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“Two Americas.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: So, late Tuesday night, you and I were texting about
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: how excited we were to talk about Georgia today. And
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: we're going to do that, including an interview with NSE UFOT,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: one of the organizers whose years of work made the
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Senate victories possible on Tuesday night. But we have been
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: robbed of the joy from those victories by a mob
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: of violent extremists who were encouraged to stage an insurrection
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: against the United States government by the man who was
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: supposed to be leading it. And so that is what
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: we have to talk about first. The congressional certification of
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: the Electoral College votes on Wednesday should have been a
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: routine event. It usually is. But Donald Trump and well
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: over 100 Republicans in Congress, led by Senators Josh Hawley
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: and Ted Cruz, decided that they would object to the
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: election results in an effort to overturn the will of
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: the voters. Donald Trump also urged his supporters multiple times
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: to descend on Washington over the last week, saying, quote,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: be there, it will be wild. Then on Wednesday morning,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: while Congress gathered to certify the election, Trump incited a
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: mob of his supporters outside of the White House, many
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: of them armed, and told them to march towards the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Capitol to, quote, give our Republicans the kind of pride
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: and boldness that they need to take back our country.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: And they did. And they clashed with Capitol Police and
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: shots were fired and four people died. And the entire
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: United States Congress, along with the vice president, either barricaded
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: themselves in offices or were evacuated from the Capitol while
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Trump supporters stormed the building carrying weapons, Trump flags, and
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Confederate flags. Pipe bombs were later discovered and detonated at
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: the Capitol, the Republican National Committee, and the Democratic National Committee.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: It was the first time the U.S. Capitol had been
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: breached since the British invaded during the War of 1812,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: except this time, The invaders were extremists who had been
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: incited by the president of the United States. So that's
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: where we are, Dan. I'll stop there and let you
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: react to what you saw unfold yesterday.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Watching everything that happened yesterday was a mix of emotions.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: It was incredibly scary. You and I had both worked
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: in that building. We both worked in that building after 9-11.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: And the idea that people could just walk right in
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: there and take it over with all the security's been
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: put in place is incredibly scary. It was sad and
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: just a terribly– I had viewed what was going to
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: happen simply with just the overly ambitious snake oil salesman
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: trying to overturn the will of the voters in an
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: impotent display of authoritarianism as a dark day for democracy.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: But when you have an armed insurrection egged on by
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: the president of the United States– Like that is an
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: incredibly sad day for democracy. And on top of all
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: of that, it was absolutely infuriating because it was so predictable,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: so preventable. And we knew we were headed in this
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: direction for years now. And all of the various stakeholders
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: in the Republican Party, in the right wing media, at
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: the social media platforms, just stood by and watched it
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: happen and ignored the warnings. And we ended up in
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: incriminating spaces. And we are so incredibly fortunate for as
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: horrible as yesterday was that it wasn't so much worth.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: There was so much, there could have been so much
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: more carnage or could have been, I mean, there were bombs,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: there were guns, like as horrible as it was, it
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: was a fraction of how horrible it could have been.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: If a couple of things had gone differently.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I also find myself, I was scared at times, a
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: lot of times, but really, really angry. Um, you know,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: when we, we talked about this Monday on Monday's pod and,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: you know, like when I thought about the certification process
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: and Holly and Cruz, like I was, I remain enraged
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: at those fucking people. But I was like, these assholes
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: are going to stretch out the process and then they're
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: going to be voted down. There's no chance they succeed.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: There's no chance that fucking Pence delivers the victory to
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump that Donald Trump thinks Pence could have, but
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: he can't anyway. Like all that was just, It's fucking upsetting,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: but it's garbage. At the end of the pod, we
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: said something like, if you're in D.C., be careful, because
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: I did think about the crowds that were coming to D.C.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: And that worried me more than what was actually going
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: on in the Congress. And, you know, I was texting
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: with mutual friends of ours in D.C., our friend Mike Gottlieb,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: who was like, yeah, I'm thinking of just getting the
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: family out of here on Wednesday because it's going to
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: be so bad. And I was like, oh, God, that
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: is going to be bad. And then we saw this happen.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, like The tweet that really summed it up
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: for me shared a lot from someone named Ed Stern.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: He said, well, that escalated steadily for four years. Yeah.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: And the scary thing about it, though, is we all
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: knew it was coming. Something like this was eventually going
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: to happen. We were all afraid of it. And when
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: I say we, Democrats, journalists, a lot of Republicans, but
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: never Trump Republicans, like a wide, wide, people all over
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the world saw this coming. saw this kind of thing
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: coming someday. And yet we couldn't stop it, right? Like
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: we were almost powerless to stop this.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Well, we didn't try.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Mainly, we tried. Well, mainly because the only way to
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: have stopped this was to have impeached this man any
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: time over the last four years and Republicans protected him.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Too many Republicans protected him. It is the reason to
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: this day that he remains a threat to this nation
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: because too many members of the Republican Party, too many
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: elected Republicans have chosen to protect this man. And so
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: the rest of us have to sit here and worry
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: that something like this could happen and we are powerless
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: to do anything about it until he leaves office. And
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: that's what's really awful. And by the way, it didn't
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: just happen in DC. State houses in Georgia, in Kansas,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: in other parts of the country, there were Trump mobs
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: there too. Raffensperger, the Secretary of State in Georgia, had
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: to be escorted out of the state house there to
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: protect him. And just, you know, what happened in the
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Capitol building was just fucking atrocious. They vandalized offices. They
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: were down on the Senate floor. They were in Pelosi's office.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: They wrote murder the media on a door and big letters.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was revolting. It was revolting. And I
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: think my first question is out of many questions, like
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: there were thousands of people at the Capitol. There were
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: 26 arrests on Capitol grounds on Wednesday, only 26 arrests.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: How did the Capitol Police fail to secure an event
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: that was being attended by the entire United States Congress,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: the current Vice President of the United States, and the
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: next Vice President of the United States? I mean, this
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: was like a president and nine Supreme Court justices short
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: of a State of the Union, which is the most
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: closely guarded, heavily guarded event in America every year. What
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: the fuck was going on?
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was clearly one of the greatest security
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: failures in modern American history.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Since 9-11?
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, worse than 9-11. It's 9-11 if they had
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: told you 9-11 was going to happen and you didn't
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: prepare for it. Right, yeah. And there needs to be
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: an investigation into what happened with the Capitol Police. Why
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: did they fail to prepare? Why were some of the
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: cops taking selfies with the protesters? There are videos that
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: lack context. So you want to know more about it,
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: about them opening the gates and letting people in. Why
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: did that happen? I mean, there needs to be an investigation.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: There needs to be accountability. And there likely needs to
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: be changes at the absolute top of the Capitol Police.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: This is your job, right? And when I worked for
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: the Senate minority leader, he was protected by the Capitol
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Police 24-7. I spent a lot of time with him.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: A lot of really, really good people worked at the
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Capitol Police to do a really good job. But from
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: top to bottom, this was a gigantic failure. And we
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: need to know why. Because the members' lives were at risk.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: I read an Instagram post from the daughter-in-law of Congresswoman
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Madeleine Dean, whose son we used to work with, about
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: her calling her family from her office, barricaded in her
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: office as people were banging on the door and she
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: and her staff were afraid for their lives. Like that
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: is the situation we ran. There's another story I read
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: today about how this is one of the greatest cybersecurity
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: failures in history because we lost complete control of all
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: of the computers in one of the branches of the
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: United States government for hours. And we have no idea
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: what happened to those computers, if something happened to them.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Just an absolute failure where we lost control of the
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: home of one of our three branches of government.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: It is unbelievable.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: And I do think, and this is related to the
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: question around arrests, is there is an inherent level of
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: racism in how this played. These were white protesters. So
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: people were talking about this on Twitter yesterday, one of
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: our friends texted us about it, about how DC police
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: surrounded a home in DC for an entire night because
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: there were 100 protesters holed up inside. And these people
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: were helped down the steps as they left after hours
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: engaging in an armed occupation of the United States Capitol.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Well, and it's systemic at every level, right? Because there are,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot of questions that need to be answered.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: The question about the selfies, the question about the, there's
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: a video of cops opening the gate. And then there's
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: also videos too of cops trying to push the crowd
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: back and just being completely overrun, right? Now Capitol Police
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: says a bunch of their members were out because of
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: fucking COVID So they have less police than they usually have.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: But also their police force was amped up from like
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: a couple hundred to 2000 after 9-11 just forced this situation.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Very scenario for a scenario just like this. So even
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: when the cops were trying to push them back, they
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: were overrun. The cops were like, you know, firing tear gas.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: They did obviously shoot some woman in the chest who died.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: So but like even when they were trying, they did
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: not have the numbers they needed, nor did they act
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: the way they should have to stop an invading force
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: when the entire U.S. Congress was inside. The entire fucking U.S. Congress. Democrats, Republicans,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: the two vice presidents. I just, it's staggering. It's staggering.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: There should be a full-fledged investigation into it as soon
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: as possible.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: Most of the line of succession was in that building
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: and there was no protection.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: There is an interview with the most recent chief of
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: the Capitol Police in the Washington Post where she just
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: destroys their entire preparation for it and cannot figure out
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: why they set the barricade so close to the Capitol.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Why weren't they off the Capitol grounds as they've been
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: in many, many previous protests, peaceful, of course. And it's
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: just an, This incredibly dangerous failure that could have been,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: as terrible as it was, could have been so much
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: worse on so many levels.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: I also read in the Washington Post, too, that the D.C. police,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: which sort of guard the perimeter around outside, but they
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: don't guard the Capitol itself. They knew because of all
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the posts, all of Trump's posts, that things were getting bad.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: They were worried that the Capitol Police did not have
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: shit under control. But the D.C. police, of course, weren't
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: brought in until the evening to settle things down. It's
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: also like one of the most heavily guarded cities in
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: the world, aside from D.C. police and the Capitol Police.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: There's FBI, there's SWAT teams, there's fucking like all the
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: goons that were out this summer that were in plain
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: clothes that Bill Barr sent out. to take care of
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter protesters, they were all around too. And
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: a lot of them were sent in, but they were
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: sent in, of course, after the fucking invaders had already
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: taken the Capitol. Unbelievable. Let's talk about the fallout. So
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: there were statements of condemnation and disgust from other countries,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: which were pretty hard to take and hard to read
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: as an American. There were statements of condemnation from former
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton, from Democratic and Republican members of Congress.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: who did finish the certification after the Capitol was clear
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: on Wednesday night. 121 House Republicans still voted to overturn
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: the election when they got back from being, you know,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: targets of an insurrection. Still voted to overturn the election,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: though only six Republican senators voted to do so, including,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: of course, Cruz and Hawley. So here's my question on
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: this one. What surprised you more? the 121 House members
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: who voted that way after they were targets of an insurrection,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: or the fact that every Republican senator but six came
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: around to the same position on this?
