'Everybody needs to be held accountable, including the Supreme Court'
Alex Wise interviews me.
My pal Alex Wise is the host of Sea Change Radio, a weekly show syndicated nationally that focuses on the environment and sustainability. Occasionally, he invites me to talk politics. Last week, we had wide-ranging chat. We touched on my idea of a new New Deal plus retribution, the Democrats going to war over gerrymandering, using cartoon language to communicate clearly, and a bunch of other stuff. You can hear the interview or read an edited transcript (both below) or listen at cchange.net. Check out Alex's show. There's new material every week. His archives are extensive! And please consider supporting him.
Transcript: Alex Wise interviewing John Stoehr, May 5, 2026
Alex Wise: Let's try to look at what the Democrats have in front of them. You wrote a piece in April, April 23rd in fact, entitled, “The key to a new New Deal for America? Retribution. Do the Democrats have the guts?” So, first of all, what did you mean by this new deal? And what can be gained by retribution? We saw when Biden came in that they said, “you know what? Let bygones be bygones. The first Trump administration was a dark day in America, but it's a brighter day and let's just move on.” Do you think Democrats have learned that that was not a correct way to tack?
John Stoehr: There's two tiers to this future for the Democrats. One is that they have to redefine what the deal is with the American people. And more or less, the deal means the American dream. You work hard, play by the rules, and you're supposed to be able to get ahead in life. And the whole system is rigged in such a way that people who work hard and play by the rules are getting farther and farther behind. And inflation is probably the greatest example of this. No matter how hard you work, you keep spending more and more at the grocery store, more and more for gas, etc. And you can't get health insurance and so on.
So that's the first part. The second part is what I call the retribution part, and that is maximal accountability for everybody who's involved in scamming the American people and basically, and I don't think these words are too hard, stealing from the American people and preventing them from achieving the American dream.
And I think that second part is really key to the first part. It's one thing to say, let's have a new deal. That's kind of what Biden did. He said, let's do this all over again. Let bygones be bygones, and we'll just move forward. And he enacted policies that were very good for workers, higher wages, lower inflation, not enough, but still lower. And he put the government on the side of workers and consumers. But he was missing that second part.
That second part is what allowed … by ignoring that second part … that allowed Trump to resurge and come back and so on.
Retribution is really a word that scares some people off. They think of it in terms of revenge, and I'm fine with that interpretation. But if they need their hands to be held, think of it in terms of justice. Retribution is part of justice, and that's what – you have to have justice. You have to clean up government, all of it. And that will provide a path forward for this new deal.
Alex Wise: We progressives often think of retribution, injustice, as not a good thing, especially when it comes to discussions about the death penalty. It's not a progressive policy. It doesn't actually change behavior. It's just some people feeling better about themselves in terms of revenge.
Nuremberg was a very different form of retribution. They weren't just trying to extract a gratuitous pound of flesh. They were trying to set a course for a new civilization that would not allow for a Nazi party to rise again. It was important to hold these people to account.
In the short term, though, what kind of retribution should progressive leaders be shooting for?
John Stoehr: Well, they can't do anything right now until there's a Democratic administration. So in terms of criminal prosecutions, nothing can be done, right? But in the short term, I would suggest that retribution or accountability, however we want to define it, can just begin with control of the House, which seems to be forthcoming. And you can go the route of impeachment, but you can also just go in the general route of grinding exposure of all the corruption and all the crimes and all the self-dealing that's going on in this administration. Just one thing after another.
And that pattern has actually already been set by public servants like Robert Garcia. He's the ranking member on the Oversight Committee, and all his investigation of the Epstein scandal. He's set the model for the future of exposing all of that corruption.
That's the beginning, exposure, fact-finding, building up a case. If that leads to impeachment, so be it. I don't think Democrats should worry too much about, you know, can we actually achieve this goal or not. The point is exposing wrongdoing to a maximal degree for the benefit of the American people so that they can see, first, that there's a big problem here and something needs to be done. And second, that they can trust the Democrats to do something about it. They can trust them because the Democrats are here. They are exposing all this evil doing.
