Former Massachusetts Governor on Representation (Part 3)

Former governor of Massachusetts. Sorry, former governor of Massachusetts. And so before me there was, there was Doug Wilder in Virginia, the OG Right, first black governor elected in this country. You had Deval Patrick in Massachusetts was number two. And then he came, and then Duval came down from my inauguration to be number three. So in 250 years we've had three African Americans ever elected, govern this, in this, in this history of this country. And so I remember the night before my inauguration on talking with Deval and he said to me, he said, do you know, one of my only regrets is that I was number two. I didn't start thinking about number three until after I left office. And I always made a pledge. I was like, I will never let that happen. And we worked hard to make sure that I'm the nation's only black governor right now. And I don't only want to give away that title. I never want anyone to ever have that title again. Yeah, ever. And we are going to go from having three black governors elected over 250 year history of this country to come January, 10% of our nation's governors will be black. This is also going to help to fundamentally change the way this country thinks about how your leadership should actually be reflective and representative of what your population actually looks like. I mean, I also want to get to the issues. When we looked at the landscape, four issues really stuck out throughout the year. Affordability, AI and data centers, immigration, and I would say Iran war, and kind of our connection to Israel. As part of that, we actually did a study guide episode discussing those issues leading up to the election and we saw so many of them play out in the results. So I'm going to go through some questions that fit into those buckets. I mean, let's start with affordability because that did seem to be the issue of the midterms. Lowering cost is the top priority for voters and frankly where they penalize Trump the most. When we think about the Democratic Party though, what's the single biggest thing Democrats could do to address folks cost of living concerns? I mean actually move fast to fix the things. Do something. I mean do something. You know what I'm saying? Like no more Studies, no more 10 year research reports. You know, I'm saying like, like move fast. So for example, in Maryland we've done permanent reform to be able to speed up affordable housing. Right? And I did not need a 10 year research paper to tell me that we have an issue with affordable housing.