Latest / Pod Save America / “Live and Let Die.”

Transcript

“Live and Let Die.” · 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: On today's pod, Dan talks to Mark Elias, one of
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the best election lawyers in the country, who's fighting day
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: by day, state by state, court by court, to protect
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: your right to vote in November. I imagine Elias just
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: going to every courtroom virtually in the country and fighting
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: off bad election laws. Before that, we'll talk about Trump's
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: surrender and the war against the invisible enemy, this week's
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: terrifying unemployment news, and some new 2020 polling. We're also
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: going to answer a few of your questions. But first,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: check out this week's Pod Save the World, where Tommy
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: and Ben talk about a bunch of ragtag mercenaries who
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: tried to invade Venezuela over the weekend and start a coup. Yes,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: that really happened. It did not go well. Then Asia
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: expert Danny Russell joins to discuss Trump's plan to punish
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: China over the coronavirus and Kim Jong-un's reemergence after weeks
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: of rumors about his health.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Can I offer a very uneducated prediction?
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Please do.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: So I have not listened to Pod Save the World yet.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: That's on the agenda for today. I have not read
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: any of the articles about this. So I know nothing.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: But I would lay a marker down right now that
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: somehow these mercenaries have some involvement, official or unofficial, with Trump.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Do you think their names are Don Jr. and Eric?
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, if Don Jr. and Eric thought invading Venezuela,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: a two-man invasion of Venezuela would get them a hug
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: from their father, yes, I think they would do that.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Also, go to Spotify and please subscribe and follow our
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: new series, Wind of Change, where journalist Patrick Radden Keefe
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: investigates a rumor that the Scorpion song, Wind of Change,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: was actually written by the CIA. It's like, this is
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Spinal Tap meets All the President's Men. How's that for
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: a pitch, Dan?
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: I would have gone with House of Cards meets Spies
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Like Us.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: It's so good. I was just listening to the third
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: episode today, and it's such a great combination of spy
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: intrigue with just Good music. I mean, I'm really excited
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: about it. You can binge the whole series on Spotify
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: starting this Monday, May 11th. You get the whole series
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: if you go on Spotify. It's great. One last note.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: There are two special elections for open house seats coming
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: up Tuesday, May 12th. You heard me interview California State
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Assemblywoman Christy Smith last week on PSA. She's running to
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: serve the rest of former Congresswoman Katie Hill's term in
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: California's 25th Congressional District. Republicans are pouring tons of money
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: into this race. It is incredibly close. And a big
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: reason why is that Democrats aren't returning their ballots. So
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: if you live in the 25th district, get those ballots in.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: If you know someone there, nag them about it. If
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: you want to donate or volunteer, go to votesaveamerica.com slash CA25.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: There's also a special election in Wisconsin's 7th congressional district.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: A tough race where Democrat Tricia Zunker would be the
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: first Native American member of Congress. from the state of Wisconsin.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Very exciting. Find out more at votesaveamerica.com slash Wisconsin. All right,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: let's get to the news. Over 1.2 million Americans have
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: been infected with COVID-19, more than five times any other country.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: At least 73,000 have died, likely thousands more. The number
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: of infections and deaths are increasing, not decreasing in many,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: if not most parts of the country. even as they
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: fall to single and double digits in places like South Korea, Germany,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, all places that have been
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: able to test a much, much higher percentage of their
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: people than we have. And in the midst of all this,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump has basically declared victory. He floated shutting down
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: the White House Coronavirus Task Force before being forced to
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: walk it back. And then he left the White House
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: for the first time in many weeks to tour a
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: manufacturing plant in Arizona without a mask on while the
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Guns N' Roses song Live and Let Die played in
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: the background. And when he was asked by ABC's David
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Muir how voters should judge his performance in November, the
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: president said this.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: I think in a certain way, maybe our best work
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: has been on what we've done with COVID-19.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Dan, why is Trump trying to just give up on
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: managing the response to the pandemic? The Associated Press also
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: reported this morning he even blocked the release of CDC
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: guidelines that are supposed to help local governments safely reopen.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Try to get in Donald Trump's head.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, when I hear you read all of that
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: out loud, it's even worse than I read it in
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: the outline and as I've interpreted it through the news.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: It's really bad. It would be funny if it wasn't
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: so fucking tragic, but it is the most absurd parts
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: of the Trump presidency overlaid on a national tragedy of
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: epic proportions. That's where we're at.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: That long pause there for my deep... perhaps characteristic sigh,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: was to choose between laughing and crying.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Because that is ultimately where we are. But if we're
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: to try to figure out why Trump is acting the
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: way he is, because on paper, for a normal human,
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: even a normal human up for re-election, you would think
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: the best way to get re-elected would be to deal
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: with the problem. But Trump will not do that because
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: dealing with the problem is hard. Given a choice between
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: solving a problem and demagoguing a problem, Trump will always
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: default towards demagoguing it because it fits better with his
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: natural skill set than marshalling the country and the world
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: to take on a very complex problem. That is not
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: something that he is naturally good at, and so he's
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: avoided it. Like there is a debate about whether that
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: can work politically, but this is what happens when you
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: elect a president who has no interest in the job
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: of president outside of appearing in rallies.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: I think it's also that his only skill, if you
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: want to even say that he has this skill, is
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: trying to sell people on something, right? Like the guy
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: never actually built anything in his life. He didn't really
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: build his businesses. He was like a marketer. He slapped
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: his name on shit. And all he's thinking about now
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: is how do I sell the country on the idea
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: that the coronavirus has been fixed, that the public health
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: crisis has been solved, and that now I'm working on
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: solving the economy. Doesn't matter if the virus is not stopped,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: if it continues to spread in real life. It doesn't
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: matter if people are still out of work and unemployment's
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: in double digits by November in real life. If Donald
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Trump tells us everything is fine and Fox News tells
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: us everything is fine and the rest of his propaganda
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: machine and the Republican Party tell us everything is fine,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: that's all enough. And that's going to be enough to
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: get him reelected because he knows that at least his
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: base is sort of trapped in an information bubble where
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: all they're going to hear is, is that everything's fine,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: that COVID's gone away, that the economy's coming back. So
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: at least if he can capture the people who are
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: already in that information bubble, that'll get him to 42%, 43%, 44%,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: and then he can just bullshit his way through the rest.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: It seems like that's where he's going, right?
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly right. And I
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: think you're slapping his name on things example is how
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: we should think about this, which is much like he
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: slapped his name on buildings, mediocre stakes, shitty wines, a
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: fraudulent university, and sold it as high luxury or the
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: epitome of success, he's slapping a giant gold label on
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: America that says normal. And the question will be, can
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: people distinguish between that and reality? And this is a
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: real test because you're exactly right. He has this propaganda machine,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: this ability to keep his supporters in this bubble. But
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: there is reality bumping up against this, right? Like when
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: you were talking about the theoretical threat of immigration or
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: the theoretical threat of demographic change or the theoretical threat
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: of Hollywood elites and university professors overtaking too much control
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: of America, that is different than trying to tell people
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: that something that is real and affecting their lives, infecting
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: or killing their relatives or causing them to lose their
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: jobs or their businesses. It's easier to tell someone that
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: something might happen than to tell someone that something is happening,
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: isn't happening. And that's the chat. That's sort of the
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: position he's in.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It is a, uh, it's a reality show presidency
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: that was always designed for the show and not necessarily
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: the reality.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: And we, I.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Mean, we remember when Barack Obama was president, like a
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: big part of that job is just eating shit constantly, right?
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: and making really hard decisions that could have short-term political
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: costs that you make anyway because you know in the
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: long term the country is going to be better off
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: and you want to do the right thing. And, you know,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: a great example of that was in 2014 with the
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Ebola crisis, when, you know, Donald Trump and a bunch
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: of others were telling Barack Obama, like, if you don't
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: close the borders right now, you know, there's going to
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: be disaster. We're going to have an epidemic in this country.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: It's going to be horrible. And Barack Obama said, you know,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: the right thing to do, what science is telling me,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: what diplomats are telling me, public officials, everyone else, is
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: to not close the borders and to send help to
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Africa to stop the outbreak there before it comes here.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: And that wasn't a politically... advantageous thing to do for
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: barack obama at the time but he did it because
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: he thought in the long term we're going to be
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: better off because of this and like donald trump just
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: has this debilitating short-termism that's not even beneficial to himself
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: politically because all he's trying to do is get through
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: the news cycle and he's not even thinking like you
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: know two three weeks ahead a couple months ahead he's
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: just he can't see beyond the day he's in.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: And i guess it it sort of posits the question
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: to the country writ large, can we look beyond the
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: news cycle? Can the media look beyond the news cycle?
