Latest / Pod Save America / “The pundit gap.”

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“The pundit gap.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon P. Pitora.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Later in the pod, you'll hear my conversation with Obama
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: pollster Cornell Belcher about what, if anything, the 2020 polls
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: can tell us about the state of the race. One
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: thing Cornell pointed out, I want to see if you
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: guys can figure this out. Cornell said, guess who was
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: leading the Democratic field at this stage, late April of 2004,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: which is how he says that this race reminds him
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: most of the 2004 primary.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: I had already guessed Dick Gephardt, but that was apparently wrong.
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: No. 2004.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I can give a big hint. It's not Wesley Clark?
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: It's a fan favorite of yours. Love it. John Edwards?
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: A fan favorite of mine? In the most sarcastic way possible.
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: Chris Evans?
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Howard Dean? Oh my God, not Joe Lieberman. Yes, Joe Lieberman!
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Of course he was.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: He was the Democratic vice president four years earlier. He
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: had yet to decide that he didn't want people between
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: 50 and 65 to have health care.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: It was a lot.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: He had endorsed George, wait, John McCain.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: He was a three-way tie for third in New Hampshire.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Hadassah and I are so blessed. That's what he'd say
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: all the time. We relish Hadassah. That was one of
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: the best signs of that cycle.
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Wow, guys. Some people are like, 2004? What are they
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: talking about?
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, in addition to that, the 2020 candidates continue to
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: come visit us here at Cricket Headquarters. Tommy talked with
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton on Friday. You can listen to
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: that episode now.
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: Damn right I did.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Dan Pfeiffer is here. He's in the other room just
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: preparing for his interview with Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: He's really buckling down. What's that? He's really buckling down.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I saw him in there.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Dan is buckling down right now. Tim Ryan's coming in
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: here later today. That will be released on Tuesday, Dan's
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: conversation with Tim Ryan. And then I will be talking
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: with former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper on Tuesday for an
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: episode that you'll be able to check out on Friday.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: So we're trying to get all the candidates in here
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: before the first debate. Who knows if it'll happen?
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Lovett wore his Merlot pants for Tim Ryan. For Tim Ryan?
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: I think so. I think they're more of a burgundy.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: That's a first. Well, if you want to be French,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: that's fine. Tommy's got his Stitch Fix red hoodie on. Yeah,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: which we know. Most of what I'm wearing is free.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Next topic, John. Okay.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Now we get to the news, and the news is
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: very serious. A gunman with an AR-15. attacked a synagogue
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: in Southern California this weekend, leaving at least one dead
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: and several others wounded, including a rabbi and a young girl.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: The attack in Poway, California, which happened on the last
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: day of Passover, came half a year after the shootings
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Police arrested
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: a 19-year-old suspect, who may have also been involved in
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: a recent attempt to burn down a mosque. A user
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: of the far-right message board 8chan, with the same name
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: as the suspect, posted a manifesto to that site before
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: the attack took place that accuses Jews of trying to
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: destroy the white race through immigration. a post that's strikingly
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: similar to the one posted by the alleged gunman behind
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: the attacks that took place on mosques in New Zealand
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: earlier this year. There was also disturbing news from Northern
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: California this weekend. Police in Sunnyvale, which is near San Francisco,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: said on Friday that they believe a driver who ran
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: his car into a crowd of people last week did
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: so because he was deliberately targeting Muslims. So shortly after
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: the shooting, a commentator on Fox News referred to the
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: gunman as a lone wolf. And you heard this in
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: a couple different places. This is a lone wolf attack. Tommy,
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: was this a lone wolf? Is this what we would
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: describe as a lone wolf?
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I don't think so, because you see packs of these
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: individuals coordinating and talking about their plans on social media
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: sites like Gab and 8chan and 4chan in certain areas.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: And so, no, I mean, I think that these are
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: people who are feeding off the last attacker, who are
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: building a community based around hate and hate speech and, frankly,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: trying to incentivize people to violence. So, I mean, like,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: I view this as... as dangerous to the United States,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: to citizens here as ISIS or Al Qaeda, and that
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: we should resource it appropriately. Because the nightmare scenario has
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: always been in counterterrorism that there's some individual in the
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: US that is inspired by or adheres to Al Qaeda
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: or ISIS or has a sleeper cell. The sleeper cell
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: is here now. And it's angry white 19-year-old kids who
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: are living on the worst places in the internet and
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: getting radicalized.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I couldn't help but wonder, like, how would
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: we be talking about this and responding to this if
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: the New Zealand shooter, if the Poway shooter, if all
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: of these people had been Muslim?
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean, even, you know, what gets described
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: as terrorism depends on the religion of the person perpetrating it.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: We have lifted up extremism that flows from Al-Qaeda that
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: flows from Islamic extremism and held that up as somehow
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: separate and special compared to anti-Semitic violence, white supremacist violence.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: And what we're learning is that that's a mistake. This
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: is just going to keep happening, right? There was a
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: conversation about this on one of the cable networks, and
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: it was someone saying, I can't believe I'm here again,
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: six months after what happened in Pittsburgh.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Why are you surprised?
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: We've done nothing to address the underlying cultural forces, radicalizing
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: groups of angry, lonely white men, We have done nothing
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: to address the policies that allow these people.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: To arm themselves. We have done nothing to.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: There's been no attempt on the part of those on
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: the right to police their own rhetoric and their own
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: language to look at the extreme rhetoric that is at
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: least helping to galvanize these communities.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Lone Wolf organized its.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: We're not yet totally comfortable with how to describe what
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: this is, which is stochastic violence, stochastic terrorism, where no,
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: you can't point to any one sentence offered on Fox News.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: You can't point to any one bit of extremism promulgated
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: by Donald Trump as the cause, the proximate cause of
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: something like this. But all of it feeds into a
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: culture of hate that at the very bottom of the
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: internet is helping to foment what we see. And these
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: kinds of events are going to pop up again and
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: again and again.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: And we shouldn't be surprised.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: This is not going to be the last time someone
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: shoots up a synagogue.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: It's going to happen again.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: And we should just face that and be honest about
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: it because I don't think we usually are.
