Yemisi Egbewole offers one of the sharpest perspectives in our current political climate. She shows up across Cable news and the podcast circuit advocating for moderation in our politics to win over all voters — including young voters.
Before traversing the media ecosystem like she does today, Yemisi served as Chief of Staff for the White House Press Office and as a legislative aide in the Senate. Today, she runs Podium Strategies and is a prominent voice in Democrats’ internal debate about where the party goes from here.
I sat down with Yemisi to get her point-of-view on where Democrats went wrong with young voters — and how to regain their trust.
Here’s our conversation, edited for clarity and brevity. You can also watch our full conversation on our YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe :)
I feel like you’re everywhere these days. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what’s informed your point of view over the past few years?
YE: The way that I view the world, I always tell people, is through the lens of having been raised in the bubble of southern Democrats. My parents moved to the states when I was in the fifth grade. We moved to Georgia, and I think the combination of maybe a Clinton heyday and this feeling for the Southeast region of being maybe the epicenter in some sense of energy of Democrats has been my guiding force and informed so much of what I believe in politics. Of — you have a party that takes care and provides for people, that protects its communities, that offers innovation and entrepreneurship lanes that put guardrails on business, but still allow businesses to flourish. So I felt like the America I lived in and what drove my politics was a very pro-capitalist, pro- business, tough-on-crime mentality, and that was a part of the community I come from. Because both of my parents are immigrants, and I would say that for a lot of immigrant communities, that’s your viewpoint. You want your kids to come here and just follow the rules, behave, and you want to do well.
What got you into politics in the first place?
YE: My awakening was with Barack Obama of like, ‘Who is this guy?,’ and ‘Why is he the most interesting thing I’ve seen out of anything that my parents have been playing on CNN?’ So I asked my dad, and mind you, this is like suburbs of Atlanta. This is, for those familiar with Georgia, this is like Paulding County, Cobb County area. Areas that might be looked at now as [Democratic] strongholds. But when when Barack Obama was running, it was just like nobody wanted to talk about Barack Hussein Obama. And I asked my dad if we could hop in the minivan, and if I could take these packets that I’d gotten from one of their regional offices, and if I could just knock on doors and hand out these packets. I mean, it was just like curiosity about door knocking. I’m so glad I did that when I was younger because I don’t think I have the resolve now to go up to people’s doors and knock.. we’re all in such insular environments. I mean, everybody’s got a ring camera, so nobody even comes to the door anymore. But that was really for me, just this like, ‘Wow, you can believe in something, and then you can tell people that you believe in it,’ and just go door to door, and it’s basically legal unless there’s no soliciting sign. But my dad, he’s from Nigeria, and has, I would say, aside from taking the citizenship test, limited knowledge of how government works, how many branches of government [there are], things like that. He was so excited that I was excited about being American and the possibilities that America had, that he drove me around door to door in all these neighborhoods. And people, I mean, they weren’t rude because I was a child, but they weren’t as enthusiastic back then as they might be now if you’re going and you’re door knocking for Jon Ossoff or something. Now that the tides have changed a little bit in Georgia.
That’s a great story. You’ve spent time on both sides of the political apparatus, so to speak, inside the White House — shaping messaging — and on the Hill, and now outside it as a commentator. How does your vantage point shape how you see this current political moment?
YE: It’s interesting now that doing the commentating, it’s like everybody everybody brings in their own perspective. I think everybody has a baseline understanding of government, and then when you layer it with your perspective, and for a lot of people, that perspective is where you grew up, how you see the world, and also where you’ve worked. So I find it such a great advantage having been in Congress and the White House because I tend to give more grace than other people. The hottest thing now is just to totally dump on Congress. But my first year working in Congress was also the first year that Donald Trump was president. I never got to work in the Barack Obama days that inspired me to work in politics.
I’ve had to be scrappy and direct from the very beginning.
I know what it’s like when you are that Democratic staffer in a minority in the House and in the Senate where I worked, so I think it ends up giving me a more well-rounded view of what they’re actually going through. And also, sometimes people talk about things. They’re like, ‘Why didn’t this pass?’ And I have to go, ‘Well, let me explain to you how a bill becomes a law and why things take time.’ So it’s helpful, especially in a world where everybody wants results now, I think getting to see it. And when I first worked in the White House, I worked in the Office of Legislative Affairs, so quite literally at the other end of the table of where I had been before. So I’ve gotten to see it from all the different angles of when you start the bill, and then when you’re trying to get the attention of the White House in order to pick up the bill and get the president to support it, all the way through to signing it.
When it comes to your commentary, you’re going anywhere that will listen. You’re willing to talk with people who are not just friendly outlets or who are going to agree with everything that you’re saying. So I’m curious, what is the biggest misconception that people have about what it actually takes to move persuadable voters. How are you having those conversations?
YE: I think Democrats biggest wins could come from the South if they wanted to invest in it, but it’s a lot of hard work to invest in states where you have this preconceived notion that most of the people in the state don’t support Democratic politics.
At one point, the South was a stronghold for the Democratic Party, and I think it could be again. But you have to meet these voters where they are, and that has honestly been one of the biggest blessings of constantly coming down south to do work is that when people are talking about certain things on TV. There is a way that pundits will talk about the south like everybody these is dumb. Like they don’t know what’s good for them.
If people believe that you think they’re dumb before you even open your mouth, nobody’s going to listen.
And one of the things I learned, I learned this on on Fox especially, is I could have a disagreement about what President Trump was doing, but if I started it by saying, ‘Wow, this man’s a total and complete idiot,’ I lost the audience in the very in the very first few seconds when I was speaking. Because one, if I’m on Fox News, these people are not expecting somebody like me to be like the political expert that Fox News picks. Let’s be honest. I’m usually on a panel with men who are maybe a couple decades older, usually white. And so I’m offering a different perspective, but I just want to package it in a way that they will listen to it.
And if you are not giving your opinion or speaking about politics in a way that is digestible to a large audience, I don’t know that anybody’s ever going to actually accept your message. And frankly, having worked in the Biden White House, this was one of our big blinders. We actually had a rule where, like, we didn’t really put a lot of our senior advisors on Fox News because we kind of thought, ‘Well, what’s the point?’ None of these people are going to listen. But now, having been [going] on Fox for more than a year, I can actually say people do listen, and they are actually just as frustrated sometimes as you are. It is really just about how you talk to them about those frustrations.
When I’m thinking about politics, I’m thinking about Gen Z voters. You’re talking about how frustrating it can feel as a voter when you’re basically being talked down to from the moment someone opens their mouths. That happens a lot with young voters. And this is a very swingy generation who does not want to be boxed in by traditional party labels. Do you see moderation in Gen Z’s politics that doesn’t get much airtime, and why do you think it gets overlooked?
YE: It’s easy to say that the younger a generation is, the more left that they are, and that you get more conservative as you get older. But Gen Z is the most fascinating because they really are different on each issue. It used to be you could just be like check, check, check, check, check down the line, down the ticket, and it really didn’t matter. So the format of who a voter was, you didn’t have to get down into the weeds. And with Gen Z, you really have to take it, ‘Okay, do the piece on the economy, and then out of that, take housing,’ because there could be a difference of opinion there. And then even on cultural issues, we have this belief that just because people are younger, they believe anything and everything when it comes to the culture war stuff.
And I actually think that’s been one of the biggest blinders that a lot of Democrats have of like, ‘Oh of course they’re going to be on board with this.’ And it’s like, ‘Well no.’
You can’t assume. You should actually talk to them about concerns that they have. I think the stressors of this economy have been one of the biggest driving forces in Gen Z not feeling like either party is listening to them.
Yes. And part of Gen Z’s rebuke of feeling boxed in and feeling like their politics were being dictated to them rather than decided on their own really took place when the Democratic Party leaned into identity politics, and it was like just because of someone’s age, or gender, or color of skin, or sexuality, or religion you were supposed to have certain politics. There’s been a real pushback to that. We saw that in 2024. And we’re certainly still seeing that today. You’ve been outspoken about your frustration with identity politics, and there’s a lot of debate right now about whether or not the Democratic Party has actually moved past that era. Have they?
I would love to believe that we have moved past, but then sometimes I’m online, and I’m thinking we’re switching out like names and and identifiers for these different litmus tests. That was to me, the whole part of the woke culture that spread, was we started making checks before we could even support a candidate or think through and it got so irritating when it became okay, ‘Well, do you believe that Black Lives Matter? Okay, well, since you believe that Black Lives Matter, do you believe in defunding the police?’ And you’d have you’d want to have conversations with people of, ‘Wow, let’s separate those two.’ A lot of Black people don’t actually believe in the messaging of defund, and a lot of Black people are actually concerned about how communities will look if if we take out law enforcement, and there’s this misunderstanding of how Black people actually engage with the police and what their beliefs are.
So it kind of felt for me during that entire era that there was a way, because I was Black, I was supposed to think, and now it finally feels like everybody is free to say, ‘Hey, yes, that was crazy.’
But a lot of damage was done. I mean, I’m incredibly frustrated that there were people who legitimately lost their jobs. I mean, there were award-winning chefs that apologized for making certain dishes because it was culturally insensitive that they made them because they didn’t reflect the historic and ethnic background of the dish. I mean, really, when I talk to people about this, I give these specific examples where I’m like, ‘This really happened to an adult, to a working professional,’ who really didn’t do anything of offense, but everybody got so swept up in this hive mind of who can who can truly outperform the next person, and I almost feel like we’re in that kind of spin cycle again with who can outperform again.
What does that look like now?
YE: I get so surprised where we are on, for instance public safety is one where I think, ‘Wow, we really are at a point where I think we’re coming back to it.’ I thought we were getting to a point where everybody could have conversations about the police, and it didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, okay, the police are racist, the police are pigs, and things like that.’ And I do feel like we’re getting back into that spiral, especially when we talk about our criminal justice system.
Data centers is one that I think is a little bit of a litmus test, and starting to be of candidates that are running getting asked about data centers, about their positions on data centers.
International conflict is one that I think gets people stuck, where I’m seeing people running for office in Iowa getting asked about what their position is on Israel and Gaza, and I’m like, we are once again diverting from the point and missing the plot.
Because what does everybody want to focus on? They want to capture those rural voters that Democrats lost, weren’t able to gain back after Barack Obama led the way when it came to places like Iowa, and we really want to capture young people. And I just think that a lot of people are more focused on what is happening here with this economy, and those are the conversations that are actually driving forces in how people vote.
Along those lines, what would it look like in practice for a campaign to build a coalition that doesn’t lead with identity but actually leads with ideas? And is that a message that you see any Democrats currently giving?
YE: If folks were in South Carolina right now, I would ask them, how do you capture the attention of the older Black voter? And the way that you do that is you talk about the hard work that they have done, the hard work in raising their families, in building their foundations and their communities, and how it feels so much harder every day to maintain that. I think if you go to people and you say, ‘Okay, you might not be at the bottom right now, because you don’t ever want to go to people and go look at this small town you live in, look at this rural area, it’s complete crap…’ That’s talking down to people, but, ‘Look at what you have built the pride that you have in building it, and how it feels every single day that the government is just telling you to survive, and at one point you were told that America is the country where people came and they thrived.’ And I’ve seen that with especially this particular demographic here, and also in Georgia, I’ve seen that moves people the most. And I’ll tell you there are a lot of people that have come down to the South and they’ve been able to really connect. People that I’ve actually been quite surprised by.
Rahm Emanuel was one who I’ve actually, speaking of commentating, I was critical of pretty heavily a year ago, and he had some really great interactions in the south, and his entire focus was just on education, remedial math, on getting test scores up, and there were so many moms who talked about him afterwards, and they were like, ‘Yes, I am concerned every day about the education of my child and them falling behind, and not only that, but then they’re not going to get scholarships to school. We’re going to go into debt with college.’ I mean, those kinds of issues are the perfect thing to catapult anyone above everybody else.
I saw when Andy Beshear came down to South Carolina, he did Jim Clyburn‘s fish fry, and openly talked about his faith, which I think a lot of Democrats have gotten away from, regardless what whatever their religious identity is, but the scarcity in talking about faith, I think, has really hampered us as Democrats, and it’s really ceded the ground to Republicans to to say that they are the party of of religion. And truly, I think, to me… I’m Anglican, and so as somebody with a Christian faith, when I think of Democrats, I think of people who not only have faith, but understand the underlying principles within that faith of compassion, of grace, of caring for others, I think more than Republicans.
If you had to name the single biggest thing that the Democratic Party still isn’t being honest with itself about heading into the midterms, what would it be?
YE: It’s a very hard thing to say you’re not the cool kid anymore, when you had Bill Clinton, Barack, you had you had all these names. You’re the party of JFK, of FDR. I get it. It’s very hard to say you’re not the cool kid anymore, especially when the other guy you look at him and you think, ‘Okay, but how is Trump, how is that the thing that’s bringing in this cool factor?’
Democrats don’t want to talk about how they’re uncool.
If people are Democrats, they lessen the identity and tie to the national party brand in order to survive in their districts and their states, and I think that’s a real problem. I think it’s great that people are using whatever technique and tool they need in order to win. Shout out to Mary Peltola, Rob Sands, Josh Turek. Those are red states. Do what you got to do. But it sucks when you have to distance yourself from the very party you’re in because of where they’re standing, and it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear plan in order to increase the image.
I get it. Dems are harder on themselves than Republicans. Republicans accept a lot. Democrats, in my opinion, have always been harder to please because they’ve had higher standards. But at some point, especially when we’re looking at 2028, you can’t have a candidate that’s distancing himself from the national brand when he’s trying to run a country. So that is something I think there’s got to be a tough conversation about.
Noteworthy Reads
The Generation That’s Never Had to Say ‘Hello?’, Alisha Haridasani Gupta for The New York Times
Tennis Everyone?, Mary Julia Koch for The Wall Street Journal
OnlyFans and AI training: why gen Z doesn’t care where our money comes from, Alice Lassman for The Guardian
As someone completely on board with wokeness who is also sick of hearing about it all the time, I am not surprised at all that Gen Z is not very receptive to wokeness when they have grown up hearing about it their whole lives! Also I was born in Northern Virginia to parents from India so I felt dumbfounded about not being into the woke movement as an ethnic minority.