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: This is a sad thing to say, but there's almost
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: nothing surprising that the right wing of the Republican Party
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: can do. Of course they still did this, right? Because
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: the political incentives that put them in this position still exist.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: And There is, I guess, Michael, I have a question
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: for you, actually. What was your reaction to seeing those
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: statements of condemnation from former Republicans, current Republicans, people who
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: have supported Trump?
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: So I am, which there should come as no surprise
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: to you, I am certainly not in the like, now
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: they're heroes camp that some people seem to be in.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: These days. But I think what happened is, look, when
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: when you're the one barricading yourself in a fucking office
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: because there's goons outside who are coming to get you
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: and they don't care that you're a Republican who supported Trump.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Because they are extremists who like only answer to fucking,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: you know, their cult leader, Donald Trump. And they'll mow
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: down a Republican just as fast as they'll mow down
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: a Democrat. You know, like I think there are some
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Republicans who partly because, at least the Republican members of Congress,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: who partly because they experienced yesterday firsthand thought, you know what,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: this has now gotten out of hand. And we've now
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: got to stop this. And look, and some of them...
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: got some of them came to that realization before the
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Capitol was taken. So, you know, Mitch McConnell had clearly
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: had enough of this shit and gave a speech yesterday
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: morning about how a little too late, Mitch, little too late.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: But Mitch McConnell gave a speech about how like we're
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: not overturning the election. We're moving on all this other shit.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: You know, Mitt Romney has been, I will say, courageous,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: a patriot through all this. And it was outrage like
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: his outrage was real yesterday. You know, not just saying
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: like some leaders have caused this, basically saying the president
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: did this. This is the president's fault. But like Mitt
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Romney has been there for a while. So I do
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: think that like basically Republicans divided up into two camps yesterday.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: They were the ones who thought, you know what, I
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: was on this train, but now shit's gotten too far.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: And this is actually a little scary even for me.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: And then the ones who are like, you know, the
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: fucking Matt Gaetz's of the world and the House Republicans
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: and Ted fucking Cruz and Josh fucking Hawley who are like, yeah,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: you know what? It was it was it was probably Antifa. Yeah,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: it was Antifa that did it. It wasn't it wasn't
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Trump loyalist. It was Antifa. And this is fine. And oh,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: come on. And both sides are to blame and blah, blah, blah,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: you know, all that bullshit. And that is the core
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: of the Republican Party. And that's probably the part of
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party that will remain successful politically forever. In
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: the months and years to come, sadly.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: My reaction is probably similar, but a little different. I
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: view most of those statements as just pure CYA.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: It's good. It's possible.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure there are some.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know what goes on. I honestly, I have
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: no idea what goes on in these people's heads anymore.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: I just can't. I don't know.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think we should be appreciative for people who
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: speak out, right? If they do it sincerely, like I
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: think Mitt Romney legitimately did it sincerely. George W. Bush,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: sincere in this, um, Ted Cruz's statement condemning the violence
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: did not seem to be dripping with sincerity to me.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: No, fuck him. He didn't condemn the violence. Then he
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: fucking started tweeting at Beto, like, you're dividing people. Your
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: rhetoric is divisive. Fuck Ted Cruz. Fuck Ted Cruz.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: But here is, this is my reaction, which is, thank
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: you for your statement. Can I get an iota of
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: self-reflection for how we got to this moment? Because all
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: of those Republicans, Mitt Romney included- bear some responsibility for this.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Because I think one of the dangers of this entire
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: situation is.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: You fucking, you rode the tiger. You rode the tiger.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: The danger of the situation is we make it entirely
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: about Trump. Trump lit the match that started this, but
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: all of these Republicans for more than a decade had
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: been pouring the gas on the ground that let him
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: do it, right? Every Republican- for as far back as
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: we can imagine, who has been talking about fake voter
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: fraud in order to justify disenfranchising your opponent's voters, bear
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: responsibility for this. Fox News bears responsibility for this. The
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: social media platforms that have allowed Americans to be, willingly
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: and knowingly allowed Americans to be radicalized by the spreading
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: of conspiracy theories are responsible for this. Weaponizing conspiracy theories
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: and racial animus for political gain was the Republican playbook
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: long before Donald Trump ever showed up. Benghazi is a
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theory. Birtherism is a conspiracy theory. They've been doing
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: this forever. And this is where we got here. And
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: if we are in this situation– and we'll talk about
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: this in terms of the 25th Amendment impeachment where it's
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: like we're going to get Trump's hands off the wheel
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: and we're going to be OK. We are deeply fucking
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: mistaken because the forces that gave us Trump are getting worse,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: not better.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: And look, this is– I mean– What's truly insidious about
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: this is that most of these Republican leaders and right
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: wing media figures know what they are peddling is a lie.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: We said it before, like few people have more contempt
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: for Republican voters and the Republican base than Republican politicians
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: and the right wing media figures who profit off of
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: all of this bullshit. And every day they wake up
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: and they tell millions of Americans these lies. And so
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: if you're someone who's a Trump voter, if you're someone
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: who watches Fox News, you're on fucking 8chan. You're on
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: one of these platforms. You listen to Donald Trump. You
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: listen to Louie Gohmert. You listen to Ted Cruz. What
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: do you think the world is? What do you think
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: the world is? You think the world is a bunch
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: of radical Democrats who hate you, who are dangerous or worse, pedophiles, socialists.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: They're coming to get you. They're stealing an election from you.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: They hate you. They're going to come into the suburbs
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: and kill you. That's what you hear day after day
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: after day, conspiracy after conspiracy. And there is no one
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: to tell these people that it is a lie. No
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: one will tell them it's a lie because the Republican
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: politicians want their votes. And even though they know it's
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: a lie, they just fucking say it anyway. And they
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: keep saying it. And you know what? Like good for
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Mitt Romney, who you're right, like he went down this
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: path in 2012 as well. But at least like he
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: has since seen seen the danger of this. And last
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: night during his speech, he made that same point. He's like,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: these are lies that we are telling these voters. We
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: are lying to them. And that is at the core
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: of this, is that these people are being lied to.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: And Fox News, fucking Fox News was still lying to
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: them last night. Tucker Carlson still last night was telling
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: them that it was Antifa that infiltrated this. Tucker Carlson
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: was still telling them that they're going to use this
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: infiltration of the Capitol to take away your rights. You
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: work at fucking Fox News right now and your network
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: is telling people that after after. mob stormed the Capitol,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: you should fucking look yourself in the mirror and ask
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: why you're working at Fox News. If you consider yourself
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: a fucking straight news reporter or a producer or anyone
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: who works at that network or any of the fucking
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Democrats who have contracts at that network.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: You know, there is such a desire, probably not because
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: politics is narrated and covered by liberal arts majors like
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: us to sort of set the whole thing into a
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: world of protagonists and antagonists. There's a hero's journey, et cetera.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: And so Trump is the bad guy. And then we're constantly,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: we're so desperate for some good guys from the other
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: side because that fits with the narrative, which is why
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: when Mitch McConnell gave his speech before the violence really
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: took hold, when he gave his speech condemning what Cruz
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: and Hawley were doing and saying, except the election results.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: And all these reporters are like, this is the most
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: important speech Mitch McConnell has ever given. Bullshit. The most
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: important speech Mitch McConnell should have given is the one
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: he should have given right after the election when he
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: could have told voters to accept the results that these
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: were lies. They let all of this happen because they
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: thought they could leverage it politically and it almost burned
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: down the Capitol.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: This is not just like it hurt them politically. They
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: lost the Georgia elections. It brought our government to heel
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: for hours.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you're absolutely right. This whole thing could
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: have been avoided with a couple of speeches from a
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: couple of Republicans the day after the election. The day
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: after the election. And Mitch McConnell just said, why?
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: Why?
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Because they wanted to win Georgia. That's why. They thought
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: they needed the base excited so that they could win Georgia. Well,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: you lost Georgia and you almost burned down the U.S. government.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: So guess you miscalculated, Mitch.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're a craven asshole and you're bad at politics.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about Trump's reaction. He spent most of the
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: day angry at Mike Pence while this was all going
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: on for not trying to unilaterally overturn the election for him.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: He refused to approve Washington, D.C. 's request for National
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Guard troops to help. So Mike Pence and the Secretary
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: of Defense went around him and approved the request themselves
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: and then put out a statement. The acting Secretary of
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Defense put out a statement saying, I've been in touch
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: with Mike Pence and the congressional leaders about protecting the Capitol.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Didn't mention Donald Trump because Donald Trump was so angry
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and pissed and happy that this was going on. Reports
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump was pleased this was happening. So Donald
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Trump wasn't part of protecting the Capitol because he was
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: too pissed. He was forced finally by his staff to
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: send out a few very tepid tweets and a video
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: where he told the extremists that he loved them, but
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: that they should go home. And then he tweeted, like,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: this is what happens when you steal an election, basically,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: was his tweet. We don't know what that tweet is
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: now because it was finally deleted from Twitter. And then
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Twitter temporarily banned him from Twitter and Facebook. And both
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: platforms have threatened to permanently ban him if he continues
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: to violate the rules. I was prepping this morning, so
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I can't keep up with this. But I think Facebook
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: now said he's banned indefinitely. And he's back on Twitter.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: It's on Facebook. Facebook and Instagram. Mark Zuckerberg put out
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: a statement that said Facebook and Instagram are going to
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: ban Trump for at least until the end of his
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: presidency and possibly longer. Twitter, it's not entirely clear what
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: has happened. He had a 12-hour ban, I think, as
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: of yesterday. And with– I don't know. By the time–
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: this will probably be in a different iteration by the
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: time this podcast comes out. But I would not be
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: shocked if Twitter followed the lead of Facebook on this
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: because usually they're slightly ahead of Facebook, which is still
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: way too late on some of these deplatforming issues. But
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: we'll see what happens.
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: And I will say– and great. Great for Twitter, great
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: for Facebook. Like, you know, as one of our friends noted,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: it sort of, it seemed, it felt calmer last night
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: that Trump wasn't on Twitter continuing to rile things up. Though,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: as Tommy also pointed out, like, this whole thing started,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: not necessarily because of his tweets, but because he got
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: up in front of the White House at that rally
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: and told people to go storm the fucking Capitol. And
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: so like the guy can still go to the briefing
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: room and cause trouble. So he is, so it's good
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: that he's off Twitter. It's good that he's off Facebook,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: but he is still a threat. So the question is
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: what can be done about Donald Trump? There have been
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: calls for impeachment among Democrats, including minority leader, soon to
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: be majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and even some Republicans, though
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: not Too many publicly there. There have been reports that
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: cabinet officials and White House officials are talking about invoking
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: the 25th Amendment. There have been White House resignations overnight
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: and rumored cabinet resignations. What the fuck can we do here?
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Should Trump be impeached or removed from office?
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: That was true before this happened. It's even more true now.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Is he most definitely unfit for the job of protecting
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: and leading America? 100%. And should the 25th Amendment be invoked?
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Been true since 2015.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Are those things going to happen? It's just worth noting
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: that you need 17 Republicans.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Well, I've been going back and forth on this. So yeah,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: you need 19 with the current Senate, 17 if Ossoff
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: and Warnock are seated.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: 24 hours ago? there were 12 Republican senators who refused
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: to acknowledge Joe Biden's legitimate election. So it's hard to
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: imagine where, even if the House were to impeach him.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Now we're going to get 17 to convict. Yes.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: 1917, that seems very, very challenging.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: And I should say that Igor Bobich last night asked
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Mitt Romney on the way out of the Senate, Mitt
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Romney being the one Republican who voted to convict last time,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: last impeachment, because now we're talking about a second impeachment.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump gets two impeachments. And he said- You know,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: I think that's really hard to do right now. I
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: think we all have to just hold our breath for
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: the next 14 days, is what Romney said. So if
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: you have the person who convicted last time, the Republican
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: who convicted last time saying, I don't think it's possible
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: this time, I don't know where you're going to find
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: an additional 16 or 17 Republicans in the Senate to
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: convict this man. And look, if the House wants to
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: gavel into session and impeach Donald Trump as a symbolic gesture,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: as a purely symbolic gesture, which is what it would be,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I'm for it. If I was in the House, I
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: would vote for that resolution for sure. But that's all.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Let's not kid ourselves. That's all it would be. I
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: don't think you're going to get 17 senators. But like, look,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: if you want to pass the resolution and then drop
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: it in Mitch McConnell's lap and make him be the
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: one to say, no, we're going to not convict Donald Trump.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: I think that's fine. I think that's fine. And, you know,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: and Tommy pointed this out on Monday. It's not just
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: to remove the threat over the next 13 days. It
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: is to if, if Donald Trump is impeached and convicted,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: if he's convicted, he will never be allowed to run
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: for any office again. And I do think it is
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: worth trying to prevent him to make sure that he
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: does not come back in 2024 and run again.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: Maybe you can sell that to Cruz, Hawley, uh, Tom.
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a good point. My brother made this point.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: He's like, why wouldn't they want him out of the
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: picture in 2024? You know, like what it is. Look,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: I think you back to your question earlier about, um,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: some of these Republican statements, like Georgia plays a big
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: role here too. Donald Trump is of very little use
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: to any of these Republicans right now. He cost them
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: two Senate seats or helped cost them two Senate seats,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: let's say, we're going to get into this, in Georgia,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: cost them a majority, destroyed the House majority in 2018,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: lost them the Senate majority in 2020, one-term president, the
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: party is now in tatters. Um, and a bunch of
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: them want to run for president in 2024. Now they
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: do want his voters, so they don't want to piss
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: his voters off, which drives everything that they do. Every
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: fucking destructive move they make is about his fucking voters. Um,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: but like, what good is Donald Trump to these people
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: now anyway?
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Well, I was reading this morning, I think from Jake Sherman,
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: that up until yesterday, Kevin McCarthy's plan for taking the
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: house back was to work hand in glove with Donald
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: Trump to raise money for the House, to rally in
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Republican districts. He was a huge part of their plan.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: And the question is, what does that mean? I just
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: want to prepare everyone's expectations for this, as they are
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: all going right back to him in a couple of months.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: They will find some grievance about Biden or some tweet
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: of Neera Tanden's and that'll send them right back into
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Trump's lap, right? Like that, we should just be prepared
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: for that because this is about where the political winds
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: are blowing. And if you're a Republican who is in
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: a safe district and your political fear is not a
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: Democrat in the general election, it's a MAGA Republican in
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: the primary, this pushes you in that direction. And there
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: are going to be candidates running Take the Georgia gubernatorial
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: election in 2022. Doug Collins, this report, is almost certainly
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: going to run against Brian Kemp. You think Donald Trump
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: is not going to campaign for Doug Collins and Doug
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: Collins is not going to want him there? And then
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: if Doug Collins wins that primary and Stacey Abrams is
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: the Democratic nominee, you don't think Donald Trump is going
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: to be on the stump in Georgia campaigning against Stacey Abrams?
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: That is probably to our benefit, but he's not going anywhere. Right.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: No, he's not going anywhere and all these Republicans are
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: going to love him. I think maybe the only hope
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: here is the narrow group of Republicans who want to
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: be president instead of him in the Senate.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Want to get rid of it yes and that might
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: be the only just purely pure self-interested now let's talk
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: about the 25th amendment because i see that going around
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: a lot and we just got to talk about the
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: 25th amendment 25th amendment of the constitution is provides for
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: line of succession removal of the president in case the
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: president falls ill or dies or something like that so
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Here's what happens. If a majority of the cabinet decides
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: that the president is unfit to serve, and now when
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: the amendment was conceived, it could either be because the
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: president has a stroke and is in the hospital and
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: not conscious, or because he's Donald Trump and a fucking lunatic.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Take your pick. So if a majority of the cabinet,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: including the vice president, decides that The president is unfit
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: to serve. They transmit a letter to Congress saying, so
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: vice president takes power. Then there is, then Trump gets
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: a move. If the president then says, no, no, I
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: am fit to serve. And these people are trying to
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: stage a coup. The president sends a letter to Congress saying, oh,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: I am fit to serve. And then what happens is Congress,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: if they're not already convened, must reconvene within 48 hours.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: And then if, and then Congress basically has to vote
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: to keep the president out of power. needs a two-thirds
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: vote in each House to say, yes, Donald Trump is
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: unfit to serve. So you're not going to get that vote,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: two-thirds vote in the House. That's harder than impeachment, because impeachment,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: you need two-thirds in the Senate, but you need a
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: majority in the House. To maintain the 25th, you need
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: two-thirds in both chambers, which you're not going to get.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: The only thing here is, it also says in the
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Constitution that Congress has 21 days to make that judgment
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: and to take that vote. So if the cabinet did this,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: if Pence did this, Nancy Pelosi could just dick around
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: for 21 days before taking the vote and we'd hit
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: the 20th and that would be that. Donald Trump wouldn't
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: be in power for those days. Mike Pence would. So
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: you could, if you want, like go through the cabinet list,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's cabinet and see there's 15 of them, including
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: the chief of staff gets to be a Obviously, Mark
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Meadows isn't voting against him. See if you can find
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: eight votes in the cabinet to, you know, say that
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump is unfit to serve. I was doing it.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Were you looking at the list?
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: It was a fun game. I was just kind of
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: looking through it like, hmm. But there's not a lot.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Like Regina Haspel do it at CIA? Probably. Steve Mnuchin
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: after he embarrassed him? Maybe. Alex Azar after he embarrassed him? Yeah, maybe.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: But like Pompeo, DeVos, I don't know.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Could you imagine if we survive this moment as a
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: country and we stop the planet from melting underneath our
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: feet and like a hundred years from now, school kids
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: are learning why this guy was president for like eight
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: days at the end, having to explain this moment to them.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: So anyway, I mean, look, I think what Romney said
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: last night is probably correct, which is that we, the
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: practical effect of all this is going to be that
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: we're going to have to hold our breath for the next,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: the next 13 days. We should also say that late
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: last night, I think four in the morning Eastern, the
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: white house did release a statement from Donald Trump saying,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: pledging an orderly and peaceful transition and saying that he
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: would leave on the 20th, which don't know how they
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: got that statement out. Don't know how much it means.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Don't know how fast he basically retracts it when he
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: gets back on Twitter, but that is where we are
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: as of, um, let's see, 10 30 Pacific coast time
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: today on Thursday is Donald Trump pledging an orderly transition
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: on the 20th. Um, Question about long term, like what
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: do we do about this violence? What do we do
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: about this extremism? What does Joe Biden do to try
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: to heal this country? He did speak yesterday as this
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: was as this was happening. And I think we have
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: a clip of Biden's speech.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: a true America.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Do not represent who we are, what we're seeing. or
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: a small number of extremists dedicated to lawlessness.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: This is not dissent.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: It's disorder.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: It's chaos.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: It borders on sedition. And it must end now. What
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: do you think? What do you think of Biden's speech
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: and what do you think of the path ahead for
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: him in trying to piece all this back together?
