents, including my trans constituents, I know I will not have the numbers with me that I need to defend people in this moment, if I demand that everyone be perfect in order to join me.
I also think movements for civil and human rights throughout history, certainly in the television era, have always successfully fought for change, with discipline and with strategy, with picking their fights, with not dying on every hill.
For instance, the civil rights movement started with the abolition of slavery. It then moved to basic civil rights. They passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, after compromising, by taking out the voting rights provisions, which then they were able to pass the next year. And then three years after that, they passed the Fair Housing Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Piece by piece, issue by issue, policy by policy, not only was progress made, but they took then the country with them on a journey, not just a journey to deeper understanding, but a journey policy by policy.
The gay rights movement started with pushing back against anti-sodomy laws. It eventually moved to marriage. We have to fight in ways that are effective, not just in ways that feel viscerally comforting to us. I think too often, we find ourselves wanting the comfort of preaching to our own choir —
Jen Psaki: Yeah.
Sarah McBride: — rather than the exercising the courage to truly grow our congregation.
Jen Psaki: Yeah. And extend the bridge.
Sarah McBride: For political leadership, I think a lot about Lincoln as a model. And Lincoln always understood that political leaders should absolutely be out and front of public opinion. They should absolutely be leading public opinion, but they do have to remain in arm’s reach of the public in order to be able to pull the public along with them. If they get too far out ahead, they lose their grip on public opinion and they can no longer bring people with them.
And so, if we want effective leadership and effective change-making, if we actually want to achieve the progress that we, as progressives, are fighting for, then we have to employ the strategies, the discipline, the tactics that throughout the last hundred years, have actually delivered the kind of change that make my service possible and make so much of the progress that we are beneficiaries of in this moment possible.
Jen Psaki: It’s a perfect place to end, Congresswoman Sarah McBride. When we decided to do a second season, you were at the very top of my list of people I really wanted to speak with, and I’ve been really looking forward to it. So thank you so much for taking the time.
Sarah McBride: Thank you.
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“The Blueprint with Jen Psaki” is produced by Frannie Kelley, alongside Leah Collins, Michelle Hoffner, Andrew Joyce, Tricia McKinney and Iggy Monda. Additional production support from Makena Roberts. Our audio engineer is Bob Mallory. Katie Lau is the senior manager of audio production. Our senior producer is Miguel Susana, and Alex Lupica is the executive producer of the briefing. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC audio, and Madeleine Haeringer is senior vice president in charge of audio, digital and long form.