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, to your point, Levitt, and this is the
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: definition of terrorism. It's violence or murder to make a
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: political point. And the point that this guy is trying
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: to make is very similar to what the New Zealand
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: shooter is trying to make, which is something you see
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: on 8chan and 4chan and Gab all the time, which
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: is that that minority groups or Jews are trying to
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: replace white people and that we need to separate out
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the races and this is their way of doing it.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, I went on fucking 8chan last night just
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: to see what was going on there. It is a
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: horror show worse than you could ever imagine. It is
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: people joking that this guy didn't get a high enough score.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: They've like gamified mass murder. They wanted to kill more people.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: It is like straight up Nazi propaganda and it will
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: live there to incite other people today, tomorrow, the next day.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: And because of the shooting, because of conversations like the
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: one we're having, people are going to learn about it
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: for the first time and end up going there more.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is a problem that's growing. It's metastasizing.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: It is not getting better. It's getting worse. We sure
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: as fuck aren't doing anything about, you know, AR-15s being
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: in every community on the planet. We're barely even talking
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: about gun control, despite the Las Vegas attack being one
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: of the most horrific things to ever happen to our nation.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: So yeah, no one should be surprised.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: And it's not just bubbling up from 8chan and Gab
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: and sites like that.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, You know, you mentioned Fox News. You can't
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: point to a specific sentence or whatever. You actually can.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Tucker Carlson, in October of 2018, literally attacked liberal pundits
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: for encouraging what he called, quote, the genocide of white
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: male Christians. I mean, this is their most popular host.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Has the primetime spot on Fox News. Millions of people
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: seeing that. And that's the most extreme example from Tucker.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: But you're right that some of the other hosts, they
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: talk about immigration is changing the character of this country forever.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Democrats are trying to bring immigrants in so they can
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: get votes.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: All of this is up. Steve King, congressman from Iowa,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: doesn't even try to hide it.
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: But this is that exact language, too. Right. And it
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: is the point. Right.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: When when Tucker Carlson says that he's not he never
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: says in that he would and he wouldn't say and
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: I don't think he would want to say.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Go out and kill people, right?
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: But what he doesn't appreciate, what he doesn't seem to
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: care is that when he says something like that, even
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: though it is a step removed from any kind of
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: call for violence, it feeds into a radicalizing culture that
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: leads some random person to take it as inspiration or
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: to contribute to the inspiration that he feels, and it's
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: always he.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: So, you know.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: And this is also at the highest levels of the
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: White House, right? This is, you know, Donald Trump during
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: the campaign retweeted an account that's a, you know, white
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: genocide account. You've got Stephen Miller has talked about these
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: views around immigration, right?
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, there's a think tank. It's the Network Contagion
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Research Institute. I'd never heard of it until I read
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: this article this morning. They analyzed like 100 million comments
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: on Gab and 4chan. They found that anti-Semitic slurs and
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: content on those platforms doubled after the election of Donald Trump.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: There's data that shows that between July 2016 and January 2018,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: The politically incorrect message board on Gab or on 4chan
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: went up drastically. I mean, it's normalized people's feeling that
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: they can say these things without repercussions.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: So a lot of conservatives and some other media personalities
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: have responded by saying that anti-Semitism is a problem. on
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: both sides of the political spectrum. Some Republicans pointed back
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: to Ilhan Omar's comments. New York Times columnist Barry Weiss tweeted,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: The past few days provide a useful case study. Thursday,
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: an anti-Zionist cartoon is published in the New York Times. Saturday,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: a white nationalist guns down Jews in a synagogue.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Sunday.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Zarif appears on Fox, the foreign minister for Iran. The
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: three strands of modern anti-Semitism, far left, far right, and Islamist. Guys,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: I'm having trouble seeing an equivalence between what Ilhan Omar
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: said about AIPAC and the idea on the right wing
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: that Jews are part of a white genocide conspiracy.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Can you help me out here?
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: You don't even have to go there.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, you don't even have to go there.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: I've been lectured by conservatives for quite some time for
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: not conflating violent actions with words, right? That, that actually,
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: that that's something that chills free speech and that's politically correct.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: But even putting that aside, antisemitism is one of the
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: most potent, dangerous forces in human history and they are
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: playing with it like it's a partisan cudgel and it
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: is very frustrating. The, this is, this is something that
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: is alive now. It has been around forever. It has
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: caused untold harm and misery over the course of human history.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: It is, It is so dangerous. They are playing with
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: such an incredibly powerful force. And to use it and
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: to cast it into our partisan frame to make it
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: easier to stomach, to make it easier to process, is reprehensible.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: We have a problem.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: The problem is white nationalists and anti-Semites killing Jews. That's
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: the problem we're talking about.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Well, and it's also I mean, I saw someone in
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: the Intercept write this piece. You know, we have the
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: same enemies.
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: That it's not just anti-Semitism that is a result of
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: white nationalism. It is anti-Islam.
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Like it is. There is a belief, there is an
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: ideology that the white race is superior. It's Nazism. It's Nazism, right?