And that's really key, I think, for the Democrats, is using power to instill trust. Biden was really more like, let's all kumbaya, and then you can trust me and you'll elect me again. I'll bring back prosperity and so on. But that wasn't enough for people. That just wasn't enough. And it wasn't just the inflation problem that was hurting Biden. It was the trust problem.
People who might otherwise vote for Democrats saw in Trump somebody they can trust because he was always talking about the problem, however he defined the problem. And he was always saying, I am the solution to that problem.
We also have an elevated opinion of our fellow Americans, but when it comes down to it, most of them are not paying attention. They only hear subliminal messages. If they hear that somebody is trying to fight for them, they'll gravitate toward that person. I think that's just the way it is. And I think the Democrats have an opportunity to pick up that mantle.
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Alex Wise: So let's talk about the fall and just assume right now that the Democrats will only pick up the House. So Congressman John Stoehr has the ear of Hakeem Jeffries. What would be on your short-term to-do list? How would you get busy exposing the criminality and the corruption in this current administration?
John Stoehr: You know, if it were me, Alex, I would actually start hauling in all these media executives and have them explain how they justify all these mergers to create conglomerates that are dominating our information environment. I would want to know, I want them to explain themselves, because they have monopolies on what we understand to be true about our country. They have a monopoly on the conduit, the information channel through which all of us get our information. None of us is down in Washington asking our congresspeople what they have for breakfast today. We all read about that through the news, and so much of our news is consolidated and so on.
And I would bring them forward to explain themselves with the understanding that they understand that the pressure is coming to break them up if they do not give good answers. That, I think, is something that Biden was about to get to, but he never had a chance to. And I hope the next round of Democrats picks that up.
Alex Wise: We're talking about short-term to-do lists for Democrats. From a messaging standpoint, we've often tipped our hat to the chaos of this current administration and their ability to just constantly change the channel for the short attention span of American viewers and voters.
I postulate that Democrats should lean into this, and instead of just trying to go the other way and say we need to just stay laser-focused on the Epstein files or prosecuting the Iran war, they don't necessarily have to stay so focused because there are so many paths. So why not just pursue them all and see what sticks in the American consciousness?
Is that an inefficient way of going about this, or do you think it could be effective?
John Stoehr: I think Democrats in general should just stay away from pretending. Our entire political culture kind of encourages public officials to pretend that everybody's above politics, that we all just want to get along, that polarization is dividing us.
This is all abstract language, especially that word polarization, and I think, I honestly, when people hear it, I think they just check out. They're like, I don't even know what that word means, and I'm just, it doesn't mean anything to me.
In terms of messaging, Democrats should stick with concrete language, especially about who is doing what to whom, with the idea that “the who” here is very moneyed elites, powerful people who run and corrupt institutions, and the “to whom” part is the American people. The elites are doing this to you, right?
And the Democrats should spell that out, and they should say transparently, we are on the side of you. Always, always on the side of you. That's what democrat means, it means the people, and we are always going to be on the side of you, fighting for you against them.
That [may sound like] a very populist message, the us versus them thing, but it is actually not, because in populism is this idea that the people are somehow pure and innocent and so on, and Democrats should absolutely stay away from that kind of thinking, because that gives the rightwingers the advantage.
The Democrats should stick with who is doing what to whom. There's a criminal committing a crime against a victim, and we're all feeling that right now. Inflation went up to 3.3 percent last month. It's going to go up again this month, surely. Gas prices are going crazy. I have spent more money, Alex, at the Stop and Shop than I've spent in my entire life, and I have two people in my household, OK? There's crazy money right now, and nobody feels like they're getting ahead. So there are victims, we all feel it, and there are villains. And I think that's the simple, call it cartoon language, call it whatever you want, but it's what people understand.
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Alex Wise: Yes, I mean, Democrats had this debate in 2016 and the year before when Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were running against each other, and it was kind of what you're talking about in that Bernie Sanders was trying to take it to a people-first message, a populist ideal that I think scared a lot of establishment Democrats. They think that politicians should be statesmanlike and Democrats should focus on policy because Democrats have better policies in their mind and in our minds. So I think that might have been the appeal of Trump to some people. It was like, ah, I don't care about policy and diplomacy. Just give me somebody who's going to fight for me. Just keep it simple for me.