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Is the devastation from a public health and an economic
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: perspective so overwhelming that we can't really fathom it? And
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: then we'll talk about that when we talk about the
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: economy a little later in this podcast. But there is
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: this desire for a return to normalcy that he is,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: it's an open door he is pushing against. And For
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: some people, that will seem insane because they are currently
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: in a hot spot or they have lost their job.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: And for other people, it may make more sense. You know,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: you picked the 2014 Ebola example as what reminded you
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: of this. I actually was thinking about 2010 and the
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: sort of quasi-famous story of when we were trying to
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: pass the Affordable Care Act and we were in the
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: middle of the political and legislative morass of doing it
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: and we were in a meeting and Obama was lamenting
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: how difficult this was and why it was harder than
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: it should be. And David Axelrod said to Obama, hard
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: things are hard, which Obama, we all sort of looked
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: at Axelrod and Obama laughed very hard at him. And
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: then we all laughed because no shit hard things are hard,
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: but like there's a, it's, it sounds obvious, but there's
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: a point, which is challenging things are going to be difficult.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: They're That sort of became a saying of Obama's because
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: it kind of described what the presidency was. It's a
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: lot of hard things that are hard. And as a joke,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: when Axelrod left, as you know, he gave Obama a
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: little plaque for his desk that said hard things are hard.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: And the way I– like I think the way Trump–
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: the plaque that should go on Trump's desk would be
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: hard things are for other people. And that's been the
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: story of his life, right? Like is he doesn't do
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: the hard things. He takes the shortcuts. And when you're
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: a reality TV star or a fake businessman or whatever
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: his previous jobs have been, that's fine. When you're president,
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: that has life or death consequences. His approach here is
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: going to kill a lot of people. It's going to
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: mean more people will lose their jobs. That is just
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: a simple fact. And we shouldn't allow that just because
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: it's difficult to say the president is willing to kill
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: people for a political argument.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: I think what's infuriating about it is Donald Trump is
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: trying to make this a forced choice between keeping people
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: safe and opening the economy up, right? And getting the
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: economy moving. And he keeps saying, you know, we can't
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: have the country close like this. And if we open up, yeah,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: there could be some death and some people could be
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: affected badly is what he said, which means dying. And
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: he's trying to make it this forced, I would argue,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: false choice of The media, once again, seems to be
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: playing along. I've even seen Democrats do it too. What
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: drives me nuts is he could just ramp up testing
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: and contact tracing like other countries so people can actually
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: feel safe going back to work. We can do. We
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: are the wealthiest country in the world, the most powerful
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: country on earth. We can do what South Korea and
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Germany and Hong Kong and Taiwan and Australia and New Zealand.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: We can do what these countries have done and thus
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: make it safe for people to leave their homes and
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: go back to work and stop the spread of the
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: virus and restart the economy. We can have both. Why
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: doesn't he want to do that?
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, the choice is not stay closed or open up.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: It's open up with a plan or open up without
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: a plan. And Trump doesn't have a plan. And that
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: is a place where, I mean, yes, the media has
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: bought in some, not all, but that's sort of how
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: the discussion is framed because that's how Trump is framing it.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: There has been limited pushback from Democrats about that framing.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: And the way you push back on that framing is
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: to lay out what a plan should look like. What
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: are the five criteria we need to open up? right?
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: And lay those out and demand that Trump has those.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: So at least you make it clear that you make
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: it harder for Trump to engage in the straw man
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: argument about that he does with some great success that,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: you know, scientists and Democrats want you to stay in
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: your house for years. And I want to open up
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: the economy so you can get back to work. Like
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: that's not the choice and we shouldn't let that be
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: the choice.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And he, he, it's in his interest to polarize
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: this and to demagogue this. And it, partly it feels
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: so weird because since this has been going on, I
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: try to watch Gavin Newsom's briefings to see what's going
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: on in California. I try to watch Eric Garcetti's briefings
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: because it's LA. I try to watch Barbara Frere, the
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: county health commissioner in LA. And they sort of prove
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: every day that it's not a choice between opening up
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: and staying home. They're sitting there like this Friday, there's
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: a bunch of businesses in Los Angeles that can now
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: do like curbside pickup they're opening up trails, you know,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: they're opening up some parks. They said, okay, in a
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks, we're going to have more guidance for
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: how to open up an office. And, you know, they're, they're, they're,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: and they're talking about how everyone has still has to
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: be careful. And now masks are required at LAX and
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: on buses. And they're taking all the, it's a plan.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Like you said, it's like they're laying out a plan
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: that like, we're still going to have to be careful,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: but we're going to open up slowly. And by the way,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: if we open up and we see the cases start
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: skyrocketing again, we're going to start closing more things. And
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: this is how we're ramping up testing. And this is
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: how we're going to hire a bunch of contact tracers.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: And like this is happening in states all over the country.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: I was listening to our friend Alex Wagner's podcast on
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Crooked Media Six Feet Apart this morning. And she interviewed
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Steve Bullock, who is the governor of Montana and a
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: state that Trump won by 20 points. She and he's
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: got like plenty of people who voted for Trump in
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: the state. And he's wildly popular. even though he closed
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: down the state earlier than most red states, closed down
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: schools earlier than most, did a stay at home order
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: earlier than most, because he is effectively communicating to people
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: exactly what's going to happen every single day and sort
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: of asking for their patience. And it's working and people
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: are listening. It doesn't have to be polarized like Donald
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Trump is polarizing this. Same with Lori Lightfoot, the mayor
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: of Chicago, she interviewed, who's doing the same thing in Chicago,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: like It doesn't have to be political and partisan and divisive.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: He is making it that way. And he's doing it
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: because he's lazy. He's got this short-termism. And because it's
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: the only way he knows how to win.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like why it's a duck quack, right? That's
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: what they do. And we've sort of always known this.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: And this is one of the things that scared us
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: when we were in the White House about a massive
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: financial crisis, the crashing of the global economy. a pandemic,
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: a 9-11-style terrorist attack was, is the country too polarized
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: to deal with the problem? Is Congress too polarized? Is
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: the media too polarized? Is the American people too polarized?
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: And it is one of America's great weaknesses that we
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: are a very politically polarized country with governing structures that
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: demand compromise. That is our Achilles heel as a country.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: And a leader has a choice to either try to
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: conquer that polarization by bringing people together or exacerbate it.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: And Trump has chosen to exacerbate it on every dimension, right?
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Like you brought up the idea of wearing the mask.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: Like that is a perfect example of where our president
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: can model good behavior for Republicans and Democrats about what
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: to do because it is in Trump's interest for people
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: to wear masks. But he's decided because of some MAGA
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: yahoos on Fox that wearing a mask means you're listening
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: to a scientist, which means you're therefore weak or some
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: insane fucking logic like that. And if you make wearing
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: a mask that prevents you from getting and giving a
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: potentially fatal virus to people a partisan issue, you are
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: making the situation much harder to solve. And It is
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: the exact opposite of what other presidents have done, right?
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Like, I mean, for every horrible, terrible thing that should
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: be said about George W. Bush's presidency, he had a
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: choice right after 9-11. And he went to that mosque
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: to try to send a message to people about that
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: we were at war with Al-Qaeda and not Muslims. Now,
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: many things he did after that dramatically undermined that message,
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: so I'm not here to get ellened. But Obama, during H1N1,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: got his flu shot, which was his flu vaccine, which
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: there was a huge conspiracy theory around whether it was fatal,
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: and released the picture of a president getting a shot
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: in his arm, which was very unusual at the time,
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: to try to conquer that division of that polarization. Trump
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: is doing the exact fucking opposite of that, and it's
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: going to make the situation much worse.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: And what also drives me nuts is that, you know,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: a lot of the political press will write about this
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: as if, like, the country is inevitably polarized. Like, that's
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: the starting point. You know, everyone loves to say on Twitter, like,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: partisanship is a hell of a drug, you know? And
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: that is not the starting point here. When this began,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: you saw, like, Huge majorities of the American public saying, yes,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: we should all stay home. Yes, we want to sacrifice
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: to help each other, right? Like the spirit of cooperation
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: was there. And now because of Trump, because of fucking
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and all
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: the rest of the yahoos out there, you know, our
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: friends at Change Research just did a poll in the
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: six battleground states and they compared Republicans versus Democrats on
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: whether the following activities are safe right now. restaurant dining,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: 70% of Republicans say it's safe. Only 5% of Democrats
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: say it's safe. Bars, 52% of Republicans, 4% of Democrats.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: And then what we were just talking about, face masks
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: in public, 90% of Democrats say yes, 47% of Republicans.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: And you mentioned, so Trump didn't wear the face mask,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: the cloth covering when he was in that Arizona factory.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: The AP reported that Trump has told advisers that he
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: believes wearing a face mask would, quote, send the wrong message.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: And Trump said doing so would make it seem like
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: he's preoccupied with health instead of focused on reopening the economy.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Which is so fucking crazy because one of the ways
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: we're going to be able to reopen the economy, or
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: at least partially be able to feel safe when we
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: go back to work, is face masks, right? There was
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: a study out the other day that said like, if
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: 80% of people wear face masks, cloth coverings that are
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: about 60% effective, we could stop the transmission of the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: disease or we could dramatically slow it, right? This is
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: something simple. This isn't like some big sacrifice for everyone.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: It's a mild inconvenience to wear a fucking mask when
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: you go out in public. And by doing that, we
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: could save a ton of lives. And now we're going
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: to polarize this? We're going to make this a fucking
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: partisan thing when it is the most simple thing you
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: could do that is the most minor convenience?
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, just we should be very clear. Like, even
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: you and I are having this discussion about Republicans think
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: this thing is safe and Democrats think this thing is dangerous.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: And on most of the things you listed, but primarily
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: face masks, it's not a question of who thinks what
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: is safe. It's who believes the guidelines put forward by
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Trump's own Center for Diseases Control.
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: This is not like Nancy Pelosi's position versus Trump's position.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: This is the consensus. Who believes the consensus position signed
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: off on by Mr. No face mask wearing himself.
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: So like it's even more fucking bonkers than you think.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: It's like these aren't opinions. These are who agrees with
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: the scientific consensus that of the Trump administration, not a
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: bunch of egghead scientists somewhere, the Trump administration. And we
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: still can't get that right. And that is in large
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: part because of the president and the folks at Fox
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: News who follow his lead as much as he follows theirs.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: And testing, another example of what you're saying, Trump's like, oh,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: there's some people who believe in testing and there's some
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: people who don't. And He's also said, you know, when
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: we do a lot of testing, we look bad because
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the numbers go up.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: So, you know, it's like a political issue. So he's
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: trying to sow doubts about the efficacy of testing. And
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: yet we read reports about how in the White House,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Trump and all the people around him who go in
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: the same room with him are tested constantly on a
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: daily basis. And that is how the White House works.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: And his government is able to function because they're all
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: constantly tested. And, you know, his valet apparently was tested
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: positive today, one of the guys around him. And so
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: now we know who that person is. That person is
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: going to be isolated because we're going to go through
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: all their contacts in the White House. We're going to
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: isolate them. That system works. We just need to scale
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: it up on a national scale, right? We just need
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: to scale it up nationally. And just Trump refuses to
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: do it again because it's hard, because it might entail
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: some political risks. because it requires just a little bit
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: more work than fucking tweeting and yelling about shit.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Trump's position is testing for us, disease
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: for you.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Right. So while he was in Arizona, Trump sat down
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: for his first non-Fox television interview since the crisis began.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: I think for television, I think for network news, it
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: was the first since June of 2019, the first time
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: he's done a non-Fox interview. He did it with ABC's
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: David Merck. Trump acknowledged that forcing people back to work
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: too soon could cost lives. He lied a lot, especially
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: about testing. And he blamed his failure to adequately prepare
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: for the pandemic on everything from Obama to impeachment, saying
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: at one point, quote, I'll be honest, I have a
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: lot of things going on. Why do you think he
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: did this interview with ABC, with a non-Fox outlet?
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: He's probably seen David Muir conduct an interview before.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Ouch. My next question was going to be, how do
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: you think Muir did as an interviewer?
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: He did.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Because the media critics from CNN, Oliver Darcy at CNN,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: The Washington Post, Eric Wemple, all kinds of folks were
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: saying he didn't really challenge Trump's lies and he let
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: him off the hook too easily.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, don't take my word for it. Take the
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: word of ABC staffers who staffed Muir for the interview,
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: told Lloyd Grove of The Daily Beast they thought he
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: did a terrible job. And he did. Yeah, he did.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: There are a couple of reasons for that. One is
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: anchors should not interview people. That is not their job.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: David Muir's job is to read the news. That's what
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: he does. And like, there are some anchors who are
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: good interviewers. Lester Holt got Trump to admit to like
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: nine crimes in like 35 seconds a couple of years ago,
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: which is probably why he was not chosen.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: For this interview.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: And it's just, it's not something that David Muir does.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: And so interviewing any president is hard. Interviewing this president
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: is particularly hard because he runs– he lies. He exists
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: in a completely alternative reality. And it is challenging to
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: bring people who live in alternative realities into your reality
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: to have a conversation about it. And it's like– it
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: was just a terrible decision to have him do this.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: And according to the reporting, the Trump White House chose
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Muir over George Stephanopoulos who– as the host of GMA,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: interviews people every day and on the Sunday shows for
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: years and years and years. And ABC never should have
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: given Trump that choice. They had not just a general
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: responsibility to their viewers, but as the first non-Fox News
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Network interview in nearly a year, they had a utmost
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: responsibility to everyone else in the non-Fox media to do
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: a good job. And they failed miserably.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: And like... It's just something about the way you interview
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Trump that I am surprised that even someone who doesn't
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: interview people a lot like Muir hasn't understood by now,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: which is you drill down on one topic. And even
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: if you have to sacrifice questions on a number of
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: other topics, you do that because he is going to
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: lie and move on to the next topic and say
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: something nonsensical and And you just have to keep going
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: back to that same, like pick testing, right? Just pin
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: him down on testing and ask over and over and
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: over again about the testing. Know where he's going to
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: go on all the lies and then just keep going.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: And like we've seen, like you said, Lester Holt has
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: gotten him in situations like that. Jake Tapper is very
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: good at that kind of thing. Katie Couric did that
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: with Sarah Palin back in 08, right? Like this is not,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: it's not impossible to do that with politicians like Donald Trump.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: But you just have to have the discipline to pick
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: one area and stick with it. And I just don't understand.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: I don't understand why everyone hasn't learned that by now.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: It is. I mean, Donald Trump is a pathological liar,
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: but he's not a creative liar. He has the same
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: lies every single day. And it is a somewhat effective
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: strategy in the context of giving rallies and going to
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: the White House briefing because. reporters in that sense just
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: get tired of challenging him. He says all the time
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: that we have done more tests than the entire world.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: Not true. Right. A thousand things he says that aren't true.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Not even close to true.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: He's been claiming for three years now to have passed
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: a veterans health bill that passed in 2014, passed by
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: a senator who is no longer alive and a president
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: who's no longer in office. And he just keeps saying it, right?
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: But in the context of an interview, you know what
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: lies to prepare for. He didn't spring some new lie
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: on David Muir. He used the same lie he had
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: used earlier that day, and he still was not prepared
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: for it. And it is– it's just we have to
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: stop with the deification of network news anchors. Like that–
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: like we– like send an interviewer, not an anchor. And
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: anchors also– just like you and I remember this from
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: like how Obama used to do a lunch with network
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: anchors on the day of the state of the union.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: It's this long time tradition. All the anchors come in
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: and it would be the, and we would do you know,
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: the three networks, you know, Fox, CNN, Telemundo, Univision, a
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: couple others. And, BET, back when I think they were
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: doing more news. And one of the things we took
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: away was that the network anchors were so disconnected from
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: the day-to-day of politics.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: Because that's not their job, right? They are the mascot
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: of the network. They read the news. They're celebrities, right?
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: They are not in the day-to-day. And sending someone who
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: was not in the day-to-day to interview a president is
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: like taking a NBA commentator off the broadcast booth and
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: put him in the game and wondering why they didn't do.
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: A good job.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Like that's just, you have to have reps in these
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: anchors don't have reps in this. And this is a
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: long running hobby horse of mine that I will get
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: off of right now, but it was a, it was
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: a mistake. And it's pretty clear that everyone at ABC
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: is aware of that.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: And look, if, uh, if they'd sent an interviewer and
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: he had grilled him and Donald Trump had screwed up,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: that would be it. That would be the election.
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: We'd win.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: That's right. I mean, yes, those Democrats always want reporters,
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: whether in the briefing room or interviewing Trump, to treat
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: him like Kamala Harris or treat Bill Barr. But that's
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: not the anchor's job. But I do think we can
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: ask for the bare minimum of challenging his lies.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, we can.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: He doesn't have to meet our test, but he did
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: meet ABC's test either.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the economy that Trump thinks
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: he's sacrificing people to save. On Tuesday, the monthly report
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: from the private payroll company ADP showed that 20 million
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: people lost their jobs in April, 8.6 million from the
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: leisure and hospitality sectors alone. That is the worst monthly
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: job loss in American history, far worse than the 800,000
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: we lost in one month of the Great Recession. The U.S.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Labor Department's monthly jobs report is due on Friday. It's
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: expected to show an unemployment rate of over 15%, by
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: far the worst since the Great Depression, probably the worst
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: on record. Dan, despite all this happening on Trump's watch,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: despite the fact that Trump's overall job approval is down,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and he's trailing Joe Biden by about six points in
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the polls, his economic approval rating is still pretty decent,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: over 50% in many polls, and he's seen as more
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: trusted than Biden to manage the economy. Why do you
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: think this is?
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: This is a place where I think Democrats have frequently
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: underestimated Trump, which is partisan Democrats correctly point out that
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Trump is basically a fake businessman.
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: And if you think Trump is a good businessman, then
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: you should think Kim Kardashian is a great businesswoman, right?
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: Because it's the same. It's a connection between celebrity and–
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: like his business is being famous and he was very
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: good at that. But voters give– Trump the benefit of
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: the doubt on the economy because they think he is
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: a businessman. And they think he understands the economy in
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: a way a typical politician would not. So that's one.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: And two, he has had enduring strength here throughout this presidency, right?
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Where regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: how you think about Trump's economic performance, like on the
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: right end, which is the left, as I'm doing this visually,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: but no one will care about it, say, listen, but
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: you know, on the far right end, voters believe that
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Trump fixed this terribly broken Obama economy, which was technically
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: stronger than the economy was pre-COVID, but that's neither here
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: nor there. But even in the middle, voters give Trump
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: credit for not ruining Barack Obama's economy, right? Where it's like,
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: you Democrats said he'd be a complete disaster, but look,
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: unemployment's still low. It's Even if there were structural things
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: wrong with the economy and it's not super fair, he
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: didn't screw anything up. And that's why his economic approval
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: rating is the only measure of any kind of positive
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: attribute that has been above 50 for Trump consistently throughout
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: his presidency. And so he has a reservoir of strength
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: here that we should not underestimate and we need an
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: actual plan to deal with, even in a difficult economy.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: We should not assume that just because the economy is
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: that Trump's economic advantage will collapse in the same way.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: I saw this, heard this in the focus groups I did.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: I remember one woman outside of Philadelphia, registered Democrat, voted
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: for Obama twice, and she voted for Trump in 16
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: and is considering voting for him again. And she said,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: my most important, she goes, I vote for Democrats up
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: and down the ballot. except for Donald Trump. And I
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: vote for Democrats everywhere else because a woman's right to
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: choose is important to me, and gay rights is important
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: to me, and I think Donald Trump is a total buffoon. But,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: you know, my 401k is doing good, and I think
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: he's got something. He's this business guy, and he's just
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: got this business mentality. And it makes you want to scream,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: but I would bet that's what a lot of voters think, unfortunately, that, like,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: he has... he has fooled enough people still into thinking
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: he is this successful. I mean, I remember during the
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: 2016 campaign, he said, you know, I've been, I've been
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: selfish for me all my life and now I'm going
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: to be selfish for America. I've been, I've made myself
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: rich all my life and now I'm going to make
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: America rich. And a lot of people look at that
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, okay. He's an asshole, but maybe
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: that's right. Maybe he will make me rich.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: He'll be an asshole for me.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: We're going to be an asshole for me. And I
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: think you're right. That is the risk. And, and, and
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: so let's talk about what Democrats should do there. Um,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Because Trump still has these decent economic approval ratings, he's
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: now leaning into a new campaign message that he built
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the greatest economy in history before this pandemic, and now
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: he's the best person to rebuild it. That's sort of
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: the line. He said that, and he's got a new
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: ad called American Comeback that basically has that message. Kellyanne
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Conway has been saying that, so you know that they've
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: pulled it. How effective do you think that message is,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: and what should Democrats do to counter it? What should
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden do?