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: And that includes anti-Semitism, but goes much broader than that.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: And also, it's worth noting, too, that in the past
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: few years, there has been a rise in hate crimes.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: And who have those hate crimes targeted? They've targeted Jews
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: and they've targeted Muslims. Those are the two religious groups
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: being targeted right now by violence.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: And African Americans. Remember, there was a black church burned
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: in Louisiana just a few weeks ago. So that is,
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: the targets are are black Americans, Latino Americans, immigrants, Jews,
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: and Muslims.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Those are the targets of white nationalism. Anti-Semitism is a
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: centuries-old evil, as Lovett said. I don't think it's rooted
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: in a party or an ideology. Louis Farrakhan... says vile
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: anti-Semitic things. We should condemn those things. The Labor Party
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom has had real problems with members
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: saying things that are blatantly and vilely anti-Semitic. I do
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: think we just need to be smart enough to separate
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: out what we've seen lately, which is far-right white nationalists
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: whose views are so sick and depraved that it leads
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: them to violence. And you're right. I mean, the fact that,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: you know, in an effort to defend Donald Trump or
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: distract from the fact that, you know, these are right-wing
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: radicals White men that we throw Elon Omar's name into
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: the mix months after this discussion. It is so cynical.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: And every time you think that something is so serious
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: that we might look inward and deal with the problem,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: our friends on Fox News and on the right fail
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: to do so. And it leads to a sense of
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: just despair that we'll never deal with these problems.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: Here's Ilhan Omar on the shooting. My heart is breaking
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: after today's deadly shooting. On the last day of Passover
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: and six months to the day after the Tree of
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Life shooting, we as a nation must confront the terrifying
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: rise of religious hate and violence.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Love, Trump's hate.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: How much are these media outlets and platforms responsible and
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: what can be done about them? I mean, you know,
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: I saw some calls for someone's got to shut down 8chan.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know how you do that. Clearly, Fox is
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: a problem that we haven't been able to solve yet.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not sure how you would do that.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, a whole bunch of companies that
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: host websites have kicked things like 8chan or the Daily
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Stormer off. And then there's just sort of a few
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: that linger, like sites that are just willing to allow
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: anything to happen. And I don't know how to increase
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: the political pressure on them to get rid of those people.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, certainly, I think it's better than having them
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: all over Facebook or all over Twitter where there's millions
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: and millions of people.
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: But again.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: every time we have this conversation, someone learns what 8chan
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: is for the first time. And maybe you don't need
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: help learning what it is if you're in some of
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: the more dark corners of 4chan or you're watching Fox
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: News at night, which leads you down this path into
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: the really radicalizing, dangerous shit.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and part of it, I think, is defining, like
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: what we were just talking about, defining exactly what this
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: kind of hate and hateful ideology is.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, here's one example.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Last week, Apparently, there was a report that when an
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: employee at Twitter recently asked at an all-hands meeting why
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: they couldn't ban content from white supremacists like they do
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: with content linked to terrorist groups like ISIS, that person
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: was told that coming up with an algorithmic solution would
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: be more complicated because it could also affect content created
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: by Republican politicians.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and what that tells me is that all the
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: bad faith attacks on Facebook and Twitter and other tech
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: platforms from Donald Trump Jr. and Donald Trump about shadow banning,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: all this made-up bullshit they do, they work.
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: They work.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: And these guys end up fearing... being called partisan more
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: than being accused of allowing Nazis to fester on their platform.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: That is a really fucked up way to think about
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: the problem. Yeah.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: And it's the inability to say that certain types of
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: speech are hateful and can incite violence. And to say that, yes,
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: sometimes they might come from Republican politicians because they're so
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: afraid because then that makes it partisan. And God forbid
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: you are ever seen or accused of being partisan. That
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: is the That is the worst sin possible, that you
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: did something that you're accused of being partisan, even when
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: the truth is right there.
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about Trump's response to all of.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: This, which unfolded over a few days, culminating in a
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: batshit crazy speech in Wisconsin on Saturday night. So he
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: did offer condolences for the victims and condemned anti-Semitism.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: That's good. But on Friday.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: The president responded to Joe Biden's announcement video by claiming
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: that he gave the perfect response to the white supremacist
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville and that when he said there
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: was very fine people on both sides, he was referring
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: to those who just didn't want to see Robert E.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Lee's statue come down. Guys, what's the problem with this explanation?
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Because it's not just from Donald Trump. I've seen a
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: ton of conservative commentators say they all got Charlottesville wrong.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: He condemned anti-Semitism and he was just talking about the
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: statue people.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: It's just a lie.
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: The Unite the Right rally was explicitly organized and people
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: went there to spread racist white supremacist views. That was
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: the point of the rally. And you didn't need to
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: see what happened on Saturday to know that. You could
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: have watched those motherfuckers marching with tiki torches on Friday
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: night and terrorizing black students at UVA. This is one
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: of those conversations where we're just being asked to not
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: believe our lying eyes and it is so infuriating that
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: we even have to talk about it.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's so many ways. When Donald Trump
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: wants to denounce something, he never struggles.
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: No.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: You know, when he has no trouble denouncing Democrats or
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: he has no trouble denouncing cable ratings, cable ratings, any
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: any celebrity that criticizes him. It seems to me he
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: only has trouble finding the words when it has to
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: do with Vladimir Putin or white nationalists. That's when he
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: seems to be able to. That's the only time the
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: corners get sanded down. it's, it's, it's just, it's just nonsense.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: Also fuck Robert E.
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: Lee.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: He was not a great general. He was a traitor
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: who led a war against his own country. He's a
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: vile racist and unrepentant, disgusting human being. Like get out
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: of here with this.
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's that. Excuse me, Donald Trump. Get out of here.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Get out of here with this.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: It just, what got me so mad about it is
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: that even before we get to Robert E. Lee, the
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: very premise is wrong. There were, there weren't people that,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: that wasn't the purpose of the rally. Um, Finally, Tommy,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: you had mentioned guns earlier when we first started talking
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: about this. Just hours after that, gunmen shot up the
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: synagogue with an AR-15. Trump said in his Wisconsin speech
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: that Democrats are trying to take your guns away. Trump
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: was fresh off appearing at the NRA's convention in Indianapolis,
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: which also ended in a bonkers leadership crisis, all while
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: its tax-exempt status is under investigation by New York's attorney general.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: So that's some good news.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Guys, how hard should Democratic candidates take on gun control
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: in the NRA in 2020? Should this be a bigger
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: issue than it has been in the primary so far?