John Stoehr: I think we need to be clear about why people voted for Trump. It really wasn't because they thought that he was going to fight for them. For most of his supporters, I'm not going to say 100 percent of them, but most of them, he said he was going to stomp on people they thought deserved getting stomped, and they enjoyed it.
Alex Wise: Yeah, it was a sadistic message of retribution.
John Stoehr: That's the retribution that we do not want. We want justice. We want real law and order. We want the criminals to be put to trial. We want accountability. We want order. We want order! That's what we want! We want a restoration of order. Right now, everything's chaotic and disorganized, and people don't like it.
So going back to Trump, we need to be clear that that's what attracted people to him. Now, there were a lot of people who put this intellectual gloss on Trump, like this whole America First thing. They use words like isolationism and these isms words that kind of make people's eyes glaze over. So we should be clear about what really attracts people to Trump, and take the fighting angle and use that for good.
Everybody understands what heroes do. They fight for justice. They do good. They fight for the little guy. They see something wrong, and they try to make it right. Again, it's like cartoons, but I mean, I think this is the language that people understand.
Alex Wise: So, John, let's look at a best-case scenario for Democrats if they take the House and the Senate in the fall of 2026. Beyond retribution and exposing corruption, beyond that, what are some of the longer-term New Deal-type policies or the checklist that you would want to see your candidates checking off the list if they win back the House and the Senate?
John Stoehr: They've got to impeach him and remove him. If they take the Congress, I think they've got to try.
Alex Wise: But you need two-thirds of the Senate, so that's not going to happen.
John Stoehr: I wouldn't put removal on the shelf just yet. Remember who Trump is. He has a titanic ego, right? And since he's been back in power, nobody has said no to him, right? Now, think about the day after these midterms. Even if he loses the House, and that seems likely, more than likely, what's going to happen? He will be a lame duck the day after. Not only will he be a lame duck, he will be a toxic lame duck, meaning any Republican who wants to have public office or has White House aspirations is going to want more and more distance from him.
Now, I think there will be some who will always be with him because they're always with the base and there's that kind of thing. But they all know they can't rely on their base alone. They need something else. So he's going to be toxic from the day after the midterms.
Now, think about it. This is a guy who's never been told no. He's never been persona non grata, but he will be persona non grata for a lot of Washington because he's not running for re-election. He's going to be done. So what kind of reaction will there be from a malignant narcissist like our president, who's also experiencing signs of dementia? He's going to react very badly to that.
You call him the persona non grata? He's going to prove every single day that he is not and he's going to do something very, very stupid, right? He's already done it with this war. He did it with the January 6th insurrection. This guy is going to do something. And the Democrats, really, all they got to do is start the ball rolling with impeachment and removal. And by the time that ball gets down the road a little bit, he will have done something where they'll be like, uh-huh, well, here it is. We got to remove him. And from the Republicans' point of view, he is going to be so toxic and so terrible for them, they may even want to get rid of him in order to push JD Vance or some other person.
So I don't think we should put that on the shelf just yet. It could happen.
Alex Wise: So we've seen Democrats rally behind this gerrymandering that the Republicans have been pushing for the last God knows how many years but the Democrats have started a new strategy of fighting back. We've seen it in Virginia and California and now New Jersey and New York. When you talk about do Democrats have the guts, is this the kind of gut check that you're looking for?
John Stoehr: Yeah, I think with the gerrymandering thing, what it boils down to is less about morality and what they ought to do for the American people, and more of survival. They have to do it. They have to do this gerrymandering face-off, because otherwise they're just going to be the minority party. That's why they have no problems throwing away whatever moral pretensions they had to get California to do gerrymandering and Virginia and New York or wherever. All of that's off the table now, because they have to. They have to fight.
Alex Wise: What about expanding the court? That's also one of those moral conundrums where we think, well, is it okay to change the rules if we don't like the outcome?
John Stoehr: Yeah, I hope last week's decision in the Louisiana gerrymandering case by the Supreme Court is that truly wake-up call for Democrats. I think that ruling posed an existential threat.
There's two responses. One is to continue with the gerrymandering fight. But the other is they've got to pack that court. That court is absolutely going to crush them electorally if they don't fight them. The mechanism for that, Alex, I don't know. I mean, it's been what? How many years since the court expanded? Many, nine, ten decades? I don't remember. I'm not a historian. I do remember that FDR threatened to pack the court and that finally got some of them to back off. And maybe that's what needs to be done.
I even think that impeaching one of them would do a lot of good. You know, impeaching Clarence Thomas perhaps or Samuel Alito. Just impeach one of them. There's plenty of evidence of corruption. Let's just get rid of one of them and that'll send a message like “Hey, we got your number. We will do something if we need to.”
That wouldn't just be for political reasons. These are corrupt people. That would be part of the two-tiered approach I was just talking about with a new deal plus retribution. Everybody needs to be held accountable, including the Supreme Court.
Alex Wise: The Democrats have always been very closely aligned with Israel. But do you think that this war being prosecuted between Netanyahu and Trump against Iran will be a watershed moment for that alliance?
John Stoehr: I think Netanyahu's war crimes were the watershed. You know, killing tens of thousands of people. There it is. I mean, OK, some of them are complicit with Hamas, but surely not all of those people. And then the grotesque discussions of turning Gaza into some kind of luxury [resort]. It's just so grotesque.
The reason we have this alliance, this affinity, with Israel is because of the legacy of World War II. I mean, it was a place of safety for the world's Jews. That was the whole point. Biden talked about it constantly and said, this is why I stand by Israel. He would refer to that history constantly. But when the Israeli leader starts acting like Hitler, that's bad, right? Even that statement is pretty controversial, but he did kill tens of thousands of people and unfortunately that seems to be okay.
So yeah, a lot of Democrats are going to take issue with that.
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Alex Wise: And at the crux of that genocide is the idea that some people are worth more than others.
John Stoehr: Yeah, that's kind of baked into … I mean the Jewish state was always problematic, because it favors some over others, and that rankles people when they believe in democratic principles. And some people will even call that a de facto apartheid state. That's something Democrats, liberals, stand against. That was tolerable as long as Netanyahu wasn't killing people by the thousands. It was tolerable, but since he crossed that rubicon, there’s just no going back from that.
And that’s in addition to the fact that Netanyahu is clearly playing to Trump's vanities. He helped him, persuaded him, lobbied him very hard, lied to him, saying this Iran war will be no problem.
Alex Wise: Relax, what could go wrong?
John Stoehr: Here we are. Obviously, that was a lie.
But there's another actually subtler complication here, and that is that the Democratic Party is in the back door open and accessible to the antisemites. There's a contingent of progressives that want to overlook things like Nazi tattoos in favor of expanding the Democratic Party – this is how they justify it – expanding the Democratic Party to the working class. And that is opening the door to a kind of subliminal antisemitism that I think Jews, like yourself, are really not going to be cool with. Because suddenly now we're having conversations that you don't want to be having.
I'm talking explicitly about Graham Platner up in Maine, and the fact that people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, these are very progressive figures, saying, yeah, he's one of us. That's not going to go over well if he wins and then has to come sit with Chuck Schumer. That is not going to go over well. Chuck will make it seem fine. He's not going to say a word, but others are not going to take kindly to that.
How that goes, I don't know. It depends on how much Platner wants to be a teammate.
Alex Wise: Yeah, I mean we saw the lesson of John Fetterman playing out. People think that Platner could be one of those Trojan horse-type candidates.
John Stoehr: Yeah, it's a big mess, Alex. It's a big mess up there. If we win Maine, then we probably could take the Senate. So we're in the position of like OK, we'll vote for this guy, because he's the Democrat but he's also a fraud. I don't – I don't know.
Alex Wise: I mean Susan Collins keeps talking about how she's going to be voting against the administration, and just always ends up being mildly concerned, and then votes along party lines every time for how many decades. That's Lucy pulling the football from Maine voters every time. So, I mean, Platner's Nazi tattoo be damned. I'd rather see what he has in store than what we know Susan Collins has in store, for Maine and the rest of the country
John Stoehr: Yeah, we could be just extremely practical and say if he votes with Democrats 50 percent of the time, then that's good.