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Well, I think for the reasons we just mentioned, it
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: has potential to be quite effective. And that ad is
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: objectively terrible. I mean, it looked like it just his
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: campaign is as of yet incapable of having one message
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: per ad, which is how you communicate messages.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: It's like Joe Biden loves China and he's got dementia.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. But buried in that ad is this
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: message that Trump is the best person to rebuild the
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: American economy. And Like that has potential and we have
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: to watch that. So I think there are four strategic
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: imperatives that Democrats have to undertake to take Trump on
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: the economy. The first is we have to do the
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: work of connecting Trump's failure to prepare for and respond
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: to the coronavirus with the economic consequences. We have to
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: explain to people that if we had enough tests, if
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: we had an actual plan, then we wouldn't be in
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: a position where tens of millions of Americans lost their job.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: we wouldn't have had to, quote unquote, shut down the
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: economy for months at a time. It could have been
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: handled much more like South Korea or Germany. Second is
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: we have to show how Trump's response to this economy
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: is part of his larger pattern of putting the interests
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: of corporations and the wealthy above middle working class, poor
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: Americans and small businesses, right? And that can be done
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: in a whole host of ways. Some of the Proposals
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: that he has talked about, like giving legal immunity to
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: corporations if they kill their workers that we talked about
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: last week, who some of these loans have gone to,
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: that there are tens of thousands, if not more, family
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: and business around this country who can't get a PPP loan,
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: but the Lakers got one. Seems like a sort of example. Third,
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: Democrats have to continue to focus on health care. Just yesterday,
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: Trump once again said that he wants to get rid
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: of the Affordable Care Act. I think the saliency of
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: that already powerful issue goes up even further in a
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: situation where tens of millions of Americans have potentially lost
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: their employer-based health care. And the idea that Trump is
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: trying to eliminate the Affordable Care Act and kick Americans
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: off their health insurance in the middle of a pandemic
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: seems to me like.
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: It might be a good argument.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: And then the last point is we need an alternative.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: We need to show, and this is where Biden has
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: to lead the way, what would Biden be doing right
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: now to deal with this economy that Trump is not doing?
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: What would his policies be? How would he help middle
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: or working class people? And so those are sort of
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: the four things that I think about when I think
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: about how Democrats should handle this.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: I read it in the New York Times that the
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Biden folks are really pushing his management of the Recovery
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Act in the Obama administration as a selling point for
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden. And I think that's wise, you know, because
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: I do think like we had a great recession in 2009.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama put Joe Biden in charge of managing the recovery.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: He did a great job of that. But I think
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: that it's not sufficient to make this an argument about
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: who do you trust to just manage the recovery. It's
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: what kind of recovery do you want? What kind of
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: economy do you want? Do you want an economy that
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: favors the people who are already doing the best before
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: this crisis hit? Do you want an economy that is
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: for rich investors and big corporations that And the people
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: that donate to Donald Trump and the Republicans and the
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: people that have been whispering in their ear the whole time?
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: Or do you want an economy that is? recognizes the
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: sacrifice and the struggles of American workers and small business owners?
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: And that is the difference in this election. And again,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: that's sort of Democrats' message all the time, right? But
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: now they're pushing on an open door because... For all
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: the reasons you gave, like there's just so many examples,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: and we've seen this in polls too, like when you
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: give people new information, it helps make the case. Well,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: there's plenty of new information here, you know, from Donald
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Trump saying on camera yesterday he wants to terminate the
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Affordable Care Act, the fact that they want to cut
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: or they don't want to re-upstate and local aid the Republicans,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: you know, or even extend unemployment insurance. Lindsey Graham the
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: other day said that he would extend unemployment insurance to
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: Over our dead bodies. This is like for people who
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: are out of work through no fault of their own
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: sitting at home because they have been asked to stay
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: home by the federal government to protect everyone's health. And
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: you're not going to extend unemployment insurance to them.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: What is the purpose of that? Can you imagine how
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: unpopular that is? And then like the liability protection. Someone
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: finally did a poll on the liability protection. Almost 70%
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: of voters oppose that. giving corporations liability protection to force
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: their employees to come back to work in unsafe conditions,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: including a majority of Trump voters oppose that. Change did
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: a poll on this too. And that poll we were
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: talking about earlier in six battleground states, majority say it's
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: important for small businesses and people who've lost jobs or
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: wages to receive relief. That's 97% for small businesses, 94%
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: for people who lost jobs and wages. 74% of Americans
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: support recurring direct payments to individuals who until the pandemic ends.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: 74% and 66% support relief to state and local governments. Also,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: by the way, just 21% say that Trump's policies in
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: response to COVID favor the middle class and small businesses most. This,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: to me, is going to be the fall, right? This
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: is the debate in this election. And this goes back
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: to our earlier conversation. One of the reasons I don't
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: want this to become a false choice between our health
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: and the economy is because Democrats have such a powerful
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: case to make on the economic part that we cannot
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: just cede that to Trump and make it seem like, okay,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: he's the guy pressing the economy, but we care about
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: people's health.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: No, no, no.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: We care about both. And the idea is his vision
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: of the economy is a vision of the economy for
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: people like Donald Trump. It is not a vision of
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: the economy for the rest of the country that is
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: struggling right now. And so far, I just like Democrats
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: haven't really broken through with that message yet. And I
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: don't know that the Biden campaign has either, but I
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: do think we need to sort of get on that
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: because that's going to be the big fight going forward.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: Just on the legal liability thing, it's not just that
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: they want legal liability, is that it is currently the
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: position of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell that if we
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: do not give companies legal liability, then they will cut
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: off aid to every teacher, firefighter, cop, essential worker, American family,
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: and small business. Their view is no more economic aid,
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: no more unemployment insurance, nothing if we don't get this
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: SOP for corporations. They are holding the entire American economy
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: hostage to give a giant gift to corporations.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: It's not great, Dan.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, it could be great if we put it
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: in a fucking ad.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would like to see that. All right. Let's
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: talk about where the presidential race stands right now. Monmouth
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: had a poll out this week, and they are a
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: very high quality pollster. They found Joe Biden ahead of
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump by 10%. 50 to 41%, a nine point
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: margin that's even bigger than Biden's four point margin in
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: their April poll. The RealClearPolitics average right now has Biden
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: up by a little over five nationally, a little over
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: two and a half in Wisconsin, five and a half
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: in Michigan, six and a half in Pennsylvania, and a
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: little over three in Florida. So obviously a bit closer
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: in the battleground states. And of course, we know this
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: is an election to get to 270 that happens in
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: the battleground states. We will say this 50,000 times between
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: now and November. So obviously, Dan, polls are not great
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: for predicting. We don't use them for that here. But
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: they are a good snapshot of where the candidates stand
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: right now. How strong is Joe Biden's position? And looking
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: at some of these numbers, what would worry you if
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: you were in his campaign?
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: So I think the change of the last eight weeks
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: or whatever it's been since coronavirus is that Trump went
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: from a slight favorite to be reelected to a slight underdog.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: You look at these polls, the election were held today.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: They are very suggestive of the fact that Biden would
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: win a narrow race. That could be a large electoral
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: college margin, but a narrow margin within states like Wisconsin, Arizona,
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: and Florida, which are the states he needs. He needs
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: one of those three states to put him over 270,
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: if you believe, based on these polls, that he's stronger
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania and Michigan. I just think one thing that
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: we should also say 50,000 times from now in the
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: election is it is highly likely that Biden will be
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: leading in national polls every day from now until election
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: day and could still not win the presidency.
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Much like Hillary Clinton.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Much like Hillary Clinton, which is a three to four
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: point lead in the national polls, depending on sort of
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: turnout around the country, is also consistent with a scenario
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: where Trump could narrowly win Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: And you basically have to, you basically have to get
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: to a five or six point national lead, which is
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: what he has right now to almost guarantee that you'll
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: win the electoral college.
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: And different, different prognosticators and data nerds will tell you
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: different numbers. Some say it's four, some say it's five,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: but it's around that. Yeah.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: And, We should just also stipulate that we have no
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: idea what– we're sort of modeling this against what we
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: think turnout will look like in a quasi-normal situation, which.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: We're not going to be.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: Also true. Right. We don't really know. But just do
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: not look at a national poll that is– frankly, any
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: national poll. But don't look at a national poll that's
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: three to four points and feel fucking great about yourself
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: because you should not.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Definitely not.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Look at a Wisconsin poll. Look at a Florida poll.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Look at an Arizona poll. Look at these other battleground
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: state polls. So I think Biden should feel– good about
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: his political standing right now. But I think we should
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: also recognize that despite Biden having a political advantage in
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: the moment, according to the polls, Trump maintains a very
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: significant electoral college advantage. He has the largest resource advantage
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: that any incumbent president has ever had and probably will
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: ever have. I mean, he has got potentially $ 5 for
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: every $ 1 Biden currently has. And that does not include
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: the massive Republican super PAC advantages, does not include the
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: $ 100 million that Trump has already spent building up a
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: massive database of his voters and potential voters for himself.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: And he has a massive media advantage. And so Biden's
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: in a strong political position, but there's a lot of
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: swimming upstream to get to a point where you can
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: take advantage of that.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: The other thing, and a bunch of us were talking
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: about this yesterday, is if you look at their favorability ratings...
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's favorability is underwater by anywhere from, I don't know,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: 8 to 15 points. I think Monmouth had him at
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: like 40, 53. Joe Biden's approval in the Monmouth poll
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: is 41 approved, 44 disapproved. We said this before, but
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama may have been the last Democratic candidate to
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: have run for the presidency with an approval rating that
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: is above water. And that is not something... particularly special
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: about Barack Obama, but it is because of sort of
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: the polarized nature of politics now and the fact that
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: negative partisanship, which is sort of just voting because you
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: want to get rid of the opponent and not necessarily
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: because you feel strongly about the person running in your
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: own party, is much more prevalent.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Would you say it's a hell of a drug?
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: I would say it's a hell of a drug. I
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: would say partisanship is a hell of a drug. And
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: just the way we are now, you know, like Every
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: other Democrat that ran for president this time around, none
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: of them have above water approval ratings. Not Elizabeth Warren,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: not Bernie Sanders, like none of them did. And that
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: could only get worse. Now, you know, the difference is
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: when Hillary Clinton ran, she was the second most unpopular
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: candidate to ever run for the presidency. Donald Trump was
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: the most unpopular candidate to ever run for the presidency.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: There was a good chunk of voters who didn't approve
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: of either of them, who didn't like either of them.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump won those voters by 17 points right now,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: at least. people who don't like Joe Biden or Donald
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Trump are voting for Joe Biden by like 30, 40 points.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: That's the case now. But again, you just said Donald
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: Trump has a lot of money. They're just starting the
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: negative ad campaign now. And so they are going to
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: try to define Joe Biden and to drive his approval
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: ratings down even more. And it does seem like at
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: the very least, Joe Biden is a blank slate for
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: a lot of voters, which is why you have this
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: approval rating of 41, disapproval of 44, and a bunch
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: of people who haven't made up their mind at all
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: about Joe Biden, which is opportunity for the Biden campaign,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: but also danger, right?
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right, which is Biden is in a
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: situation somewhat similar to what Hillary Clinton was in before,
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: which is 100% name ID, a general base of knowledge, right?
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: It's not just they know his name, they know he
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: was vice president. I think they have some general... sense
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: that he's been in politics for a long time. I
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: think there's a general sense. He's probably a nice guy. Um,
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: and probably some general sense that he's more moderate than
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: some of the other Democrats running. But other than that,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: there was very, particularly among the voters you're going to
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: need to persuade either, uh, sort of the quote unquote
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: swing voters and the people you're trying to convince to
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: engage in politics, perhaps for the first time, there's a
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: real lack of knowledge. And Biden is operating a sort
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: of generic Democrat plus right now. And the battle for
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: the presidency is in part over that last 15% of
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: people who don't yet have an opinion on Biden, depending
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: on what poll you look at. And Trump has the ability,
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: if Biden lets him, to define Biden before Biden defines himself.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, back to the answer Trump gave
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: David Muir when he asked whether he's comfortable with the
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: 2020 race becoming a referendum on his response to the coronavirus.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Trump starts by saying, well, I am and I'm not.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: I hope it's not solely on what I've done here
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: because this is a very, this is like rubber. It's very,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: very amorphous. I don't know what the fuck that means.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't seem like Trump wants this to be
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: a referendum. Do you think it will be? And should
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: Biden try to make it one? You and I have...
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Talked about this before.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: I find the referendum versus choice discussion to be a
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: bit of a one-dimensional framework for something that happens in
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: three dimensions, which is, yes, of course, every presidential election
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: for an incumbent is in some cases a referendum on
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: that president's performance because the most important driving factors that
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: dictate the parameters of the political debate are around the
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: president's approval rating, and the state of the economy under
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: that president. Those are historically drivers of what happens. But ultimately,
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: unlike for House, Senate, and even governor, presidents or elections
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: are always a choice. Someone still has to sit at
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: their kitchen table with their mail ballot or go into
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: a booth and decide between two people. And Biden does
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: not get to decide at the referendum. That's not his choice.
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: The incumbent decides. And the incumbent always makes it a choice.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: Mitt Romney thought this was going to be a referendum
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: against Obama. Every speech, ad, tweet, awkward statement was about Obama.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: He spent all his time trying to convince people that
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: Barack Obama was a bad president. He spent no time
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: trying to convince people that Mitt Romney would be a
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: good president. So when our campaign decided to explain to
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: the American people what kind of president Mitt Romney would be,
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: We got to have that conversation before Mitt Romney did.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: So I think if the Biden campaign, I don't have
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: any reason to believe they're going to do this. And
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: I have actually reason to believe they're not going to
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: do it. But you see this a lot from political
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: strategists on Twitter and cable, which is make this a referendum,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: make it all about Trump. And I think that that
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: is a mistake against any income. And I think it's
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: particularly a mistake against Trump because the negative information about
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: Trump is often baked into the cake already because it's
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: so evident every day. And he dominates the media so
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: much that you have to work extra hard to communicate
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: about yourself. And so I think Biden has to lean
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: into making it a choice to protect himself against Trump
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: doing that, if that makes sense.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: I think that makes a lot of sense because I
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: think that sort of, it sort of illuminates the reality
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: of this debate, which is that like, yes, if the
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: election becomes a referendum on Donald Trump, and it may
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: be that just because of the circumstances that we're living through,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: then that will be good for Joe Biden and bad
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: for Donald Trump.
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: But if you're Joe Biden and you have a finite
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: amount of resources in a finite amount of time, where,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: how do you want to spend it? Do you want
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: to talk constantly about how bad Donald Trump is, which
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: is something that most people are living through every day?
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: Or do you want to say, by the way, I'm
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: the acceptable alternative, um, and, and talk about your economic plan,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: your vision, here's the contrast knowing that Donald Trump is
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: going to be dumping millions and millions and millions of
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: dollars of ads on you every single day. And that
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: the most important thing to do is to make yourself
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: a credible challenger so that if it is a referendum
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: on Trump and a bunch of people have decided, okay,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: I want to fire Donald Trump, but I'm not sure
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: if I want to hire Joe Biden. Um, you can say, yes, no,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: I am an acceptable alternative. Yeah.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: I've seen a bunch of, uh, polling done for various
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: Democratic organizations and campaigns over the last few weeks. And
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: there are a couple of points that are pretty clear.
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: One is that voters are willing to fire Trump. But
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: it is also true that they do not know, as
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: of yet, know enough about Biden to be sure that
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: he is the right alternative. And so they just don't
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: know enough. And so that is a blank that Biden's
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: going to have to paint in. The second point that
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: I think is really important for all of us to remember,
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: which is Huge swaths of voters, particularly the ones who
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: are going to decide this election, this universe of voters
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: we call up for grabs voters in sort of Obama
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: campaign parlance, believe that two terms is the default for
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: a president. And there is a higher burden for firing.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: And that higher burden is not just about their performance.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: It's also about the person you want to put in
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: the seat when you fire that president. And that– We
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: just have to remember that because that is how you
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: have to try to put yourself into the mind of
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: the voters who are going to sign this election. And
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: they do not think Trump is as dumb as we do.
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: They do not think he's a fake businessman. They think
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: he has at least a right to make a case
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: for himself for a second term. And if you try
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: to run against the MSNBC, Twitter, Pod Save America version
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: of Trump, which I think is the accurate version of Trump,
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: you're running against a different Trump than the voters see.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: And that is another mistake Mitt Romney made. He ran
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: against the Fox News caricature of Obama, not the actual
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: Obama that swing voters saw, which was someone who they trusted,
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: they thought was honest, and they thought was doing his
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: best in a difficult situation.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. A lot of these voters are disappointed with Trump,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: but they are not disgusted with Trump. And that might
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: not be emotionally satisfying to all of us, but it
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: is the reality. And winning a vote from someone who
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: was disappointed with Trump counts the same as winning a
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: vote from someone who was disgusted with Trump. So just
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: go for it.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: It counts the same, but it requires a different argument.
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: It does.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: A different tone. Okay.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: So before we get to your interview with Mark Elias,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: we do have some listener questions that came to us.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: So we'll just go through a few of them. Julie
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: McKellar asks, where to donate with limited resources to get
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: the biggest bang for donation buck? to one of the
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: in-place Senate campaigns to flip it. Biden, super PAC, I'm
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: bombarded every day with multiple requests. I give, but I
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: can't give every day to every ask. Thanks. I mean,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know what you think. I would say either,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: like Brian Schatz always says, adopt a Senate race. And,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: you know, he said this to love it on Pate
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: of America, I thought was really smart. He said, you know,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: don't just give to sort of the most popular Senate candidate,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: or at least the Senate candidate who's running against the
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: Republican you hate the most, because we have a lot
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: of chances now and a lot of paths to flip
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: the Senate. And we want to make sure that we...
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: as Barack Obama would say, spread the wealth around to
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: all the, that's a deep cut, Dan, to all the
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: different potential Senate races. One way you can do that,
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: by the way, is to go to our Get Mitch
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: or Die Trying Fund that you can find on votesaveamerica.com.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: And if you donate, it will automatically split your donation
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: to all the different, all to the most competitive Senate races.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: So you can do it that way. And I also
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: think that Joe Biden's campaign, we've been talking about nonstop
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: is behind Donald Trump in the money chase. They absolutely
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: need money. So donate to Joe Biden if you can.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: I think both of those things are more effective than
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: donating to super PACs, only because for super PACs like
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: like billionaires can write gigantic checks and you can write
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: an unlimited amount of money. So like grassroots donations don't
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: need to be going to places where some super rich
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: person could donate a fuckload of money. You should be
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: donating grassroots donations. Grassroots donations should be going to candidates
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: where there's an actual donation limit.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: I agree with all of that. And I'm for everything
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: you just said and donating to all those groups. I
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: think also I would look at If you want sort
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: of a hipster choice of what to give to, look
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: at some of the groups that are focused on far
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: down ballot races. Jessica Post, who's the head of the
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, had a tweet the other day
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: that we will retweet, if I remember to do that,
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: that goes through all the chambers that Democrats have a
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: chance to flip.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: In 2020.
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: And so either giving to the DLCC or to some
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: of the individual campaigns in those states or to run
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: for something, which helps recruit and train candidates for down
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: ballot races, like that is a place where your $ 50
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: is going to go exponentially farther or your $ 5, your tenant,
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: whatever it is you feel like you can give is
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: going to go farther in a race with a smaller
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: budget than in one with a giant budget. So that's
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: another thing to think about, but all is good, right?
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: It's not, there's not one better than the other. It's
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: sort of where you want to have your impact.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: Joel Dodge asks, How much should Massachusetts having a Republican
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: governor caution against Biden picking Elizabeth Warren? What is the
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: current procedure for filling her Senate seat? I like Warren,
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: but the semi-recent history of Senate special elections in Massachusetts
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: makes me nervous. What do you think, Dan?
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: This is a fixable problem.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: Well, the Democrats in the Massachusetts legislature, if I understand
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: it correctly, have a veto-approved majority, so they could pass
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: a bill that says that The governor is required to
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: appoint someone who is of the same party of the
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: departing senator. This is something that the folks in North
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: Carolina did to both make it harder for the Democratic
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: Governor Roy Cooper to have political power and also allow
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: Richard Burr to engage in a large amount of insider
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: trading without fear of losing his seat to a Democrat.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I didn't realize that, too. I mean,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: I should have because it's Massachusetts and I'm from there
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: and I've seen the legislature, but yeah, they have a
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: super majority, so they can change the law there. At
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: some point, the vacancy, so they could compel Charlie Baker,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: the governor of Massachusetts, to appoint a Democrat to fill
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: her seat. At some point, there would still have to
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: be a special election. The other thing that Elizabeth Warren
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: could do is she could give her letter of resignation
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: to in advance after Biden selects her in July, or
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: she could even wait till November, and then basically say,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: I will resign on X date in the future, and
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: push this and make sure that the special election is,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: you know, early in January, so that you can hopefully
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: get a Democrat to fill her seat, or she could
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: push it past the first three months. You know, like,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: there's different ways that she can actually control her destiny
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: there and win the when the special election is and
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: sort of coordinate it with whatever, hopefully, President Biden's governing
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: agenda is and how many Senate votes he needs for
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: that agenda in the first hundred days.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: And it's like, obviously, there is a very challenging history
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: of filling special election Senate seats in Massachusetts, which we
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: know quite well from Scott Brown winning Ted Kennedy's seat
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: and derailing the Affordable Care Act briefly, which did lead
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: to Elizabeth Warren becoming a senator, so that's also good,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: I guess. In the long run, great. But we should
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: also not be overly sanguine about the selection of a
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: Democratic senator in a swing state with a Democratic governor.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: If Biden were to pick Timmy Baldwin or Amy Klobuchar, yes,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: the Democratic governors could appoint a Democrat to serve for
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: whatever the law is there, but you're still putting yourself
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: in a challenging situation to win a Senate seat in
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: a swing state in what is always a very tough
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: election for the party in power the first midterm. Doesn't
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: mean you shouldn't do it.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: No, but you're right. I mean, like an A.B. Klobuchar
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: pick means that there's another, there's a special election in Minnesota,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: a tougher state than Massachusetts in 2021 or 2022.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: I think we.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: Have to look at the laws, but I think in most,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know about those specific cases, in often cases
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: it means the person fills out the, until the next
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: election so that you would have someone until 2022. So
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: you have them on the ballot in that first midterm,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: which is historically challenging. Right.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: And especially, you know, president Joe Biden in, in 2022,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: when we still have double digit unemployment, having to midterm
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: there is going to be challenging. It never ends people.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: Steve Lindley asks which congressional Republican losing in November would
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: bring you the most joy.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: Do you have an answer?
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: I do.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: What's yours?
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: Susan Collins. Susan Collins is a good answer. I'm going
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: with who's actually... I mean, there's plenty of Republicans I
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: hate more than Susan Collins. But I'm talking about likelihood
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: to actually lose. And when we're talking the Senate and
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: we're talking all the seats we pick up, a lot
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: of these Republican senators are just fucking terrible, but not
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: in any special way. Susan Collins just... pretending that she's
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: some independent, moderate voice through the Trump administration has driven
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: me fucking crazy, especially after Kavanaugh, especially after all the
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: other things she's just given in on to Trump. And
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: then she gets so angry when anyone suggests that she
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: may be just covering for Donald Trump or impeachment, right?
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: She gets so angry that people think that she's just
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: a Trump apologist when that is what her record shows.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I'd be super psyched for Susan Collins to lose.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's a good answer, but that's not the
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: right answer. Okay, what is it? The right answer is
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's right.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously Susan Collins losing is much more likely than
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell, but Mitch McConnell losing would be fucking amazing.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: Do you think there's a real chance for Amy McGrath
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: to beat Mitch McConnell?
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: I think it is a very, very hard... I think
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: she is a good candidate to run that race. But
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: this was not which Republican do you think is going
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: to lose is which Republicans you want to lose.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: OK.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: Well, the other one in that case, too, is Jamie Harrison.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: That was my second choice.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And Jamie Harrison is running a fantastic campaign. And
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: I think they just moved that seat from like safe
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: Republican to likely Republican or whatever. And so, you know,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: there's it's again, it's a real tough one, just like Kentucky. But,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: you know, it would be fun to watch Lindsey Graham lose, too.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: The demographics in South Carolina are moving faster than people think.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: That's good news. I like that.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Watchter asks, I haven't heard much on the podcast
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: about the Postal Service. As a postal worker, I'm concerned
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: that while a few Democrats have commented in favor of
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: funding the U.S. Postal Service, it doesn't seem to be
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: a priority or item of high interest in negotiations with GOP.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: What can I do to bring this issue to the forefront?
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: Read John's T-shirt. Which says call Congress for those of
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: you who are watching this on YouTube.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, the good news is I saw a report
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: this week somewhere that the Democratic leadership, Nancy Pelosi, has
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: committed to including $ 25 billion for the post office in
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: whatever the next stimulus bill is. So that is good news.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: I saw a bunch of senators wrote a letter to
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: Mnookin because basically what's happening right now is Treasury– is saying,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: all right, we'll give the post office a $ 10 billion loan,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: but only under these conditions. And one of those conditions
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: is Donald Trump thinks they should be charging Amazon and
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: other shippers more to use their service instead of like
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: having the taxpayers bail them out, which is an absurd
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: thing to say because the post office is competing with
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: the prices of that FedEx and, um, and UPS are
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: also charging places like Amazon. So the, the post office
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: raising their shipping prices is not going to help the
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: post office. It's going to, um, lose them business to
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: FedEx and UPS. And they're just going to end up
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: being more fucked. So like, it's an absurd, it's Trump
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: not understanding how the fucking post office works.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm shocked to find out he doesn't fully
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: understand that. And he also just today appointed some Republican
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: hack donor to be postmaster general.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: Which is a longer conversation. I think Democrats will do
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: the right thing here. I also think if you live
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: in a district with a Republican, put pressure on them
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: to not have mail stop running. Like that seems like
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: your basic fucking job as a public servant is ensure
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: the mail still arrives.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: Right, and guess who really needs the mail to arrive,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: especially because places like, you know, FedEx and UPS don't
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: reach them. Rural areas where there are Republican voters, senior
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: citizens who are stuck home right now who need their
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: medications delivered, people who need their fucking ballots delivered in November. Yeah,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: the post office is pretty fucking important. It's also incredibly popular.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: Another thing that across party lines, everyone loves the post office,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: north of 70% of Americans. So yeah, call Congress. Um, and, uh,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: it looks like the Democrats are going to put this
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: in the bill, but you know, it's got to survive negotiations. So, um,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: keep on your representatives. Uh, Kelsey Breen asks, have you
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: ever heard Obama say fuck?
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: Not a ton. He's not, he doesn't like throw it
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: around like we do on the podcast.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, you weren't there in 2014. That was a
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: tough year.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right. I left before things got really bad. Um, Uh,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: Jake Van Curson asks Dan last dance is making me
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: want to get into the NBA when it resumes, which
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: team should I follow context? I've lived in Chicago since
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: 2004 and was born and raised in Michigan.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: This is a great question. And I love this question.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: I would say it is somewhat similar to someone saying,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: Hey Dan, I've been watching top chef. I want to
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: get into food. What do you think? And so to me,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: it's a question of what kind of experience do you want?
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: I would, Just point out to you, Mr. Questioner, that
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: probably the two franchises that may be in the worst
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: current position in terms of future prospects and talent and
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: cap and everything else are the Chicago Bulls and the
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: Detroit Pistons. So maybe you don't want to go with
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: the hometown there. And so it's like, what do you want?
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: Do you want long time excellence? Do you want scrappy underdog?
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: Do you want exciting? Do you want defense? Do you
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: want the tortured experience of being a Philadelphia 76ers fan?
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: So I would say based on geography and the fact
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: that you like the last dance, I would suggest one
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: Sixers have the best fans. and you're welcome to be
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: a Sixers fan with me. I don't know I can
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: good conscience recommend that as an easy first step in
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: a basketball fandom, but based on the geography of somebody
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: who lives in Chicago, if they do not want to
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: be a Chicago Bulls fan, I would recommend picking up
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: the Bucs of Milwaukee. They have the best player in
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: the NBA. Giannis Antetokounmpo is both reigning MVP, will win
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: MVP this year if we ever finish the season, and
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: is just like an amazing story and amazing guy. So
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: he would be very fun to root for probably along
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: those for the same reasons why you've enjoyed watching the
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: last dance. So that's my recommendation.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Great answer. Last question. Mary Chris Arcuri asks, John, what
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: are your thoughts on Francesca and Harry? Are you as
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: shocked as I am that they're still together?
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: Who are those people?
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: Well, Dan, Francesca and Harry are the, um, the hero
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: and heroine from the Netflix reality show too hot to handle.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, so did we just spoil too hot to handle
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: for millions of listeners?
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: Um, I wouldn't use the word spoil necessarily because I'm
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: not sure it's a show that can be spoiled. Um,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: but I will say much like the Trump presidency, it is, um, shocking,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: but not surprising that they're still, they're still together. Um,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: Francesca is of course a, um, a Canadian model. Harry is, um,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: someone from Australia. They, they met on the set of
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: too hot to handle. They, um, broke many of the
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: rules of the show, and yet they ended up together.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: I just read, I think on some trashy website, that
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: there's going to be a Two Hunt to Handle reunion
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: episode this Friday, so I know what I'm doing Friday night.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: And they met during the show. I guess they broke
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: up for eight months, and now they're back together, and
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: they may even be engaged is the rumor. Can't believe
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: this is something that I know something about. That tells
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: you about my quarantine schedule.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, this was fascinating. I love that you
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: said Francesca is, of course, a Canadian model. If you
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: don't know that.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: Anyone who knows too much to handle knows her background.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: I would know just, I'm making fun of you for this,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: but I want you to know, all of our listeners,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: I'm not doing it from the perspective of a TV snob.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: I like equally bad TV, just different bad TV.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. I mean, you and Howley introduced us
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: to Below Deck.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: Yep, we are big fans of the Below Deck extended universe.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: All right. When we come back, Dan will talk to
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: Democratic election lawyer Mark Elias. So we asked all you
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: guys to send us videos about why it's so important
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: for you to be able to vote safely in November
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: as we try to make sure that the next economic
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: relief bill includes protections for safe voting. So many of
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: you sent videos. We really appreciate it. Here are a
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: couple of testimonials from people about why it's so important
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: that they're able to vote safely in November before you
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: hear Dan's interview with Mark Elias.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: Hi, my name's Libby and I'm a medical student from Wisconsin.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: To say that I'm disappointed in how the Wisconsin legislature
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 4: and Supreme court handled our election earlier this April would
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: be an understatement because really I am furious. It's our
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 4: constitutional right to vote and we should never have to
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: choose between that right and the health and wellness of
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: ourselves or of our loved ones. But I'm not just
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 4: angry on principle. This reckless disregard that our state showed
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 4: for voter security is very personal because it directly affects
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: my family. My mom has an autoimmune condition called myasthenia gravis,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 4: which means that her muscles tire quickly, including her respiratory muscles.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: If she were to contract COVID, she would be a
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: high-risk case and she would very likely need to be intubated.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: Knowing that, she and my dad and my brother still
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: went to the polls earlier this month because they never
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: received their absentee ballots. If she were to have to
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: do that again, I honestly don't know if she would
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: be so lucky to not get infected, and that really
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: scares me. We need to have voter protections put in place,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: and we need to have them as soon as possible. Please.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: Hi there. My name is Caitlin Kahn.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 5: I live in Madison, Wisconsin, and I need safer voting
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 5: options because I'm a poll worker, and I have a
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 5: suppressed immune system. So working the poll on April 7th
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 5: was very.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 4: It was very scary.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 5: And I couldn't see my family for two weeks afterwards
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 5: because of self-isolation. And I would just like safer voting
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 5: options so that we don't have to risk our lives
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 5: to exercise our right to vote.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: I'm now joined by attorney Mark Elias, a lawyer and
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: voting rights advocate who's been working hard to make sure
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: that everyone can vote safely and securely in November. Elias,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: how are you doing, buddy?
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 6: Good.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: How are you?
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: You know, all things considered. Doing pretty good for not
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: having left my house in.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: A few months. Yeah, I know. It feels longer, actually.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Every day takes forever, but it's hard
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: to believe we've been here for eight weeks already. Let's start.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: I imagine your vision for a safe and fair election
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: looks nothing like what we saw in Wisconsin last month.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: How do you think a safe and fair election can
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: take place with the backdrop of coronavirus?
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 6: Yeah, look, I mean, the challenges of coronavirus are just
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 6: accelerating the problems that we had in voting even before.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 6: In order to have a fair and open and safe election,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 6: we need two things. Number one, everyone who wants to
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 6: vote by mail needs to be able to do so
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 6: without unnecessary restrictions. And number two, we need to provide
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 6: safe in-person voting. And the way you provide safe in-person
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 6: voting is you Increase the number of polling locations. You
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 6: increase the number of days over which you have in-person
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 6: early voting. And by doing those two things, along with
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 6: expanding the pool of people to work election day and
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 6: curbside voting, you can have.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 3: People vote in person.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 6: But the biggest key is to drive as many people
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 6: to vote by mail as possible so that you can
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 6: keep down the crowds of people who need to vote
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 6: in person.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: What do you want to see in a legislative package
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: that originates in the Democratic House in terms of helping
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: states vote by mail and have safe elections?
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a great question. So there's two pieces to
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 6: what Democrats need to do. The first is money. You know,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 6: I say to people, I am not usually in the
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 6: business of telling– people that state election officials need more
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 6: money to administer elections. I usually sue state election officials.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 6: So I don't usually, I'm not usually their advocate. But
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 6: in this case, the first and highest need is for
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 6: states to get the resources necessary to increase vote by mail.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: And other kinds of voting.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 6: You know, what a lot of people in your audience
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 6: probably don't realize is that unlike the federal government, they
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 6: could just print money. States oftentimes operate under a balanced
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 6: budget requirements. So if they don't have the money to spend,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 6: they don't have the money to spend. And so getting
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 6: funding for elections is probably the biggest thing. There are
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 6: some other things that would be helpful as well, mandating
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 6: that states provide for vote-by-mail. There are still states that
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 6: don't allow automatic no-excuse absentee voting, so things like that.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: You have written about and talked about the difference between
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: vote by mail and the most fair version of vote
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: by mail. What are some of the things we need
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: in vote by mail to ensure that people aren't disenfranchised?
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that question because one
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 6: thing about vote by mail is that Unlike in-person voting
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 6: where the rate of rejection of in-person ballots.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: Is virtually zero, right? You go, you show up.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 6: If your ballot doesn't scan into the machine before you leave,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 6: you fix it. One of the problems with vote-by-mail is
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 6: that you have some significant number of ballots that get
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 6: mailed in that don't get counted.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: They get rejected.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 6: And just to give you a couple of statistics on that,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 6: there was a study by Dan Smith out of Florida
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 6: that showed that mail ballots cast by 18 to 21-year-olds
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 6: in 2018 in Florida, 5.4% of them were rejected. If
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 6: you look at the number for over 65, it was 0.6%.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 6: So that means one out of every 20 young voters
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 6: had their mail ballot rejected. One out of every 200
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 6: mail voters who are over 65 had them rejected. So
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 6: there's an unevenness to this. So there are four things
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 6: that I've said we need to do to make sure
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 6: that we, to use a phrase, flatten the curve of rejection.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 6: And that are, number one, free postage to make sure
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 6: that people who want to vote by mail don't have
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 6: to try to go out in coronavirus and find stamps.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 6: Number two, that we ensure that ballots that are postmarked
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 6: by Election Day count, even if they are received afterwards.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 6: That small change, by the way, was one of the
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 6: things we won in Wisconsin, and 142,000 ballots counted. that
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 6: would have otherwise been rejected. Think about that for a second. 142,000
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 6: ballots were cast that were postmarked by Election Day but
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 6: received afterwards. Had we not won the victory that we
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 6: did under Wisconsin law, those ballots would not have counted.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 6: The third is signature match law reforms. State's typically match
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 6: the signature on the back of the return envelope of
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 6: a mail ballot with the signature on file from when
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 6: someone registered. And we see sky-high rejection rates, particularly, again,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 6: among young voters and minority voters. And there are things
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 6: states can do to make sure that those rejection rates
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 6: are lower and that voters are given an opportunity to
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 6: be notified and fix any problems. And then finally, allowing
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 6: community organizations to collect and return sealed mailed ballots and
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 6: This is very important, for example, among Native American populations
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 6: and some rural areas where there is not reliable mail service.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 6: And therefore, that's the only way to make sure that
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 6: their ballots are getting.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: In at all.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: You know, you could see how to some people it
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: would suggest that given the pandemic and the dangers of
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: going in public and the challenges of social distancing while
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: waiting in line to vote at a high school gym
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: or a church or wherever else, people might say, well,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: why don't we conduct elections only by mail? Can you
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: help explain why we need in-person voting as well?
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: So a couple of reasons.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 6: The first is that the states that have gone to
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 6: all vote by mail, which is really Colorado, Washington, Oregon,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 6: they did so over a long time horizon. So we
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 6: could have a longer discussion about whether or not for 2022, 2024, 2026,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 6: states ought to be moving in that direction. But The
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 6: fact is getting that in place for 2020 would be
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 6: challenging for most states. And when you do that, the
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 6: problems are basically twofold. Number one, it requires the states
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 6: to have really, really accurate lists of who.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: All their registered voters are.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 6: And when you see that transition take place, unless it's
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 6: done really thoughtfully, you tend to miss transient populations, particularly
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 6: young voters, but other types of transient populations tend to
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 6: get left out, number one. There are demographic differences, particularly
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 6: African-Americans have a higher propensity to vote in person. And geographically,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 6: if you spent any time in Vermont or New Hampshire,
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 6: you know that they very much engage in democracy as
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 6: an in-person act. They still have town meetings where whole
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 6: towns get together. So it's important that we have safe
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 6: in-person voting options because there are going to be people
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 6: for whom voting by mail is simply either not an
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 6: option because they don't have reliable mail service or where
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 6: they just don't have confidence in the vote by mail
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 6: system because of the rejection rates and they just want
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 6: to vote in person, we need to make that available
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 6: for them.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: Given what you just said about some of the populations
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: that prefer in-person voting and Obviously, there is a moral
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: argument for why vote by mail should be an option
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: in any time in a pandemic. But given the demographics
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: of the average Republican voter and the demographics of people
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: most affected by coronavirus and the demographics of people who
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: use the mail, can you help me understand why Republicans
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: like Mitch McConnell have such an opposition to vote by mail?
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 6: So it's a great question. I think it is born
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 6: more out of desperation than data. It's a little bit
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 6: like a lot of things that the Republicans right now do.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 6: It's not based nearly as scientifically based on the data
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 6: of vote by mail, because you're right, vote by mail,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 6: you know, on its face doesn't have a skew that
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 6: is particularly democratic. I remind people that when Colorado went
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 6: to all vote by mail in 2014, we lost the U.S.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 6: Senate race in Colorado. So, but I think that the
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 6: reason is that to put what I think is really
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 6: going on is that the president is constantly insisting he
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 6: is the victim of some kind of voter fraud. And
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 6: so first, the voter fraud was 3 million undocumented voters
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 6: in California. I don't want your audience to forget that,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 6: that that was actually the first thing we were told,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 6: is that there were 3 million undocumented voters in one
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 6: state in California.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 3: And that's what happened.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 6: Then he set up a fraud commission with a different
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 6: set of theories and that fell apart. And now his
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 6: latest one is that it's a problem of vote by mail.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 6: And I do think that to the extent there is
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 6: any rationality to what McConnell is thinking, it is this,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 6: that COVID is coextensive with urbanity as is, as our
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 6: democratic voters, right? So, you know, this better than anyone that,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 6: you know, the more highly dense a population center you
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 6: live in, the more likely you are to be a
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 6: democratic voter, whether white or black compared to, to more
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 6: rural areas or Hispanic or, or, or other, um, And
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 6: COVID has a particular impact on those same population centers
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 6: so that if you close in-person voting locations due to COVID,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 6: which is what we saw in Milwaukee where there are
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 6: only five polling locations open in the entire city where
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 6: normally there's more than 180, and you're not having that
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 6: same impact on more rural in-person voting, then shutting down
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 6: or making vote-by-mail harder is de facto hurting Democrats more
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 6: because their voters need them more in those urban centers
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 6: than the Republican voters need them in less densely populated areas.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: You brought up Trump questioning the legitimacy of the election
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: that he won.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: So– Which is kind of unusual, right?
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is unusual. It does not bode well for
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: what would happen in a situation where he does not win.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: What keeps you up at night in terms of what
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: Trump could do to delegitimize or even invalidate the counting
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: of votes or the election in 2020? Yeah.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 6: So let me first start with something that I get
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 6: asked a lot. which is that Trump can't move the election.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 6: So I get asked this question all the time. I
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 6: wrote a piece about this on, on, uh, on my website,
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 6: democracy docket, where I take apart the legal arguments about, um,
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 6: moving the election date, uh, and that's set by act
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 6: of Congress.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: So that's not moving.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 6: So the good news and the bad news is we're
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 6: going to have an election on, on November 3rd. So
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 6: what are the things that I worry about? I worry
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 6: mostly that, um, because, uh, elections are administered at the
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 6: state level, that you will have Republican governors or local
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 6: election officials who will do what we saw happened in Wisconsin,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 6: which is there will be five polling locations open in
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 6: the largest city in the state. If there are only
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 6: five in-person voting locations open in Milwaukee, it's going to
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 6: be very, very difficult for Democrats to win in Wisconsin.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 6: And if you pile on top of that restrictions on
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 6: vote by mail, then it becomes impossible. So what I
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 6: am worried about is that Trump will, number one, underfund
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 6: the Postal Service, which, as you know, has its own
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 6: budget problems. And there was just a story that he put,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 6: he installed one of his donors to be in charge
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 6: of the Postal Service, that the Postal Service won't be
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 6: able to adequately handle a surge in mail ballots. That
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 6: will disproportionately affect Democrats. The in-person voting will be harder
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 6: in urban centers and easier in rural areas. And therefore,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 6: what you'll wind up with is a really skewed electorate.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 6: So this is something you know. But if you look
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 6: at the election results from 2004 to 2016, high turnout
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 6: is about 58 percent and low turnout is about 54 percent.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 6: That's kind of the swing. We're talking about relatively narrow numbers.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 6: I think the Trump strategy is to drive those numbers
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 6: down into the low 50s or high 40s. I think
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 6: that's what keeps me up at night.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: And you think that helps them?
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 6: I think it does if it's uneven, right? Like it
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 6: wouldn't be if it was– if those numbers were lower
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 6: because of an excitement issue, then it would be different.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 6: But if it's that way because there are only five–
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 6: because the lines in Milwaukee are five and a half
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 6: hour long and people are lined up in masks, then yeah,
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 6: that worries me because you'll simply have longer lines and
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 6: more barriers to voting in cities than you will in.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 3: More rural areas.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: You have been, um, in court all across the country
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: over the last few months, but particularly the last few
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: weeks since COVID fighting, you know, just recently in Nevada, um, to,
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: you know, ensure that voters get sent ballots and things
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: like that. How have you found the courts receptive to
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: arguments for expanded vote by mail and expanded access?
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 6: So look, it's a mixed bag and it's early. Um,
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 6: we've had some, we've had some, um, important victories. Um, Uh,
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 6: but you know, the trial courts are very close to
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 6: the communities. So they are experiencing, and you'll hear judges
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 6: say it, uh, you know, I was on a hearing,
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 6: you know, with a federal judge in Nevada, actually, where
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 6: she began by saying, no one needs to spend time
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 6: talking about the fact that.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: There's a health crisis. We were aware of that.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 6: Um, the risk is, and this is what we saw in, in, um,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 6: in Wisconsin, is that when the cases move from the
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 6: trial judges who are hearing testimony and seeing facts on
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 6: the ground up to the Court of Appeals and then
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 6: the Supreme Court where they are more remote from those realities,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 6: that that's where the problems can be. So, far, the
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 6: courts have been good. I've been pleasantly surprised. The ACLU
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 6: actually had a great victory in Virginia, which is a
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 6: state I live in. And we've been having our successes
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 6: as well.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: But there's a long road ahead.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 6: And the RNC has committed more than $ 10 million to
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 6: fight us in court. And there are a variety of
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 6: right-wing groups that are showing up in case after case.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: You brought up the, um, you know, the Supreme court
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: decision in Wisconsin, which most people were very upset about,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: but there was this element that you mentioned about, about what,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: about ballots that come that are, that arrive after election
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: day postmark before, before election, but arrive afterwards. Is that,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: is your, do you believe that really need to be
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: specific to Wisconsin or a standard that the Supreme court
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: perhaps accidentally set for elections going forward?
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good question.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 6: So I think it's a little of both. I think
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 6: that the Supreme Court's decision to take this case was
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 6: an unfortunate one. It actually signaled that they have more
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 6: of a willingness and an interest in taking cases in
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 6: this area. I mean, there was nothing compelling about a
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 6: judicial as important as the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin is.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 6: There was no reason why the U.S. Supreme Court needed
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 6: to weigh in there, but they did. But I pointed
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 6: out the night of that ruling that though the RNC
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 6: was boasting that it had won and everyone was portraying
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 6: this as an unmitigated loss for our side, that there
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 6: was in fact this significant silver lining for the future,
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 6: which was that the Supreme Court ruled that for Wisconsin,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 6: ballots postmarked by Election Day would count even if they
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 6: came in afterwards, notwithstanding the fact that Wisconsin law said
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 6: they had to be received on Election Day. Now, we
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 6: are citing that throughout the country. We've cited that in
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 6: any number of cases. We'll see whether that's a durable
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 6: rule for the U.S.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: Supreme Court or it was only in that circumstance.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: The Bush v. Gore standard would suggest that precedent is
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: flexible in Republican elections.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: Correct. Yes. I'm not saying it's lock solid. I'm saying
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 3: it's helpful.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 6: And look, it's certainly helpful to show lower courts who
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 6: want to do the right thing that the Supreme Court
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 6: did this. So what the Supreme Court would do if
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 6: they got it back, well, we'd wait and see.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: Before I let you go, Mark, and get back to
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: whatever court you have to zoom into next, for folks
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: who are listening to this who are now going to
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: be staying awake at night thinking about all the things
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: that you've been worrying about, what's the best way that
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: they could support your efforts to fight for voting rights
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: around the country?
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 6: Look, I mean, keep pressure on Congress to appropriate money.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 6: I mean, number one, that's like super important because without funds,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 6: the states are not going to be able to administer elections.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 6: And the second is, you know, talk out and educate
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 6: your friends and your colleagues about the importance of voting
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 6: and making sure that their vote count. You know, my
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 6: motto for this election, you know, in the past we
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 6: said everyone needs to vote. This time everyone needs to
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 6: make sure their vote counts because I'm afraid otherwise we're
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 6: going to have that 5.4 percent in Florida who cast
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 6: their ballot, got their little sticker, but their ballot didn't count.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 6: So people really need to pay attention to that.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 3: And obviously, you know, every bit of support helps.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: Mark Elias, thank you so much for joining us today
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: and for everything you're doing to fight for free and
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: for elections. And we will talk to you soon.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 4: Great.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 3: Thanks so much.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Mark Elias for joining us today. And everyone
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: have a good weekend.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: Bye, everyone.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: We nailed that. Pod Save America is a product of
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: Crooked Media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
• 1:32:39
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• 1:32:42
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  Speaker 1: production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian,
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: episodes as videos every week.