Shadowing Practice: What Do Tuesday's Elections Mean? - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Thanks very much for joining me.

Last night, Tuesday night, progressives won a major victory in the state of Minnesota.

Peggy Flanagan won the Democratic nomination for Senate with a blowout.

She won by some 20 points.

A week earlier, Dr. Abdul El -Sayed won the Democratic nomination from Michigan for the U .S.

Senate.

And what is very interesting to me.

I want you all to know this.

If you combine those two campaigns,

Michigan and Minnesota, billionaire -funded super PACs spent over 80 million dollars trying to defeat El -Sayed and Peggy.

Over 80 million dollars, and they lost.

We were able to win despite all of that massive spending.

So what does it tell you?

It tells you that not just in Michigan and in Minnesota, but all over this country,

and I want everybody to remember that we have been winning elections, primary elections, general elections, for the last year.

We won in New York City with Mamdani, we won congressional seats in New York State, we won in New Jersey,

in Colorado, in Ohio, in Montana, in Pennsylvania, Arizona, California, and in the last week in Michigan in Minnesota.

So what's going on?

What is going on?

And I think the answer is not complicated.

Working people all over this country are looking around them and they understand increasingly that the economy is totally rigged.

60 % of our people live in paycheck to paycheck.

In America people are struggling to put food on the table pay for rent or mortgage,

pay for health care, put aside a few bucks for a dignified, secure retirement, worried about their ability to send their kids to college,

worried in fact that their kids may very well have a lower standard of living than they do,

while the billionaire class has never ever had it so good.

You know, I remember when we were all in school, we studied the Gilded Age.

Remember the Gilded Age of the time of Rockefeller and Carnegie and J .P.

Morgan and Jay Gould and all those guys at the end of the 19th century?

And everyone said, wow, how unequal society was Gilded Age.

Right now, inequality is much worse than it was in the Gilded Age.

You got one guy, Mr. Musk, owning more wealth than the bottom half of American households, top 1%, or even more wealth than the bottom 93%.

And the American people see that.

And what they also understand is the reason the government is not acting to protect their interest is

that many of the people in Congress are owned by the billionaire class

and corporate interest as a result of a corrupt campaign finance system.

And again, one of the extraordinary things about Michigan and Minnesota is

that people saw the tens and tens of millions of dollars of TV ads and all that stuff, and they said, wait a second.

If billionaires are trying to defeat people like El Saeed and Flanagan, maybe I'm going to stand with them.

So, where are we right now?

We're in a moment in history where we have the most dangerous president in the history of the United States of America.

A guy who happens not to believe in democracy, He happens to be an authoritarian, doesn't believe in the Constitution or the rule of law.

A president who is a kleptocrat.

He's made some $2 billion in personal wealth since he's been president in this term.

Somebody who is a narcissist, who if he had his way, I think would name half the buildings in the country after himself.

Somebody who lies all of the time.

somebody who campaigned on keeping us out of endless wars and then got us into this terrible war in Iran,

which has killed thousands of innocent people and disrupted the economies in America and all over the world.

So we've got to keep our eye on doing everything that we can to stop Trump's authoritarianism and his disastrous policies.

But on the other hand, We have got to fight for an agenda that works for working families.

It's not good enough to say, oh, Trump is terrible.

Yeah, most people know that.

Poll numbers are plummeting.

Many of his own supporters are catching on.

We need an agenda that says that in the richest country in the history of the world,

you know what? we can create an economy that works for all of our people, not just the people on top, okay?

It is not radical.

It is not far left.

It is not extreme to say that health care is a human right.

So it exists in every other major country on earth.

And we've got to take on the insurance companies.

We've got to take on the drug companies.

And we've got to move to a Medicare for all single -payer system.

It's not a radical idea to say that a $7 .25 an hour minimum wage is insane,

that we've got to raise the federal minimum wage to a living minimum wage, at least $20 an hour.

It is not insane to say that instead of putting $1 .1 trillion into a bloated military,

we should be investing billions of dollars to build the millions of units of low -income and affordable housing that we need.

It is not a radical idea to say that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the billionaire class has got to stop paying their fair share of taxes.

Not a radical idea to understand that Donald Trump is crazy when he thinks that climate change is a hoax,

given what's happening all over the world right now, that we can create millions of good paying jobs,

transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

And certainly not a radical idea to say that if we're going to preserve democracy,

we cannot maintain a corrupt campaign finance system under Citizens United, which allows billionaires to try to buy elections.

So bottom line here, as progressives, we have a twofold task in front of us.

Number one, we've got to lead the effort against the Trump administration and all of their horrific policies.

Number two, as progressives, we've got to take on the Democratic establishment and fight for a Democratic Party, which is a party of working people,

of young people, of people of color, and not just the top -down party dominated by wealthy campaign contributors.

So that's what we've got to do, and the good news is we are making significant progress, but we've got to keep fighting.

The general election is going to be in early November, and our job is to make sure that our people win all across the country,

that Democrats gain control of the House, gain control of the Senate, and that we elect as many progressives as we possibly can.

A lot of work to be done.

Look forward to going forward with you.

Thank you all very much for what you're doing.

Take care.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 84 sentences and 1167 words to shadow. The speech runs for 7:40. The speaker talks at a natural 152 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
billionaire noun	/ˌbɪl.jəˈnɛɚ/	Somebody whose wealth is at least one billion (10⁹) currency units (usually understood to exclude holders of hyperinflated currencies).
radical noun	/ˈɹædɪkəl/	A root (of a number or quantity).
progressive noun	/pɹəˈɡɹɛsɪv/	One with liberal or progressive political beliefs.
wage noun	/weɪd͡ʒ/	An amount of money paid to a worker for a specified quantity of work, usually calculated on an hourly basis and expressed in an amount of money per hour.
insane adjective	/ɪnˈseɪn/	Exhibiting unsoundness or disorder of mind; not sane; utterly mad.
agenda noun	/əˈd͡ʒɛn.də/	A temporally organized plan for matters to be attended to.
corrupt adjective	/kəˈɹʌpt/	Willing to act dishonestly for personal gain; accepting bribes.
nomination noun	/ˌnɑmɪˈneɪʃən/	An act or instance of nominating.
inequality noun	/ˌɪn.ɪˈkwɑ.lɪ.ti/	A condition or state (of social, cultural, or legal matters) that is not equal; especially, such a condition that is thereby also unfair.
complicated adjective	/ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/	Difficult or convoluted.
household adjective	/ˈhaʊshoʊld/	Belonging to the same house and family.
innocent adjective	/ˈɪnəsənt/	Free from guilt, sin, or immorality.
establishment noun	/ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ.mənt/	The act or process of establishing; a ratifying or ordaining; settlement; confirmation.
morgan noun	/ˈmɔɹɡən/	A unit for expressing the relative distance between genes on a chromosome.
mortgage noun	/ˈmoɹ.ɡɪd͡ʒ/	A legal agreement in which a borrower pledges real property as collateral for a loan used to purchase or refinance that property.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
look around verb	To inspect a building or area.
look forward to verb	To anticipate, expect, or wait for, especially with a feeling of approval or pleasure; to be excited or eager to.
put aside verb	To save or keep (something) to be used at a later time.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	guy who happens · Somebody who is · Somebody who lies
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has never ever had · he's been · has killed
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is totally rigged · are owned · be done

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 14 contractions and reduced forms, such as we've, we're, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: wealthy /ˈwɛl.θi/, authoritarian /əˌθɑ.ɹəˈtɛɹ.i.ən/, authoritarianism /ɔˌθɔːɹɪˈtɛːɹiən.ɪzm̩/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: nomination /ˌnɑmɪˈneɪʃən/, establishment /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ.mənt/, efficiency /ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/, congressional /kəŋˈɡɹɛ.ʃə.nəl/
Long words — get the stress right: nomination /ˌnɑmɪˈneɪʃən/, inequality /ˌɪn.ɪˈkwɑ.lɪ.ti/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, establishment /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ.mənt/, efficiency /ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like billionaire, radical, progressive.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: What Do Tuesday's Elections Mean? - Learn English Speaking with Video

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