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: His speech was great. Some of the things that frustrate
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: a lot of Democrats about Joe Biden in the primary
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: are why he, and sometimes us, frustrate us in the
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: primary too sometimes. But that is why he is the
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: person best suited to this moment. He is someone who
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: approaches things with decency and not anger. His natural instincts
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: is unity and forgiveness. And that is the right temperament
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: for this. He is never someone who's going to throw
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: gasoline on a fire. He's going to always try to
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: appeal to the better angels people, even when those people
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: have demonstrated no evidence of having angels, he is going
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: to try to do that. And he should continue to
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: do that. I think we all have to understand, and
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: I imagine that Joe Biden does understand this as well,
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: is that the solution to this problem is not something
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: that happens within the traditional bounds of quote unquote normal politics.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: We are not a tour of red states away from unity.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: We are not more drinks with Mitch McConnell away from unity.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: We are not one infrastructure, bipartisan infrastructure bill away from
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: solving this problem. This problem is endemic to American society.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: It is something that includes politics. It's driven by politics,
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: but goes much beyond politics. And we have to really
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: take a step back, all of us, right? This is
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: not a problem for Joe Biden in the White House
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: to solve and think about how we fix it because
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: our country is coming apart at the seams. We have,
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: we had An armed insurrection in the Capitol yesterday by
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: people who believe, most of them, to their core something
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: that is provably not true. And that lie was spread
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: all across this country by a broken media ecosystem, by
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: social media platforms, by politicians who knew better. And none
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: of that is going to get better on its own.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: We are not 14 days, however many it is, from normalcy.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: There is a lot of work to do. I don't
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: know that anyone, I certainly don't have the answers to this,
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: but it is much bigger than one person sitting in
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: the White House starting.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: In two weeks. I sort of have a few specific
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: things and then one larger thing. We need to regulate
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: these social media platforms and not just wait and hope
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: that out of the goodness of their heart, Mark Zuckerberg
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: and and Jack are going to suddenly decide to implement
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: policies that protect people and stop the incitement of hate
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: and violence. So there needs to be some regulation of
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: these platforms. I think we need more pressure on right-wing media.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: I think there needs to be more competition for right-wing media,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: from progressive media. You and I have said this a
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: million times. It's why we do this. I think the
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: next Department of Justice... Um, we're going to talk about
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: Merrick Garland in a bit and the FBI have to
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: go back to taking white nationalism and right-wing extremism seriously,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: surveilling it, going after it. It is a incredibly dangerous
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: threat to this country from within, and that needs to
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: be a priority. Um, and then, you know, then the
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: work of the work of elections and the work of democracy, right?
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Like I, I think that, um, as you said, like
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the odds are that we will face this kind of
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: hate and violence again. And the sad truth is it's
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: always been a part of who we are as a country. But,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: you know, our friend Ben Rhodes pointed this out yesterday, tweeted,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: there's always two competing stories about America. And, you know,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: we're a country of slavery and civil war and Jim
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Crow and horrific racist violence. But, you know, we're also
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: the country of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Rights Act and Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: And ultimately, I think politics is about us choosing between
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: those competing stories. And the story that we chose on
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Tuesday night looked very different than Wednesday's. And it was
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: almost poetic, right? Like Donald Trump ends the November election
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: by trying to disenfranchise millions of voters, specifically suing to
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: throw out ballots in majority black areas like Detroit and
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia and Milwaukee and Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell's Senate majority depends
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: on two Georgia senators who have literally profited off the
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: pandemic while denying relief to disproportionately poor and black and
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: brown citizens of Georgia who are hurting most. And one
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: of them, Kelly Loeffler, runs one of the most racist
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: campaigns in memory against her black opponent. And what happens
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: on Tuesday? A multiracial coalition of whites and Latinos and
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Asians and more black voters than have ever voted in
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: any election in any state ever. Turn out to end
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell's majority by electing a young Jewish kid who
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: worked for John Lewis and the first black Democratic senator
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: from the South who literally preaches for Martin Luther King Jr.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: 's pulpit. And that's America, too. We have a good
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: clip of Warnock from his victory speech.
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: The other day, because this is America, the 82 year
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: old hands that used to pick somebody else's cotton went
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: to the polls and picked her youngest son to be
• 39:32
  Speaker 5: a United States Senator. So I come before you tonight
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: as a man who knows that the improbable journey that
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: led me to this place in this historic moment in
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: America could only happen here. We were told that we
• 39:51
  Speaker 5: couldn't win this election. But tonight, we prove that with hope,
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: hard work, and the people by our side, anything is possible.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: Georgia, man. Were you surprised?
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, only because I refuse to allow myself hope. We
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: were on a text chain where People were making predictions,
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: and you should feel free to gloat about yours, but
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: I refused to do it for two reasons. One, we
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: don't make predictions. That was a thing we pledged, and
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know why you violated that. But my prediction
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: was- Publicly, publicly. My prediction was, look, I'm transparent. My
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: prediction was going to be a loss, and I felt
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: you seemed really kind of on edge personally with the
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: shoulder and the pandemic. I didn't really want to run
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: out of your parade. This is what I thought about.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: both in preparing for this podcast and thinking about everything
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: that's happened in the last 48 hours of American politics is, one,
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: it feels so discordant almost to talk about the joyous
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: outcome in Georgia and then break down, like, what lessons
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: did we learn and how did we win and how
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: did we increase turnout with what we just went through, right?
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: We were going to start the podcast with the win.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: That was going to be the whole thing.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: We were very excited to. We were very excited to.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: But imagine what yesterday and today would feel like if
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: we lost in Georgia. If everything that had happened since
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: the election had led to Republicans being rewarded with more
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: political power, with a validation of the idea that stealing
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: elections and spreading conspiracy theories works. If David Perdue and
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: Kelly Loeffler joined the coup the night before the election,
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: and if the voters had then given them six more years,
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: that would have been absolutely devastating. We at least– are
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: able to take, it's a small amount of comfort, granted,
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: but it is comfort that Mitch McConnell becomes a minority leader.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: He loses the power to block Joe Biden's agenda. We
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: have a lot of work to enact that agenda, but
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: they have paid a political price. And it's a pretty
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: steep one for their behavior, both during the Trump years
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: and since the election. And that feeling has turned from
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: joy to relief after what we saw yesterday, in my mind.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I don't know why I was so hopeful
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: about Georgia the whole time. Because I was a complete
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: anxious mess, as you know, before November. And even when
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: on that text chain that we're on with and I'll
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: say we're on with Mitch Stewart, you know, field organizing
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: data genius from the Obama campaign. And Mitch demanded that
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: we all make predictions in November at the end. He said,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: just for me, tell me what's going to happen. And
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: we all refused. I made no map for November. I
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: made no predictions. I was too worried, not even to myself.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: I made no predictions. But for some reason in Georgia,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: I started feeling, I just felt better about it. And
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: I've started feeling, part of the reason I felt better
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: about it is because of what happened in Georgia in November,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: partly because I believe so much in Stacey Abrams and
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: people like Latasha Brown and Nse Ufot, who we're going
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: to have on, and all of these organizers in Georgia
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: and all the work that they've done. But also, like,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: the environment just felt right for this. And I ended
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: up predicting that Warnock would win by 90,000. He's currently
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: up 75,000, but more vote out. And Asaf would win
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: by 80,000. He's currently up 37,000. More vote out. So
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: I won't quite hit that one. But pretty close. Pretty close.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: And I was saying, by the way, in early December,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: I was like, we're either going to win by half
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: a point or lose by a point. And some of
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: our friends were saying down four. We're going to lose
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: by four, which... Wrong. But anyway, predictions aside. Predictions aside.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: So I want to talk about why we won. But first...
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: What do we know about how this turnout and this
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: coalition differed from the one in November, in which, at
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: least in the Senate races, the Republicans slightly outperformed the Democrats? Which,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: you know, this is why this is so amazing here, right? Like,
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: we just had an election in November. Nate Cohen was
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: calling it the perfect poll. The only perfect poll is
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: an election. And we took the perfect poll in November.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: David Perdue beat John Ossoff and the Republican candidates beat
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: the Democratic candidates in the special election. And so in
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: two months time, suddenly Democrats come back and win. What
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: what differed about the coalitions and the turnout?
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: A couple of things are notable.
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: One is.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: Democrats turned out more than Republicans. And Nate Cohn did
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: crack some math on this, which is in precincts that
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: voted 80% for Biden in November, turnout was 92% of
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: the November total. In districts that turned out for Trump
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: at that same rate of 80%, it was 88%. So
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: that 4% difference is gigantic. And so that's one.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: And there was one more. In black districts, heavy black districts,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: which were also 80% black or more, turnout was 93%
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: of the November number, which was bigger than both the
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Biden districts or the Trump districts.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: And even more shocking than all of that to me
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: is there were 140,000 people who had voted early in
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: this runoff who did not vote in November.
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Two months. Two months in a special election when there's
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: supposed to be less attention and more drop-off. You had
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: over 100,000 more voters who didn't even vote in November.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: And demographically, based on what we know from the early vote,
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: that was a group that was largely favorable to Democrats.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: And that is incredibly notable. That is the absolute tribute
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: to grassroots organizing. That's the only way you find those
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: people is through the hardcore work of organizing. And it's
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: a tremendous feat. And it goes against history. In relatively
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: recent history, there have twice been Georgia senatorial runoffs after
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: Democrats won the White House. In both cases, the Democrats lost,
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: including in 1992, a Democrat incumbent losing because Democratic turnout
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: was diminished through complacency, et cetera. And this time that
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: didn't happen. Our turnout was When you are in the
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: 90% of November turnout in a runoff election that happens
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: three or four days after New Year's, it's unbelievable.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: It's unheard of. It doesn't happen. There are no historical
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: examples of it happening that I've heard. Someone can prove
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: me wrong, but it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. So
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about the turnout. Turnout ended up being 4.4 million.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: All the prognosticators, a lot of folks who were on
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: these campaigns, part of the state party, everyone, People believe
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: that if turnout was north of 4.3 million, it would
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: be good for the Republicans because it meant that they're
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: going to match the Democratic turnout. And the fact that
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: it hit 4.4 million and Democrats still won is, I think,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: an even larger testament to the Democratic turnout operation because Look,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how Republican turnout did sag
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: more than Democratic turnout, but Republicans turned out in this race.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: Their turnout machine was strong. Getting 88% in the heavy
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Trump districts over their November turnout is still very, very
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: good for a special election. But Democrats just did more.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: I want to point out just a few more interesting
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: nuggets here. Youth turnout and youth share of the vote
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: went up. Biden won young voters by 11 points in November.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Ossoff and Warnock won them by 34 points. So the
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: share of youth voters went up. The Latino share of
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: the vote went up. So they did better among the
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Latino voters who showed up than they did among the
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Latino voters who showed up in the general. And then,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: as you mentioned, the 140,000 voters who voted in January
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: who didn't vote in November were disproportionately young and people
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: of color. So two very heavily Democratic voters. groups. Three
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: reasons you win race. Organizing, candidate, message. Let's start with organizing.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: What happened here? And I know you're going to talk
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: to N.C. about this more, but just as a top level.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: A culmination of a decade of work that did not stop.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: No one took a day off. They went back to
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: work the first Wednesday in November and kept organizing, kept
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: turning people out. It was local organizing, community organizing, and
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: It is what has happened in Georgia is the model
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: for how we turn more of this country blue. And
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: we have to learn everything there is to learn from
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: the people involved and replicate their model. Because you cannot
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: turn out the vote like that if you start 60
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: days before the election or even six months before the
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: election or even a year before the election. It is
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: the work that happens in the odd years. It's the
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: work that happens when no one's paying attention. And the
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: organizers in Georgia, mostly black women, are– Heroes. They literally
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: saved the Republic right here.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: And I just want to emphasize that point because, you know,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of people rightfully praising Stacey Abrams. We
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: do it all the time here. But it's, Obama used
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: to say this to us, too. He's like, sometimes people
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: think I just like materialized on a stage in Boston
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: to give that 2004 convention speech. I think sometimes people
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: think Stacey Abrams just like materialized in 2018, just like
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: suddenly showed up and gave a speech where she, you know,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: talked about voter suppression and how Brian Kemp cost her
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: the election because of his suppression. And she was a
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: star there then. And that's the first a lot of
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: people heard of Stacey Abrams, right? Stacey Abrams worked for
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: 10 years on this project, 10 years doing work that
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: nobody wanted to do. And she said this to you
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: in your interview with her after November, like just going
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: around to people with a PowerPoint about why it's important
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: to invest in Georgia because Georgia, the demographics are changing
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: and it's It's the most diverse battleground state and it's
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: the youngest battleground state. And if we organize and we
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: register people, we can do this. And like a lot
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: of the work of organizing and the work of winning,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: so much of it is not glamorous. It doesn't put
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: you in the limelight. You don't get a lot of
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: fame from it. You get a lot of rejection. There's
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of losses. Stacey Abrams, aside from when she
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: lost in 2018, she endured a lot of other losses.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: So did Georgia Democrats. So did the organizers in Georgia
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: who've been working on this for the last 10 years.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: But they kept at it. And so a lot of
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: these places that we look at today that seem like
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: it's going to be hard to flip or that it's
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: going to be too, you know, whatever, like these things
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: don't happen in one cycle. And just because you lose
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: one cycle doesn't mean that that state or that district
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: should be out of reach for you for the next
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: cycle or the cycle after that. Like this is the
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: work of organizing takes time. And that is why Stacey
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: Abrams and Latasha Brown and NSEI and all of these
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: people are Lauren Gurwaguro, like all of these people who
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: worked so hard in Georgia have finally succeeded because they
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: put in the work for so long. Look, they registered 75,000
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: voters between November and January. 75,000 voters they registered. More
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: than half of them were under 35. They started knocking
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: on doors again. That's a difference from the general election.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: There was in-person campaigning. And I just want to give
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: a shout out to everyone who participated in Vote Save
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: America for this, especially our team at Crooked, who Basically
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: took no time off and then just worked through Thanksgiving
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: and Christmas to get Adopt-A-State Georgia up and running. And
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: then everyone who signed up, we had 41,000 people sign
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: up to Adopt Georgia between November and January. Raised $ 4. 2
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: million for the Get Mitch Fund for Ossoff and Fair
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Fight Action. Raised $ 1. 65 million for our Every Last Vote Fund,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: which included Black Voters Matter, Mijente, and the new Georgia product.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: made 108,000 calls to unregistered voters with the New Georgia
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: Project Action Fund, and we sent 5,000 volunteers distributed to
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: local Georgia organizing groups on the ground. So thank you
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: to everyone who signed up to adopt Georgia and who
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: helped out and volunteered or donated in any way over
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: the last couple of months. You really made a huge difference.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: So as we said, Democratic turnout dropped by less than
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: Republican turnout. What role do you think Trump played in
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: the process the drop in Republican turnout. Obviously, two possibilities here.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: Republicans stayed home because Trump wasn't on the ballot, or
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: they stayed home because Trump, and to a greater extent,
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: lunatics like Lin Wood, told them that the election was rigged.
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: I think it's more the former than the latter.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: You think it's more that Trump wasn't on the ballot?
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: If Republican turnout was sky high, and if Democrat turnout
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: had been lower than it was, we would have been
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: blown away by how high the Republican turnout was for
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: this special election.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: That, like, we talked about how high the Democratic turnout
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: was unprecedented. The Republican turnout is also unprecedented. It's just
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: slightly less unprecedented, and therefore they lost. And so, like,
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: we had this hope that Trump was going to convince
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: all these people not to turn out because of the
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: election rigging. But apparently the Georgia voters got the winking
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: and the nodding and went and when it turned out.
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: So I think it had more to do with Trump
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: not being on ballot. Also, Democrats doing a better job
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: of organizing. They out-organized Republicans. And so it's more the
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: Democrats won the race than Republicans lost it. I think
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: that's very important. And as we think about what's going
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: to be really interesting, because turnout was so high on
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: both sides, is was this the last election of the
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: Trump era? Or was it the first election of the
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: post-Trump era? Does it tell us something about how the
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: people are going to stay engaged at this incredibly high
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: level post-Trump? Or will we look back and say this
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: massive amount of engagement where politics was the dominating point
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: of discussion in American life was unique to Trump? And
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: I think that's something we're going to test and see
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: out throughout 2021 and in 2022. And I think it's
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: a really interesting question about where things are headed.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the campaigns and their messages. Ossoff and
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: Warnock hammered COVID relief throughout the campaign, especially at the end.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: when McConnell blocked the $ 2, 000 checks. Biden even focused on
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: this message in his final campaign stop. He said, their
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: election will put an end to the block in Washington
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: on the $ 2, 000 stimulus check. If you send Senator Perdue
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: and Loeffler back to Washington, those checks will never get there.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: It's just that simple. The power is literally in your hands.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: What role do you think that played? It played a
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: huge role.
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: It is hard to know in the moment whether it
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: was the checks specifically or the checks were the embodiment
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: of a very effective narrative about Republicans. The with all
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: of the this, I think, is a great credit to
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: John Ossoff, Raphael Warnock and their campaigns is Trump was
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: the dominating omnipresent figure in the race. He was days
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: before the election. He tried to bully the governor into
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: overturning the results of the presidential election, engaged in multiple
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: electoral crimes and moral travesties. He was in Georgia twice.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: He was tweeting about it all the time. Yet the
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: Senate campaigns ran campaigns like we did in 2018. They
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: pushed Trump into the background and brought the Republican Party
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: and David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler specifically into the foreground.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: And they ran against Loeffler and Perdue as callous, corrupt
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: corporatists in the middle of a recession. And that proved
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: to be a very powerful message. Now, as we think
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: about how this plays out going forward, two incredibly wealthy
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: senators who engage in insider trading to enrich themselves off
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: the pandemic are– particularly vulnerable this attack, but I think
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: it has, I think there's some real lessons learned about
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: how you talk about Republicans not named Trump and elections coming.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: I do think it's a, there's two sides of the
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: sort of Republicans are corrupt message. There's obviously the negative
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: message about Republicans and there's the positive message about what
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: you're going to do. And I do think the $ 2, 000
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: checks gave Democrats the ability to offer voters a tangible
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: benefit to voting for them.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: Which is something that we We often forget this. And
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: by the way, it's not just, you know, because Stacey
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Abrams made this point to me in the wilderness, right?
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: When we talked about sort of some of the more,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: the bigger, some of the more bigger, progressive, ambitious ideas.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: And she said, here's the thing. You need to be
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: able to deliver for voters. And so you need to
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: propose something that is going to make voters' lives better,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: but also something that they believe that you can actually
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: get done. Because if you promise them the moon and
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: you can't deliver, then they're going to grow more cynical
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: the next time and not and not come out. And
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: the $ 2, 000 checks is something that the Democrats can deliver, right?
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: Like it is very obvious that you can just, you
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: can pass the bill. Joe Biden can sign the bill.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: You can send the checks. Like voters aren't stupid. They know,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: they know what's possible and what's not possible. And I
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: think Democrats should remember that when we are campaigning, that
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: it's not sometimes, you know, there are a couple of
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: problems with this. Sometimes we get lost in like tax
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: credit speak, and we're talking about expanding the EITC. And,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: you know, so sometimes we get way too in the
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: weeds and it's benefits that people can't really understand. And
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: it seems small and it seems like, you know, just
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: nibbling around the edges. And then sometimes it's like big
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: and vague promises, you know, like that you make to
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: voters that they know that you're not going to deliver.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: So I think specific policies that you know you can
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: deliver to voters that actually improve their lives are incredibly important.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: That sounds obvious, but it doesn't happen enough.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: And it's hard to find them that are very tangible
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: That is very true. But I also think, like, as
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: much as Warnock and Ossoff did a good job sort
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: of calling out the corruption of these two Republican senators,
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: I didn't see a tweet, an ad, anything from those
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: two candidates where they didn't mention and wear about health
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: care jobs and justice, health care jobs and justice. You know,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: they had three things that they said over and over
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: and over again, and then they had specifics backing that up.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: So I thought that was pretty good. Do you have
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: any other lessons that you think we can draw from
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: this race going forward?
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, there are three lessons I would say. It's
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: negative message against Republicans around a populist economic critique of
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: Republicans pushing Trump out of the narrative as much as possible.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: Is your point specific populist deliverables in terms of policy?
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: And then I think the other thing is they ran big,
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: bold campaigns. They were not embarrassed. They were not centrists.
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: They were not embarrassed to be Democrats. You see that
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: a lot in a purple state. They ran ads with
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: John Lewis. They campaigned with Joe Biden. They ran ads
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: with Barack Obama. They were proud Democrats who ran big,
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: bold campaigns. They ran from a position of strength and
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: hope and not fear. And it did not have to
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: be that way. You often see it in these particularly
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: in these runoff elections where you're trying to just win
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: what you expect to be low turnout, they ran a
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: very motivating race and they benefited from it. And I
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: hope that lots of Democrats follow that lead in 21
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: and 22.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: I think there's something to learn from. Raphael Warnock and
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: his campaign. I mean, we have the first black Democratic
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: senator from the South. He ran a, like you said,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: a campaign where he was unafraid to embrace being a
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: Democrat or a black man in the South. And he also...
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: Kelly Loeffler ran an incredibly racist campaign against him. And
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: how he handled those racist attacks were, you know, there
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: were the puppy videos. And then it was also just
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: constantly pivoting to his positive agenda. You know, and when
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: you are getting attacked like that, when she's going after
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: his church and going after things he said, going after associations,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: all the racist dog whistles that they, that Republicans like
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: to blow every single election. There's a lot of pressure there.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: from your own campaign, from allies, from everyone else, to
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: hit back at every single one of those attacks. And
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: it takes a lot of discipline to say, I'm going
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: to pivot and say, she doesn't have anything to say
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: about herself, so she's attacking me, and here's what I'm
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: going to do for you. She's afraid that if I'm elected,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: I'm going to deliver on these stimulus checks, that I'm
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: going to give people healthcare, that I'm going to help
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: make this country more just. And I think Warnock's message
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: discipline and how he handled the racism leveled against him.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: And I think it's very similar to how Obama handled
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: it in some of his races. I think it's similar
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: to how Stacey Abrams handled it in her race in 2018.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: I think that is something for Democrats, especially Democrats of
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: color who are running to learn from going forward. And yeah, no,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: I think it's, I continue to just be amazed at
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: what happened in georgia a state that has been red
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: for so long where we have a a the first
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: black democratic senator a 33 year old jewish kid um
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: senators who did who didn't run as scared centrists right
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: they didn't run as like you know democratic socialists either
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: like they were they talked about medicaid expansion they didn't
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: talk about medicare for all they they Raphael Warnock ran
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: ads where sheriffs talked about supporting him and he attacked
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: Loeffler on stage and saying, you're the one who's defunded
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: the police with your votes against state and local funding, right?
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: So they didn't really run too far to the left,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: but they definitely didn't run to the center either. They
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: were just Democrats, mainstream Democrats who were proud of what
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: they stood for. And they had an agenda and they
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: had a story about the other side. And sometimes that's it.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: Sometimes that's what you need. That's all you need.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: What I think is so important about Warnock's victory is
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: one of the things that I've really been concerned about
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: over the last couple of years is whenever you talk
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: to someone like Stacey Abrams or Andrew Gillum or someone,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: a candidate of color who is trying to run statewide,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: the hardest part is convincing donors, party types, institutional supporters
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: that you can win. And I was very worried about
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: how narrow the presidential race was, where Joe Biden- A
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: 70-something white man from Scranton barely won the electoral college.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: What that would say about the ability of candidates, black candidates,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: Latino candidates, Asian candidates to run and win statewide in
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: purple and red states. And you saw– we saw that
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: in how the electability question was– during the Democratic primary
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: among our voters was filtered through race and gender. And–
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: We have so much work to do on this, but
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: Raphael Warnock has proven that in a very tough race, again,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: where you're running against an incumbent president who is campaigning- In.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: An incredibly competitive state. Incredibly competitive state.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: You can win. And that is a huge deal. And
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: I hope that we remember that as we think about
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: who our candidates are in races all across this country.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: I totally agree.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: I think it's very, very important. And I'm glad that
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: we could end on Georgia because it is- a very
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: dark and scary set of things that we are dealing
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: with as a country and I'm talking about right now
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: and that there is this positive thing that matters a
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: lot and bodes well for our ability to navigate what
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: is to come in American life because you've proven how
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: to do it in Georgia.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: And we should also end by talking about not just
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: what it means for history or what it means for
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: electoral politics, but what it's actually going to mean for
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden and the country to have A Democratic majority.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: We have a Democratic majority now. We got Mitch. For one,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: Republicans can no longer block any of Biden's nominees if
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: Democrats just hold together. All the complaints about Neera Tanden
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: or Javier Becerra or anyone else we've heard about do
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: not matter. John Cornyn and Lindsey Graham can cry about
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: mean tweets all they want. They can go fuck themselves.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: Just complain all you want about mean tweets. You don't matter.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Number two, Biden can actually pick some judges and start
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: filling judicial vacancies, including the Supreme Court. I believe Justice
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: Breyer is 82. So nice. Might be a nice time
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: to retire. Breyer because we have a democratic president, democratic
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: majority might not last forever. So you might want to
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: start looking at your calendar. Um, and not like he's
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: going to listen to us. You think justice Breyer listens
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: to pod save America or probably not. Uh, and, and
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: so both of these points, the nominees and the judicial vacancies, uh,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: come into play with Biden's announcement on Wednesday that his
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: pick for attorney general is none other than Merrick Garland. Um, Dan,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: what do you think about the pick and what impact
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: did Georgia have on that pick?
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: It's very notable that Joe Biden waited until the races
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: were called to make this choice because Merrick Garland sits
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: second most powerful court in the land. When Obama was president,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: one of the reasons why Harry Reid got rid of
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: the filibuster for judges is because Mitch McConnell filibustered every
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: single nominee to that court. He shrunk the court. Mr.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: I care so much about court packing. He shrunk the D.C.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: Circuit Court of Appeals for all intents and purposes to
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: prevent Obama from getting nominees. And so were McConnell to
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: still be in control of the Senate and Biden were
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: to pick Garland, that seat would certainly never go filled
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: in Biden's first term, for sure. And so I imagine
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: that someone else might have been the nominee if Georgia
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: had gone differently. Because he had He has made almost
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: all of his appointments. This is one of the big four,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: as they're called, and he certainly held it until this moment.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: He clearly wanted to pick Garland, and the voters of
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: Georgia let him do it. Merrick Garland is a tremendous
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: public servant. He has a tremendous record. I had the
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: privilege of sitting in the interview when he was one
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: of the shortlisters to be an Obama pick on the
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court back in 2009 and is a truly phenomenal
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: human being. We have lots of friends who have clerked
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: for him, know him, and think he is– tremendous. And
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: the team he put together, it's not just Merrick Garland.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: Lisa Monaco, our former co-worker, is going to be deputy.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: Vinita Gupta is going to be the associate attorney general.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: And Kristen Clark's going to be in charge of civil rights.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: And this is very notable. He's picked two civil rights
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: leaders to play senior roles in the Justice Department. And
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: that's a huge thing. And I think this is a very,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: very good team.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: There's also Some reports that Biden could or has been
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: thinking about replacing Garland on the D.C. Court of Appeals
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: with Katonji Brown-Jackson. She is a 50-year-old black woman who
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: currently sits on the federal district court in D.C. and
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: also is someone who has been mentioned as a possible
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court justice. And so she could go to Phil
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: Merrick Garland's seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: And then perhaps if Breyer retires... you could get Katonji
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court and elevate a very
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: young black woman to the Supreme Court of the United States,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: which would be awesome. So a lot of good things
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: came from what just happened in Georgia. What else can
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: we expect from a Democratic Senate and where are we
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: still going to face challenges?
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: Well, we're going to face challenges in that the filibuster
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: still exists. So to pass the most things, not nominations,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: not court appointments, but most pieces of legislation, and there
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: are a few exceptions we can talk about, we still
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: need 10 Republicans. And Mitch McConnell still has say under
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: that scenario, under large portions of the Biden agenda. And
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: even still, we have Joe Manchin, a very conservative Democrat,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: Kyrsten Sinema, Mark Kelly from Arizona, more moderate Democrats who
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: have concerns with some of the more progressive Democrats elements
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: of the Biden agenda, some of the more important structural
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: reforms like turning D.C. into a state or some of
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: those sorts of things. So this is hard. 50-50 sentence
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: are very, very challenging. They take a long time to organize.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: There's some pretty intense negotiations between the majority and the
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: minority about how you set up, how many people are
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: on each committee and how you set it up and
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: all of that. So this is an incredibly narrow path
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: to get things done, but it is a path. And
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: that would not exist under any scenario if we had
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: not won both of those seats on Tuesday.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: A few points here, because as you know, Dan, I
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: have some concerns about the filibuster and I have for
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: a while. The reason that we can't, you might be thinking,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: why can't we get rid of the filibuster? Like we
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: said we wanted to. Well, because Joe Manchin doesn't want
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: to get rid of the filibuster. You need 51 votes
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: to get rid of the filibuster, which we have. We
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: have 50, Democrats have 51 votes, but we do not
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: have 51 Democratic senators who want to get rid of
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: the filibuster, namely Joe Manchin. Possibly some others, too.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure we have 40 votes right now.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know that Kiersten. But like some of
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: them you could imagine pressuring. You could imagine saying the
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: voters of your state are going to, you know, punish
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: you if you don't eliminate the filibuster and we're going
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: to have a primary challenge. Joe Manchin, there's none of that.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: We're not getting another Democrat out of West Virginia. Probably
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: in our lifetime. Maybe I'm wrong. I shouldn't say that.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: least in the next 10 years let's say we're not
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: another democratic center of virginia and certainly not another democratic
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: center out of west virginia who is more liberal than
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: joe mansion joe mansion doesn't care about your pressure campaigns
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: he doesn't care about you calling his office and yelling
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: at him he won a seat recently he's there for
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: a while and he's just going to be joe mansion
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: and i hate that you hate that but like that
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: is the reality that we have so the question is
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: Can we ever get to a point where there's legislation
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: that comes to the floor that's so important that McConnell
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: is obstructing so much that we somehow can convince, and
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: by we, I really mean Joe Biden and his administration,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: because again, Joe Manchin doesn't respond to popular pressure and
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: is somewhat insulated from political pressure. Can Biden ever convince
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Manchin to change his position on the filibuster? I don't know.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that question. The other
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: opportunity we have is, You mentioned most legislation requires 60 votes.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: There is something called a budget reconciliation bill where we
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: can pass that bill with only 51 votes. What can
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: you put on a budget reconciliation bill? Well, first of all,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: you're only allowed one budget reconciliation bill per year. You
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: can stuff whatever you want in that so long as
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: it is about taxing and spending. It has to do
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: with actually changing the budget itself. So what can get
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: done within budget reconciliation with 51 votes? The $ 2, 000 checks
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: can get done. Democrats can expand eligibility for Obamacare subsidies.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: They can get Medicare to negotiate for better prescription drug
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: prices that way. You can actually change the Medicare age,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: the age of eligibility for Medicare within budget reconciliation, which
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden, because of Bernie Sanders, has promised to bring
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: down five years. I read that you can possibly do
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: a public option within budget reconciliation. Tax hikes for the rich,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: anything that has to do with taxes, you can do
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: in budget reconciliation, which means climate spending, investment that has
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: to do with climate. You can do some immigration things
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: within budget that have to do with money, but still
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: a lot of immigration stuff would actually have to be
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: real legislation. And then the things that you can't do
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: are minimum wage, immigration, guns, And then this is the
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: big one that worries me that I wanted to ask
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: you about is all of these democracy voting reforms that
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: we know we need to pass in order to make
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: sure that we can still have free and fair elections again. Like,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: what do we do about H.R.1, which we've talked about before,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: which is the House democracy reform bill that they are
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: going to rename the John Lewis Voting Rights Act? What
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: do we do about that bill? Is that is that
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: is that dead on arrival? Does Biden try it anyway?
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: I don't want to say dead on arrival, but there
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: is no plausible path to 10 Republicans supporting something that
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: helps black people and brown people vote. There's no recent
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: history of that being the case. However, I think it's
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: critically important that Biden, in the appropriate order, calls the question.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: We can't just presume Mitch McConnell's obstruction. We have to
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: force him to actually obstruct to things for two reasons. One,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: so that we can create a paper trail of the
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: costs of the Republican Senate for when we are going
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: to go be trying to defeat Republican senators in 2022.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: And if you want to make a case, if Joe
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: Biden wants to do this, and Joe Biden is very
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: reticent on the filibuster, that's the most– even as important
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: as Joe Manchin– Joe Biden is not someone like Elizabeth
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: Warren or Pete Buttigieg or some others who were running
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: for president who were very adamantly opposed to the existence
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: of the filibuster. Joe Biden, as close as he came
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: during the campaign, was to say he was open to
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: the idea if Mitch McConnell was obstreperous, I think was
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: his term. Now Mitch McConnell was obviously going to be
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: a stripper, so he opened the door wide for it.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: But let's test the proposition on all of these issues
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: of the things that are very important that have huge
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: majority support from the American people that Mitch McConnell wants
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: to stop. Let's make him stop them. Let's make Marco
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: Rubio stop these things. Let's make Ron Johnson stop these things.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: Let's make the people that we are going to try
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: to defeat in 2022 go on the record blocking popular legislation.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: Let's not presume to– Let's not assume they're obstruction and
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: so avoid them. Now, when I say do it in
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: the proper order, I think there's going to be a
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: real question about what that budget reconciliation bill is. How
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: soon do you do it? How important is it to
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: fill in the gaps of the very meager COVID relief
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: bill that was passed last month? How quickly do you
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: get these checks out? That is going to require being
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: the budget reconciliation bill. So is that something that's going
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: to move very early? And should that move The House
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: can do things like this, right? So they'll– like Nancy Pelosi,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: pick whatever– if you want to do H.R. 1 first
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: and then come around and do the other thing, that's great.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: The Senate takes much more time. It's much harder. And
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: so it is a real– I'm very curious to see
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: the order in which Biden prioritizes these things and how
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: quickly he wants to play that budget reconciliation card in
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: his presidency.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: I would go very hard on the John Lewis Voting
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: Rights Act. I would put it on the floor. If
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: I was Schumer and just dare Mitch McConnell and those Republicans,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: if you want to filibuster it, like actually filibuster it,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: sit on, get on the Senate floor and just talk
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: about why you don't want to expand voting rights. And
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's necessarily going to shame Republicans, but
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe the pressure builds at that point. Like
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: Joe Manchin, do you want the Republicans to filibuster a
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: bill named after John Lewis about voting rights? That's, that's
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: what we're going to let them filibuster. Like, I think that,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: you know, whether we win or lose on that one,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: I would I would spend a lot of my capital
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: on that because I think that, you know, we don't
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: pass some of these democracy reforms, voting reforms. I get
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: pretty worried about elections in 2022 and 2024 and 2026
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: and beyond. We have redistricting this year. That's going to
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: be tough for us. Like, you know, we know we
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: already saw in Georgia.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: They're getting ready to pass a raft of voter restrictions
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: in Georgia. And look, there's limited stuff that you can
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: do on the federal level, but H.R. 1 is a
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: good bill. And I think that the Democrats should push very,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: very hard for it and make it very, very clear
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: whose fault it is if it doesn't pass and do
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: everything they can to pass it.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is the central issue. Everything flows from it.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: And when we talk about Mitch McConnell nurturing this lie
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: about a stolen election, we talk about in the context
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: of jacking up turnout in Georgia. That's part of it.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: The longer term reason why all the Republicans who definitely
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: knew better allowed this lie to fester is because it
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: creates pretext for more voter suppression. This is going to
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: happen all across the country. And this is the last
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: throes of a shrinking white conservative majority in a country
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: defined by a diverse, growing progressive majority. And We are
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: going to have some limits on what we can do
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: in the Senate, but we've got to call the question.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: We've got to fight on it. We've got to talk
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: about it. We've got to make it the defining issue
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: because everything else we care about flows from that. All right.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: When we come back, we will have Dan's interview with
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: Nse Ufa.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: I'm now joined by Nse Ufot, the CEO of the
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: Civic Engagement Group, the New Georgia Project, whose critical work
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: in registering and turning out voters helped turn Georgia blue
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: once again on Tuesday. Nse, welcome to the show.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 4: Hi.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: Hi, Dan.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: How's it going?
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I just want to start by thanking you for
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: all the work you did to turn Georgia blue twice.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: John and I were talking a little earlier about what
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: as horrible as yesterday was for this country. how much
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: worse it would have felt if the people who had
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: egged on what happened had been rewarded just the day
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: before with more political powers. I just want to say
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: thank you for all of your work.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 4: You're welcome. On behalf of the people of Georgia.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I thank the people of Georgia, yes. You
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: were on another Crooked Media podcast last month when you
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: said your gut feeling was that we were going to
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: win this thing. Why did you feel so good then?
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: And what was your reaction when you found out that
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: Reverend Warnock and John Ossoff had both won?
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: So I was confident in one thing. our organizing, to
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: be completely honest. I've said before that the demographic shifts
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: in Georgia are the fire and organizing is the accelerant.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: It's the gas that we've poured over the fire. You know,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: Georgia's going through this rapid, massive, and sort of unique
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: demographic shift, The demographers and political scientists are calling it
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: the reversal of the Great Migration. Great Migration, 1920s to
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: the 1970s, Black Americans fled the South, fleeing racialized violence,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: looking for economic opportunities, which is why so many Black
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: folks in Chicago can trace their roots to Mississippi. You know,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: Black Americans in New York and New Jersey can trace
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: their roots to the Carolinas and to Georgia. And now
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: those folks are moving back South where their children are.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: And it's created these opportunities for a different kind of
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: politics in the South. And so we've been watching, and
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: so have the other side, been watching these demographic shifts.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: But we also learned about all of the sort of
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: tips and tricks in their toolbox that they've been using
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: to suppress the vote. And so in addition to the
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: 2 million doors that we knocked on, the 7 million
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: phone calls that we made, the 4 million text messages
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: that we made, we also had 4,500 volunteers who were
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: our eyes and ears watching for voter suppression.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 4: We had lawyers on lawyers on lawyers on.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: Deck that were in place and prepared to respond to
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: any sort of shenanigans that arose during early voting and
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: on election day. And quite frankly, like people are tired.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: So all the conversations that we were having on the doors, right?
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 3: Folks were pissed off at their president, told them to
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: drink bleach, right? Folks are pissed off that the governor
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: lied about what he knew about COVID. And it's particularly
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: egregious to us in Georgia because everybody knows that the
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: governor's mansion is three miles away from the CDC headquarters, right?
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: And so, you know, as an organizer, we're out, we're
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: in the streets, we're on the doors, and we're talking
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: about the pain that people are experiencing right now and
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: what they can do to stop it. And one of
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: those things is voting.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 4: So we knew folks were.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: Going to turn it up.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: So in November, Joe Biden won a narrow victory, but
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: David Perdue got more votes than John Ossoff in the
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: other race. The sum total of Republican candidates got more
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: than the sum total of Reverend Warnock and the Democratic candidates.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: What adjustments did you make to your strategies and your
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: organizing to overcome those deficits in such a short period
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: of time?
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: So we knocked on about 405,000 doors, having high quality
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 3: face-to-face conversations between Labor Day and the November general election.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: We knocked on 1.7 million doors in the nine weeks
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: between the November general and the January election. So there
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: was a lot of deliberation with public health experts and
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: with our board and with our staff. about going out
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: on the doors and going big and leaving it all
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: on the field. So that was one of the major
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: adjustments that we made to our program. We still, and
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: we'll continue to privilege high quality face-to-face conversations with people
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: because we A, know that it works, but also B,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: we train our organizers.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 4: Listen, you have twice as many ears as mouths, right?
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: And so people want to be heard. Right.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 3: And so we listen to people. It helps inform our messaging.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: It helps inform all of our tactics, quite frankly. At
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 3: the core of the work that the New Georgia Project
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: does is a very bold, very aggressive research agenda. And so,
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: you know, just because we're black and brown, just because
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: we're young people, millennials and Gen Zers, don't automatically make
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: us experts in those youth politics that we study to
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: show ourselves approved. So, you know, that was one of
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: the adjustments that we made. And then quite frankly, I
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: think that even with our like nine months of aggressive
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 3: AB message testing, polling, focus groups and all that, nothing
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: was more powerful than watching the state flip. For the
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 3: first time and watching Georgia's vote for a Democrat for
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: president for the first time since 1992.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 4: Nothing was more powerful.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: Than hearing really awful remixes and remakes of Georgia on
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 3: my mind and having the entire country talk about, I mean,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: some of them were good. I don't want to offend people,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: but some of them were not. But it all contributed
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 3: to the chorus, right? That your vote matters, that Georgia
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: votes matter, and that Georgia's had the opportunity to sort
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: of save our democracy.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: It's really interesting what you said about door-to-door canvassing. So
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: to get this right is that for most of the
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: general election, you sort of shied away from it for
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: the very obvious public health reasons, picked it up a
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: little bit towards the end, and then Not that anyone
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: can return all of this, but it was a much
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: bigger focus in the runoff was door-to-door as opposed to
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: phone and text. Is that correct?
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 4: Correct.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: One, we saw that there was an additional registration opportunity, right?
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: So an additional 30 days to add more people to
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: the voter rolls. There ended up being like 33,000 young
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: people that registered to vote. About 14,000 of them were
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: young Black Georgians. And we registered about 7,000 of those, right,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: in 30 days. But also I think having someone knock
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 3: on your door underscores the importance of the opportunity, the
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: importance of the moment that we're in.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 4: We definitely saw tons of people who.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: Were like, no, no, no, I voted already. I voted
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: in November, I voted for Biden. And we're like, thank you.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 4: And don't know if you heard. And so again, just.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: Having an opportunity to one, listen, but then to also
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 3: underscore the opportunity.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 4: And here's why it matters.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: Like one, like obviously, you know, campaign field operatives, like
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: folks know.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 4: The effectiveness of these face-to-face conversations.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: But the secondary benefit for us was that there's been
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: a ton of misinformation and disinformation targeted at young voters
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: and Black voters. And so Being able to hear what
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 3: people are reading in online magazines and hearing what they're
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 3: reading on social media and being able to combat that
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: disinformation with a real human who's standing on your porch
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 3: telling you that it's really important for you to vote
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 3: and that Mitch McConnell is trying to take $ 1, 400 out
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 3: of your pocket and you can do something about it.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: The, you know, there's the turnout. On both sides, frankly,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: particularly on the Democratic side was unbelievable turnout, particularly among
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: black voters, Latino voters, young people, just flies against every
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: piece of conventional wisdom about Democrats and runoff elections. But
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: the number that blows me away when I look at
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: what you guys accomplished was the 140,000, I think it was,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: people who voted in the runoff, but not in November.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: Who are those people? How did you find them and
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: how did you get them to vote? Because that is
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: a margin larger than either John Ossoff or Reverend Warnock
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: are going to win by.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. So a couple of things.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 3: One, there are 23,000 Georgians that turned 18. in the
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: period between the November general and the January runoff, right?
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 3: So we wanted to get out and make sure that
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: we registered them to vote. So what does that mean?
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: We called a whole bunch of guidance counselors, high school
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: principals and said, can we have a virtual assembly with
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 3: your seniors? Let's do a virtual birthday party for everybody
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 3: that's turning 18.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 4: Killer Michael hop on the Zoom.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 3: We'll welcome them to adulthood and register them to vote.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: So that was awesome. And those folks were absolutely motivated
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 3: to get out and vote too. Again, Georgia has a
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: long and a recent history of voter suppression. And so,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: you know, At the end of 2019, going into 2020,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: there were 750,000 Georgians that were purged from the voter rolls.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: And because our Secretary of State does an awful job
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 3: of giving people notice, there are a lot of folks
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 3: who showed up to vote in November who didn't find
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: out that they'd been purged until they showed up to vote.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: And so we went out trying to make sure that
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: they got re-registered. and that they should have showed up
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 3: and vote. And again, those people were particularly motivated because
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: they had experienced disenfranchisement firsthand. I think there's also folks
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 3: who just moved into the state as we met, listen,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: Tons of people keep moving to Georgia. That's a part
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: of the demographic shifts that we're talking about. I joke
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: and be like, you know, traffic is awful. Atlanta is full.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 3: You should check out Charlotte. I hear it's lovely this
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 3: time of year. But the truth of the matter is that,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: you know, they're here and they are a large part
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 3: of why we have this opportunity. But I also want
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: to underscore that enthusiasm was high on both sides. Right.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: And so it wasn't that there are a lot of
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 3: folks who thought that the phone call with Brad and
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: President Trump would depress Republican turnout. Earlier, towards the end
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: of the year, in December, there were these Trump supporters
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 3: who were saying, don't vote because the elections are.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 4: Rigged, et cetera. That did not work. Republicans turned out,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: and they turned out in numbers.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: It's just that there were more Democrats that showed up,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 3: and particularly more Black voters that showed up.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: The history of political success for Democrats, particularly in the South.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: is one of a lot of work, success, and then
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: backlash from the political leadership in the state. Particularly when
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: it is a black candidate who wins. Barack Obama's election
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: in 2008 led to a raft of voter suppression laws
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: all across the country. there's already talk from a lot
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: of Georgia Republicans about a whole new set of laws
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: to suppress the vote in Georgia. How are you thinking
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: about that? What are you planning to do to fight
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: back against those?
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 4: So we're going to call it what it is. It's
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 4: a white lash.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: Fair point. Fair point.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 4: And so really a couple of things.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: One is we have built sort of permanent, independent, organizing infrastructure,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 3: progressive infrastructure in Georgia. And so, you know, the central
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 3: conceit of the New Georgia Project, in addition to, you know,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 3: every voter, every election, is that we want to win.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: We want to build infrastructure that's designed to harness the
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 3: power of our electorate, of our neighbors, to win things
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 3: for our families, for our communities, and then defend those
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 3: wins beyond one election cycle. And so where a campaign
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 3: is designed to get a particular candidate.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 4: Elected, right?
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: There's grand opening and then grand closing. We're still here
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 3: and we're going to be here. And we're, I mean,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 3: after vacation, much needed rest. We are preparing for Georgia's
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 3: legislative session. And, you know, they haven't telegraphed what their
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: intentions are. They are telling us we lost, we suck.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 4: People are not.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: Buying what we're selling. And the only way that we're
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 3: going to hang on to power is if we cheat,
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: is if we change the rules. And so that is
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 3: what we're preparing for. So we are preparing to turn
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 3: up in the Georgia state legislature because quite frankly.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 4: Having a sort of robust.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 3: Democracy, to have, you know, robust elections infrastructure is the
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: sort of foundation that we need for any of the
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 3: policy changes that we want. I don't think that people
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 3: know that the minimum wage in Georgia is $ 5. 15 an hour, right?
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 3: Georgia's building two new nuclear power plants in Black neighborhoods.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 3: There haven't been any new nuclear power plants built anywhere
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 3: in the U.S.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 4: In 30 years, right?
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: So there's a lot that is on Georgians' minds that
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 3: they want to get addressed in the state legislature. We
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 3: have nearly 12 hospitals, eight that have already closed in
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: rural parts of the state because of the state's failure
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: to expand Medicaid.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 4: People are dying.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: And we're in the middle of a pandemic. And hospitals
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: tend to be the largest employers in the rural communities
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 3: where they are.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 4: So people are losing their jobs.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: People are running out of beds. And let's be clear,
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: people are still having babies. People are still fighting cancer.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: And COVID is on the rise. So there's a lot
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 3: that is on Georgians' minds and they have a lot
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 3: to sort of say to their legislatures. And so we
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 3: have the permanent infrastructure that is designed to, again, capture
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 3: the fears, the hopes of Georgia voters and help turn
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: it into policy.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: So if our listeners want to help support your work,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: both And fighting back against this voter suppression and building
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: the sustainable progressive infrastructure to push for progressive policies, but
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: also to prepare for what are going to be incredibly
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: critical elections in Georgia in this next cycle. How can
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: they do that?
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: This is where I throw up the softball and you
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: knock it out. Right, right, right.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 4: I'm going to catch this guy. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 3: Listen, you can reach us always at newgeorgiaproject.org. We're also
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 3: on all the social media platforms. as New Georgia Project, right?
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: So Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. I mean, if you want
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 3: to see the CEO give you some auntie bars, like
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 3: you can join and follow up any of those platforms.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 3: But yeah, we do this work year round. The traditional
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 3: launch of our voter registration year is MLK weekend. And
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: so again, after we take a break, we're going to
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 3: be back at it.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: Well, and say thank you so much for everything that
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: you are doing. You are an inspiration. We are so
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: grateful for the work you've done. And the New Georgia Project,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: as we say to our listeners a lot, is a
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 2: model for what Democrats need to be doing around the
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: country to build sustainable progressive power and turn these red
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: states blue. And so we thank you for your work,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: and I encourage everyone who can to support your efforts.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: We have a lot of work to do to make
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: sure that Georgia is on a an inexorable path to
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: becoming a blue state. Much like we wanted to be
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: more like Virginia than North Carolina right now. So thank
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: you so much.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 3: Take care.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: Thanks, Sensei, for joining us today. And we will talk
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: to you. Everyone have a good weekend. We'll talk to
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: you next week. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn,
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: upload these episodes as videos every week.