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: It's a great question. Politically, it's hard. I don't know.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, I liked what Kamala Harris had to say,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: I believe, over the weekend about some executive action she
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: would take. Yeah, it does. Because... We need to focus
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: on things we can do by executive action to deal
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: with any problem since the Republican Senate is likely to
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: be there. Yeah, we should talk about it. So Harris
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: made news during her CNN mega town hall.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: It was last week. All these things sort of blend together.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: That if no action by Congress was taken within the
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: first hundred days of her presidency, she would move on
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: a series of executive actions, right? Harris has made a
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: pledge that includes mandating background checks, revoking licenses from dealers
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: and manufacturers who break the law, and closing a legal
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: loophole to keep those convicted of domestic violence from purchasing guns,
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: among other things. You know, we know this is difficult
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: because we tried this with Obama. We kept pushing and
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: pushing to see how much he could do via executive
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: action on guns versus getting something passed. And there is
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: quite a bit you can do, but still, the big,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: big stuff still has to happen in Congress.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think they should be talking about
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: what they do, talking about what they do with a
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: Democratic Senate and a Democratic... House. You know, we're still
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: trying to get through modest proposals that have massive bipartisan support,
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: things like background checks and other steps like that. We've
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: had the first hearings in a decade on gun control
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: in the House because we finally have the branch of
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: government back. So I think that should continue. I think
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: we have to just keep pressing the issue. I also,
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: you know, I do think when it comes to gun control,
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: as always, like we conflate the three kinds of violence.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: We conflate gun deaths by suicide, gun deaths by kind
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: of quotidian murder, and then mass shootings.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: They each require a different response.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: And then on top of that, I also think we
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: are in a real cultural rut in how we talk
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: about mass shootings.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: You know, this is a small thing.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: But every time there's a mass shooting now, someone goes
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: on television and says the people of this community are
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: strong and they'll get through this. I understand why they
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: say it. I understand why they feel the need to
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: say it. No one's ever gone on television and said
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: this community is weak and it will succumb to this
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: mass shooting. But the reason they feel the need to
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: say it is it ascribes agency to all of us
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: in the fight against what happens after a mass shooting,
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: but it's actually a false sense of agency. It's trying
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: to make people feel like they're empowered when actually they're
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: just sort of the grim victims of a lottery. And
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: I think all the kind of hopeful notes that come
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: at the end of coverage is harmful and wrong.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I agree with that. I also, you know, there's a
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: lot of journalists, you see a lot of reporters on
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: TV in particular who, you know, are heartbroken and frustrated
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: and screaming about how they don't want to have to
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: report on the same story again. I feel like that
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: rage and frustration is rarely translated into a political setting
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: where you could clearly say that one party is has
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: done everything they can to side with the NRA and
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: prevent gun control from happening, and one has not. Like,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Eric Swalwell is the only one talking about banning and
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: buying back military-style assault weapons like the AR-15. It's the
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: most obvious thing we can do. I know the politics
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: are hard, but, like, I would love for the outrage
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: to extend into the political setting because one party is
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: the problem.
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: And I will say that there is hopeful news once
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: you get past sort of national action via Congress and
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: the president, right?
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Like, you know.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: You've seen this almost at every single candidate's events. There
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: are Moms Demand Action activists there. The Parkland students have
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: been active. And what they're trying to do is they say, okay, well,
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: on the national scene, it's very tough to get things
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: moving with this Congress and this president. We're going to
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: take on the states. And not only have they stopped
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: a lot of really bad laws from passing that would
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: make it easier to have a gun, but they have
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: also passed real gun safety reform in state legislatures all
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: across the country. And so that is If you're thinking
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: about how to do something that's not just thoughts and
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: prayers or our community is going to get through this,
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: there is real grassroots action happening right now all across
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: this country at a lower level than Congress that should
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: give us hope for the future.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Let's turn to the Trump investigations. The Washington Post and
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: ABC have done the first big Post-Mueller Report poll. I'll
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: read some questions and results, and then I'll go to
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: you guys for reaction.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Did the Mueller Report clear Trump? 31% yes, 53% no.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: Did Trump tell the truth? 33% said yes, 58% said no.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Did Trump obstruct justice? 47% said yes, 41% said no. Now,
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: should the House begin impeachment proceedings today? 37% yes, 56% no.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: And that's 62% of Democrats are in favor of impeachment proceedings,
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: but 60% of Independents are opposed, and of course 90%
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: of Republicans are opposed. Guys, anything in here surprising to you,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: or what's your take from these numbers?
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: It's not particularly surprising. I actually think that 47% of
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: people believing he obstructed justice is pretty good.
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: That was surprising. In a news cycle that basically went...
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: Democrats saying he did, but we're going to take it slow.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: And Republicans being like he's exonerated and the media being
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: teaching the controversy. It doesn't surprise me, but that feels
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: like some truth got through.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you, the the 37 percent who want impeachment
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: hearing proceedings to begin versus the 47 percent who believe
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: that Trump broke the law and obstructed justice. That's the
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: pundit gap right there.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm calling it.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: That is a whole bunch of voters who are like,
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: he broke the law, but I'm hearing on TV that
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: it's a little worrisome that Democrats might overreach by moving
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: towards impeachment.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: I will say also there's a little bit of a
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: Clinton gap in there, too, because there might be some
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: people out there who vaguely remember that Democrats were against
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: removing a Democratic president who.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Obviously obstructed justice. So there's a little.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: Bit of like a kind of lawless overhang from like
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: the last 30 years, a little bit of a hangover
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: from presidents being above the law. Like kind of remove
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: a president for breaking the law.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: I think I would like to see data on that
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: only because I think we can barely remember what happened
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: last week.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, no, we're goldfish.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: I don't I don't think it's like a one to
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: one connection of people making it. But there is a
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: kind of the that we've we've elevated holding presidents accountable
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: to such a high bar, which I think is inappropriate.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: And I think both parties have contributed to that over
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: a very long time.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: This is really bad news for Trump. What are we
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: talking about? This is insanely bad news for Trump. And
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: I think that what Democrats need to do now is
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: use hearings to bring the Mueller report to life on TV.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Cause it was 448 pages. Nobody read the whole thing.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: There's all sorts of explosive stuff in there. So I
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: want days and days and days of testimony from key
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: officials stretched out over a year that explode this thing
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: on television and create moments that break through. And again,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I've been skeptical about impeachment because I don't fucking want
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: a moral victory and I'm a crass political hack. And
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: to me, that says we need to do some more
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: work here to sell people on how bad of a
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: person he is. And also, I really, really want to
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: know if impeachment is more likely to motivate our base
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: or his base. I think in some ways that is
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: the key question to figure out. Yeah, I mean, I
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: don't know that it's possible for his base to be
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: any more motivated. I mean, this is what I thought.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Absolutely it is. Kavanaugh. But that's what I'm saying. Before
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: and after Kavanaugh. But what I'm saying is I think
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: during the 2018 election, we learned that no matter what
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: it is, there will be something, whether it's impeachment, which
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: starts a year out of the election, more than a
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: year out of the election, whether it's a Kavanaugh fight,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: whether it was the caravan. Remember, it started with Kavanaugh,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: then Kavanaugh faded out, and then it was the caravan, right? Like,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: they will.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: They have an entire propaganda empire that will find something
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: to motivate their base.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Count on it. Just count on it.
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: people talked about it, but I don't think it's fully
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: been like absorbed into our thinking. Um, it is the
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: propaganda machine. Uh, I would say the biggest surprise of
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: the 2018 election is just how hard the Republicans turned out.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: All this notion that like there's that, that, that Trump
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: is demoralizing to some segment of this base, all this, the,
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: all the conversation about how, uh, energetic and, and, you know,
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: come alive, the liberal base is all of that is,
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: that is actually true. But, Republicans came out. They came
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: out in massive numbers. They surprised people like Beto O'Rourke
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: in Texas, who hit his targets on how many people
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: turned out. And all of a sudden, there were more
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: Republicans than anyone expected in Texas. Same thing happened there.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: Happened in the House races. It happened in the Senate races.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: It happened everywhere.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: They all hit their targets. They hit their targets.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: So it's the Republican turnout machine is vast, quiet and
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: incredibly impressive. And so it's just I don't think that's
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: been fully kind of. Part of the conversation.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: And there's a reason it's impressive. It's because Donald Trump
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: has turned the party into a party that runs on
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: grievance politics and only grievance politics. There's always a reason
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: to feel fucking aggrieved, according to Donald Trump and Fox News,
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: whatever it may be.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: It's always going to be easier to motivate a homogenous base.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: That's very true. And for Democrats, where we're a coalition
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: of African Americans and liberals and higher educated and Latino voters.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: We're arguing over everything all the time. There's not going
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: to be one thing that gets us going. That's exactly right.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: And also, these are older voters. They are registered. They
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: are not moving. They know where their polling place is.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: They vote every time.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: I will say one more thing about, so this was
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: the Washington Post-ABC poll. The New York Times did a story.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: where it talked about Democratic politicians holding town halls with voters,
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: and they said there's not a big.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Push to impeachment. Including many friends of the pod, like
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Katie Porter? Yep, exactly.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: But what drove me nuts about this, the story was
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: well written, what drove me nuts about some of these
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: voters is not one of them raised their hand and said, hey,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: can you focus on health care instead of impeachment? Because
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: I don't think impeachment's important, right? They all said, please
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: focus on health care and other issues, because I hear
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: that if we focus on impeachment, We're going to lose,
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: and it's going to excite Trump's base. Everyone, all these
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: voters are acting like fucking punks.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: They're all auditioning for the Meet the Press panel this Sunday.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: It's all of our collective fault. It's the impeachment Ouroboros.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: But it's all what you think might happen. It's the
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: same thing we deal with in the primary when people say,
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: I love Elizabeth Warren. But I don't know that she
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: can win because the pundits tell me she can't win.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: And because the pundits are saying she can't win, she
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: can't win because the conversation is about how she can't win.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: I want impeachment, but the pundits tell me that impeachment
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: is not going to be good. Look, I go back
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: to my thing. I'm just as much of a crass
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: political hack as you, Tommy. But I think what you
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: just said, which was bringing the Mueller report to life
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: on television for people instead of reading a dense 300-page,
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: 400-page report, is a much better political move for the Democrats,
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: even if they don't. come out of that victorious because
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: no one expects Donald Trump to be removed by the Senate.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: But I will say, the idea of sort of dragging
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Trump administration officials to Congress to testify.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: That's not easy either.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Right now, this week, we're dealing with William Barr, Attorney
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: General William Barr, is now threatening to cancel his testimony
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: before Congress this week because he's upset with a format
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: that would allow for extended questioning. That's why Barr's pissed,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: of course. So the question is, and I saw Ted
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Lieu did an interview with Greg Sargent about this, is
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Is the move now to possibly threaten impeachment proceedings if
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: the White House continues to stonewall and not? provide any
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: officials to give any testimony? Like, what if we can't
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: have these hearings because the White House refuses to allow
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: anyone to testify?
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: Well, one of the articles of impeachment against Nixon was
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: about his was about the administration's efforts to thwart Congress's investigation.
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: It's congressional obstruction.
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: So I do think that's a place to go.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: I don't know how to game out where impeachment falls
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: as a threat to them.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: I do like the stories suggesting Democrats are beginning to
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: consider more drastic measures to enforce their subpoenas, whether it's
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: through fines or even potentially threatening contempt in jail time.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: I think that that is important You know, one thing
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: we've talked about a million times is how much we
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: rely on norms of behavior, and that is especially true
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: in the dynamic between the White House and Congress. But
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: it's very clear that this administration is not going to
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: respect those at all. They're not turning over the tax documents.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump is suing to prevent subpoenas to his accountant.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: We have a lot of evidence that they are going
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: to fundamentally disregard the kind of fair play between the
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: two branches, and that may force them to go further
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: in one direction or another.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think the tax issue is a
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: very specific one for Trump, and I think he is
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: playing to delay it for as long as humanly possible
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: past the re-election, basically. But writ large, I want to
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: see Democrats just hit the gas everywhere. No more waiting
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: to subpoena people. Just subpoena them. No one knows the difference.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Hurry up. Get everyone you want before you start the
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: process now, because a lot of this will end up
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: in courts. It gets dragged out. There's negotiations. Enough. And
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: if they reject the subpoena, hold them in contempt.
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: And to take it as far as you can.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's also worth stepping back to sort of
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: first principles. Why do we want the tax returns? So
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: they can form the American people in their decision making
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: on reelection. If there is Donald Trump will face one
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: more election in his life until he runs for. mayor
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: of New York and wins that. But the, uh, no,
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: he will, he won't, he won't, he can't, probably can't. No, but, but, um,
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: his returns are only of importance to the American people
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: for another year and a half.
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: That's it.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: This is the time we get them now, or it
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: doesn't matter.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. All right. Let's talk about 2020.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: We don't love covering primary horse race polls here, especially
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: this early, but I want to quickly talk about the
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: post ABC poll because They questioned respondents in an interesting
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: way and got a different kind of result.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: It's fascinating. It's fascinating. It's fascinating.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Instead of reading a list of candidate names, the Post
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: asked people to name the candidate they like off the
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: top of their head as opposed to reading on the list.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: So with people who are leaning towards a candidate included,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: so they asked people, who would you vote for today?
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: And then also, who are you leaning towards? So that combined,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: you have Biden leads with 17 percent. Sanders gets 11 percent.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Buttigieg gets 5 percent. And Kamala, Warren, and Beto all
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: get 4%. But the big winner is no opinion with 35%.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: What does that tell us about the state of the race,
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: and what does it tell us about polls?
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate this for a few reasons.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: One is I like that basically in a lot of
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: polls you see Biden somewhere, say, around 25%. Yeah, it's 30.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Let's say it's 25%. And he got, what, 17 in
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: this one? That means that there is about 8% of
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: people who support.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden, however— cannot remember his name when asked, which
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: I think is very interesting that like, who am I for?
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: I'm for Joe Biden, but you got to remind me
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: that he exists. And then I love him.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: What did you think, Tommy?
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, big picture take home is how early it is.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: There were some interesting things within the numbers. Bernie's support
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: was pretty even among white's non-whites, college grads, those without
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: college degrees. I think that sort of cuts against conventional
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: wisdom about who's supporting Bernie Sanders. So, you know, notable, interesting.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Ben Smith, who is the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, wrote an
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: interesting piece about how it used to be that candidates
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: got little, like, earned media boomlets from the press, and
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: then the press looked at them closely and then criticized
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: them and discarded them. Reminded me of Howard Dean and
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: some of the frontrunners of the past. His argument is
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: that today is different because of social media and someone
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: like Bernie or Biden could use social channels to prop
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: themselves up throughout the primary. It'd be interesting to see
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: if that plays out. Certainly you look at Mayor Pete
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: and the way he's used the media and his own
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: channels to really boost himself. Like that would tell me yes. Although,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: you know, you look at Beto O'Rourke who had huge,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: you know, social media presence, Facebook presence that propelled him
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: in the Senate race. He is not, you know, done
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: as successfully last few months. So, and yet a lot
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: to learn. Despite the fact that, at least in Buttigieg
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: and Beto's case, the Buttigieg boom has been all over
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: media for the last couple weeks and ton, and Beto
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: has been almost absent from national media, and they're separated
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: by a point in the poll. And Elizabeth Warren and
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: all of it. What stands out to me in that
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: poll is, A, that it's interesting that Bernie and Biden
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: are both a little lower when you ask people to
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: name them off the top of your head, but also
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: that for all that we've talked about and thought about, uh,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Beto O'Rourke, they
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: are all sitting at four and 5% right now. And
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: 35% of people don't have an opinion, which means this
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: fucking race is as wide open as ever. And it
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: is early.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: And also as, uh, Cornell said to me when we
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: just had our chat, um, These horse race polls this
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: early are complete bullshit.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Might as well burn 30 grand.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: Democracy dies in the darkness. Shame on you, Tommy. I
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: think there's an optimistic read and then there's a pessimistic read.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: I think the optimistic read is it's a wide open field.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of really, really great candidates and it
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: could really be anyone and any one of these people
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: could walk away with it. We have debates to come.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of lot to happen. I think there
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: is a pessimistic read that's worth airing, which is, I
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: think part of what we're seeing, I think part of
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: the reason, first of all, there's no one clear person
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: that everyone recognizes as like the person they want, right?
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: They're just absent.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: And I think that could be because we haven't found
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: them yet from this pool of really good options. It
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: also could be that in part because Democrats are so
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: shaken by 2016, but also in part because there's a
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: gut sense that none of them are kind of capturing
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: what they were hoping for in a candidate. that everybody
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: is still kind of feeling around because they look at
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: each one of these people and they like them. Maybe
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: they like how policy-focused they are. Maybe they like the
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: voice they bring. Maybe they like the critique they bring.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: Maybe they like the experience they bring. But for whatever reason,
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: there's a gut sense that none of these people are
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: capturing what they were looking for in the person that
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: was going to stand across from Donald Trump because they
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: recognize how important it is.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I think it's worth certainly there's
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: anecdotal evidence, uh, among, uh, recent presidential candidates who threw
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: their hats in the ring. They're clearly not seeing what
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: they want to see, which is why we're on number 20.
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's right.
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: True.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: And as much as people joke about all new Democrats
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: getting in, the reason it's not laughable, the reason it's
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: not seen as completely ridiculous is because there is a
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: sense that, you know what?
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: It really could be someone who's not in the race yet.
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: And I would just say that I still think, um,
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: it's just too early. Like, I think that the idea
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: that people have, there's voters out there who have seen
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: all these candidates, vetted all these candidates and are like,
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: no one has got what I'm looking for is probably
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: not true just because we haven't even had the first
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: debate yet.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: I think that's overstating my critique. I think it's just
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: a little bit of a nervousness.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: I think, and good, like we've seen this before, good
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: candidates become good candidates throughout the course of these primary campaigns.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: They reveal themselves to be good candidates. Like, You know,
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: and we just had two elections, 2016 and 2008 on
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: the Democratic side, where Hillary Clinton was the dominant frontrunner
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: in both of those elections. You know, it was not
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton's position in 2008 is not like Joe Biden's
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: position in 2020.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Hers was much, much stronger.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: And it's also one of the reasons I'm kind of
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: I want everyone to at the end of this, like
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: come together. And I and I don't want there to
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: be too much kind.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Of vicious infighting.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: But I'm sort of glad to see there's the first
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: hints of some mixing it up. Because one of these
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: people is going to go up against an overflowing insult toilet.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: And whoever that is, I would like to see what
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: happens on a debate stage when people start mixing it up.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: I don't hate it.
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Now that we've done all the horse racy poll stuff,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: some substance. What? Yes.
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: I got to go. My postmates is here.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: During a campaign trip through California on Monday, former congressman
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: and Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke released his first major
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: policy proposal. which he also says would be his first
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: priority as president. A climate change plan that calls for
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: a $ 1. 5 trillion federal investment in new infrastructure technologies and
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: helping people transition to a carbon-free economy. He says he'll
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: pay for the plan by changes to the tax code
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: and by ending tax breaks for fossil fuel companies. Beto's
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: campaign says the plan would meet the Green New Deal
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: resolution goal of net zero emissions by 2050 and be
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: halfway there by 2030. It's so far the most detailed
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: climate plan we've seen from any of the other 2020 candidates.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: We know also that Jay Inslee has made it a
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: centerpiece of his campaign as well. Guys, what do you
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: think of the plan, and why do you think Beto started.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: With this policy? Seems like he's going to roll out, what,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: two or three big policy ideas, or that's what they've
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: hinted at. So I think that leading with climate shows
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: that it's your top priority. It's a thing you're going
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: to do on day one.
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: I think.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: In terms of process, they did a pretty smart rollout.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: He's here in California. He did an OTR meeting with
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: firefighters to highlight the fact that climate change is driving
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: these horrific fires. He went to Yosemite to show you
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: an amazing natural resource. Like, it's a good plan. It
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: was well done. I do think we need to remember,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, we've talked a lot on the show about
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: how bold and impressive and comprehensive Elizabeth Warren's policy plans are.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: And we're political nerds. And so, you know, of course
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: we love that sort of stuff. But on some level,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: who has the best plan is irrelevant once you get
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: into the White House. So that's why You guys are
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: constantly asking about how you're going to get it done,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: eliminate the filibuster, pack courts, questions like that. It's why
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: I'm always asking about foreign policy because you actually have
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of freedom to just do stuff on foreign
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: policy grounds. So anyway, long way of saying good plan.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: I'm glad he's starting to roll it out. Maybe we
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: shouldn't get too, too seized. Well, let me stop there
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: because I don't want to tell people not to care
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: about policy.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: Well, I was going to say, I totally agree on
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: it's important to figure out how you're going to get
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: it done, right? This is why we've been pushing people
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: on this.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: So I was actually glad to see one of the
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: things I was happy about in this plan is he
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: has a whole bunch of things that he can do
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: via executive action right away. Because we all know, whether
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: it's the Green New Deal or Medicare for All or
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: any of these plans, it's going to take a minor
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: miracle to get some of these through even a Congress
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: with a Democratic Senate.
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: Agreed.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: As we've heard from all the candidates and certainly from
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: Schumer and all them. They're all afraid of getting rid
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: of the filibuster, right? So it's going to be really
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: hard to move legislation. So in this plan, you know,
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: he says rejoin Paris, which they're all saying, which is great.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: He's going to restore Obama's Clean Power Plan. And then
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: also he has a plan for net zero emissions by
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: 2030 on all public lands and stopping all new fossil
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: fuel leases, which is something that's interesting.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: I love all the executive action stuff. Yeah, because for
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: some of these people... I worry about the big.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: And that's why I liked Kamala Harris's executive actions on
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: Gun Stuff, too, because I'm glad... I'd love to hear
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: more people talking about their executive actions. Lovett, what do
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: you think?
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I think Elizabeth Warren has staked her claim
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: on an argument about the economy and the scale of
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: the challenge there, and she has put out a set
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: of policies that meet that moment, and it is why
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: I think she's inspired a lot of people. I think
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: Beto has been criticized by a lot of people for
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: not being substantive, for not having... an actual substantive policy
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: argument for why he should be president. I think he's
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: looking to answer that. I think it speaks well of
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: him that he's starting with climate. You know, Jay Inslee
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: has staked his claim on climate, but I actually don't
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: think he's maximized that.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: He hasn't put out a specific claim yet. I'm sure
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: he will if he's making his guess. Of course, of course.
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: But I think he hasn't. And I honestly was not
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: super happy. Like when you talked to him at Pod
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: Save America, you asked him very specific questions about climate change.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: I thought that he gave kind of pretty kind of,
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: I don't know, unsatisfying answers ultimately when you're if you're
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: a long shot candidate staking your claim on climate change,
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: you would expect someone to come to the table with
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: a bolder and more kind of exciting set of ideas,
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: a way to captivate people and show why this is
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: so important and why you want to make it the
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: centerpiece of your campaign. So I think that does leave
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: an opening. And I think it speaks, look, part of
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: campaigns is revealing who these people are and what they
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: care about. He's approaching this and saying he's looked at
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: the vast sweep of areas where he could make a
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: big proposal and he chose climate because he believes that's
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: the most important. I think there's a good argument for that.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: I think it speaks well of him. Kamala Harris, I think,
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: has come out with, proposals on, you know, kind of
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: tax code proposals and teacher proposals that speak to, I think,
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: a more cautious approach to policymaking. And it speaks to
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: the more cautious approach I think she would take as president. And,
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: you know, there's good arguments in favor of that. There's
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: good arguments against that. But that's what this campaign's about.
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: We're going to start to learn who these people are.
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: One other interesting thing about this policy, because obviously everyone
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: who rolls out a climate policy will be compared to
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: the Green New.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Deal, right?
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: So the Green New Deal resolution is says that the
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: globe needs to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050,
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: and they need to get halfway there by 2030.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: 40% to 60% by 2030. Yeah. So that's the resolution.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: That's the resolution introduced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: That's the resolution that has been agreed to and signed
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: on by Kamala, Booker, Warren, and Gillibrand. Sorry if I'm
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: forgetting anyone else in the Senate who's running for president.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: And Bernie Sanders, of course. And so they all signed
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: on to this. And so that's what Beto's plan is.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: And yet the Sunrise Movement, who we've talked to, put
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: out a statement critical of Beto's plan this morning saying
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: that we actually need to do, we need to be
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: net zero in the United States by 2030 because we
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: need to go faster than the rest of the world
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: since we have more emissions, which is a completely fine
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: position to have. But it's very interesting that I didn't
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: realize this until I saw this, that the Sunrise Movement's
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: goal is not in line with the actual Green New
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: Deal resolution that was introduced by AOC in Congress.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Doesn't that make sense, though?
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: It's just funny, they never said anything when the Green
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: New Deal resolution came up.
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: Right, but I imagine, you know, look, this is, I think,
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: the first presidential candidate to outline a specific policy plan
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: around climate. And so this is the first opportunity the
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: Sunrise Movement has to criticize it. It would make sense
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: to me for them to stake out a maximal position
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: because their goal is to try to keep Democrats further
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: to the left. I think it's a kind of natural
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: place for them to be. And, you know, we've talked about,
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: I can't, I'm about to say the phrase Overton window,
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: but whatever, uh, they're going to move over to window,
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: but the, uh, trying to make sure that they make
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: sure that as long, they have to stake out further
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: left cause they can feel how our politics is going
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: to pull wherever we land.
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: To the right. That's all.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: The only other thing I'll say about this is, um,
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: I think everyone criticized the Green New Deal when it
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: came out as like, you know, it's pie in the
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: sky thinking, whatever, it's unrealistic. I thought that it's one
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: of the most politically pragmatic plans from a messaging perspective, uh,
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: because it combines here's what we need to do on
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: climate with here's what we need to do to make
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: sure that our economy transitions in the right way and
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: that everyone gets something from this, right? That there's, you know,
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: dignified work and benefits and all this kind of stuff.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: And so, and I think Beto's plan leaves room for that.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: But I hope that not only Beto, but all the
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: candidates as they talk about climate don't just talk about
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: here's what we have to do to prevent the planet
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: from extinction, but here's what we also have the opportunity
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: to do to make sure that as we transition to
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: this new renewable energy economy, clean energy economy, that we
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: can also make sure we lift up poorer communities and
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: make sure people have good jobs with good benefits. I
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: think the economic messaging is really important.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: To the policy. Sorry. We've really adapted.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: Because I remember when we used to talk about climate change,
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: and we'd talk about the carbon tax, talk about the
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: cap and trade, and we'd lead with that. And, man,
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: he does outline a massive climate proposal, and it's like,
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: we're going to do this, we're going to do that.
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: We're going to restructure the tax code, and we're going
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: to do this, and we're going to get all this
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: other shit done, but also we're going to restructure the
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: tax code just a little bit.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: You're going to have to get some taxes from people.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: And so I think that that's sort of an interesting
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: change in how we're talking about it, and I think
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: for the most part it is a lesson learned about
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: bad faith arguments and what you need to actually do
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: to get something done.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: When we come back, we'll have my conversation with former
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: Obama pollster, Cornel Belcher.
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: On the pod today, Obama pollster, DNC pollster, just brilliant
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: all-around guy, Cornell Belcher, joining us today.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show, Cornell.
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: So, I thought we'd have you on now that the
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: Democratic field is almost set.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Barring a few.
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: I was going to say, is it set yet? I'm
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: not sure.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Right, I think we've got like two or three out there,
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: but now that our old friend Joe Biden is finally
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: in the race, it's starting to look like the field
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: is set. How much is polling even useful at this
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: stage in the primary, and what, if anything, do the
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: public and private polls you've seen tell you about the
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: race so far?
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: Well, that's a really good question, and let's do a
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: little bit of educating and informing for our audience.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, please.
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: There's a big difference between the public polls that you
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: all see on a regular basis in Washington Post, NBC,
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: Wall Street Journal polling. And those polls have a lot
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: of basic horse race numbers in it and favorability ratings,
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: job performance ratings, et cetera, which gives you a snapshot.
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: As you know, John, campaign polling is different because campaigns poll...
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: for around building strategy and figuring out what's the best
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: outlay for their resources. Uh, you know, who, who are
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: they targeting? What, uh, what demographics, what geographic groups, um,
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: make sense for targeting and what are the best arguments
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: for those candidates? So right now I would say a
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: lot of the public polling is taking a snapshot of
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: the horse race numbers. Um, are completely meaningless, particularly when
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: you look at the history of the Democrat primary. The
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: history of the Democrat primary says that the candidate who
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: is in the lead right now is not in the
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: lead six or seven months from now. It is often
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: the kiss of death to be in the lead at
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: this point. I will point you all to 2004 when,
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: at this time, Senator Joe Lieberman was the leading candidate
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: in all the polling.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: I forgot about that.
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: Right. Do you remember Joe Lieberman? Yes. Unfortunately. Senator Joe
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: Lieberman was leading in polling at that time, and then
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: followed very quickly by Wesley Clark. