Yasmin Radjy
Appearances
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
Thank you so much for having me on, Ben, and being such a longtime friend of Swing Left's million members around the country. You know, I think this has been a week of a lot of emotional ups and downs, as you can imagine. Yesterday's economic hit, as you covered really thoughtfully just now, is really scary for folks, right?
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
And our volunteers and our grassroots donors are people who have small businesses and have families and have car payments and have mortgages. And so the weight of this week is significant as, you know, really every week in this administration has been sort of overwhelming.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
And at the same time, this has been a week of a lot of real hope and a feeling like we have entered a new and more hopeful political paradigm. And that's because, as you know, the Wisconsin Supreme Court election was this Tuesday night, or was this Tuesday, and the results were called pretty early in the evening, which was exciting because what they showed was
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
a full-throated victory for the liberal justice on that court.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
And that's really, really important because not only does that mean Wisconsin now has a liberal majority or keeps a liberal majority on its court, it also means that we're setting the stage for the ability to draw fair lines for critical house districts and to have free and fair elections in Wisconsin and, of course, so many other issues.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
And then we also saw other amazingly hopeful results in some of the deepest red turf in Florida, two districts, House districts that we knew were unwinnable. We saw incredible double-digit Democratic overperformance. And as you well know, Republicans are running really scared of everything that you showed in those clips earlier shows what we are all feeling, which is that Donald Trump
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
made a series of pretty effective lies over the course of the 2024 election, telling people that if they voted for him, he'd bring prices down. And what we saw yesterday, and it's surreal that he called it a day of liberation. It was really a day of real hamstringing of our economy and of people's lives. Folks are not just thinking, oh, shoot, maybe we made the wrong decision. Folks are organizing
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
in astronomical numbers around the country. And Wisconsin and Florida were just the beginning signs of the electoral consequences of what Trump is doing. But we're also seeing, you know, Republicans, independents, voters, Democratic voters who stayed home this cycle showing up at town halls and organizing.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
And at Swing Left, you know, we've got, as you mentioned, a million members and about 400 groups all around the country led by volunteers. And we are seeing levels of enthusiasm, not just in Wisconsin this week, but all across the country for folks to start really getting involved in the fight ahead.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
And we just launched this week our campaign called Three to Win, which is anchored on the number three, which is the three districts that we need to win to flip the House. And I'm talking about that here
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
um in response to your question around energy because i think folks are both really pissed off and really worried uh about things like what uh trump is doing to wreak havoc on our economy and they want to do something but they're not really sure what they can do that doesn't just you know feel like they're blowing off steam but feels like it is meaningful and it can put an actual check on donald trump elon musk and on the mega agenda and winning the house is that fight and we
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
As we saw in Wisconsin, as we saw in Florida, there's enthusiasm, there's energy. We've got to point it in the right direction. We're only three seats away from winning the House.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
And if folks organize starting now, including in your backyard in California, in my backyard here in the DC area, and in all sorts of even really blue parts of the country, most of us live within 90 minutes of a competitive swing district. We only need to win three of them to win back a House majority. And that's only 7309 votes.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
That's smaller than a Texas football game, smaller than a concert in L.A. And we can do that. And that really is going to put a meaningful check on an agenda that is deeply, deeply, deeply unpopular, as your clips earlier showed.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
That's you framed it exactly right. First of all, folks can go to swing left dot org slash house and they can get involved today in the fight to win back the house. They can join, as you said, a local group because, you know,
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
it's we're 18 months away from this election so what we're not looking for is to just have folks do one click and then uh you know move on with their lives of course if folks want to do one click they'll be able to donate to the highest impact uh races they'll be able to you know get involved in that one click but a lot of folks as you said you know digital fatigue is really real and i think one of the reasons why your show is growing in its popularity is that
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
We all gather online, right? We read, we engage with content online. We text our friends and DM our friends online. But we all also have an appetite for real human conversation and engagement. And so all of that online engagement, whether that's listening to shows like yours, whether that's going to swingleft.org,
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
It ultimately needs to have people have more to talk about when they're gathered together at dinner, find ways to connect.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
And if we're in an 18-month fight to win back the House, and then we're going to have two years before the next presidential election, and then after that, we're going to have a lot of work to do to rebuild our economy and our country, given all the damage that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have already done. We've got to do that in a way where we are well-trained for the marathon ahead.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
And our vantage point is we need to be really strong online and meet each other there. And in order to really build those muscles for the marathon ahead, we have to engage offline. And so when folks go to swingleft.org slash house, they can sign up to join a Swing Left gathering in the community that they are closest to. wherever they are in the country.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
And whether or not there's a gathering already scheduled in your home turf, folks can host a gathering of their own. And that might be opening your doors, whether at your home or at a coffee shop or a park or whatever the case may be, to others that you might not know yet.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
or whether it's getting your existing community a book club your group of friends that you wish you saw a little bit more this is not just um it's actually like very strategically important for us to spend some time slowing down offline as we engage also in this very fast-moving digital media landscape
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
both so that we've got the the strong muscle for the marathon ahead but also because something i've observed a lot as we're getting feedback from volunteers and donors in this really really challenging moment for our country is that folks are also feeling things outside of our politics that are impacting them and that's a real sense of loneliness of isolation of fracture
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
These are things that Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Biden's Surgeon General in the last administration called the top public health crisis in this country. And so at Swing Left, we are all about what are the highest impact actions that folks can take to make a material difference in shifting the balance of power for Democrats.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
So we've got a fighting chance on fighting for an economy that works for all, for a democracy that thrives, for a country that we can be proud of that lives up to our values. But in that process, we've got to do it in a way that grows our connection.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
And if folks get involved, again, at swingleft.org, my hope is that they're not just having a big impact, they're also driving meaning from that impact and sinking their teeth
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
into a political strategy that even if they are brand new to politics and they've never done anything besides listening to news and listening to great shows like yours, they've never turned that into action yet, that they can get involved. And the vast majority of folks are much stronger political leaders than they know.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
And our job is to hold a mirror to them and also offer them the on-ramps to really high impact opportunities. that, again, will shift the balance of power, which we can do. We're only three seats away from doing that in one of the most critical levers of government, which is the House of Representatives.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Swing Left Executive Director Yasmin Radjy on Fighting Back
Thank you so much. It's great seeing you, Ben.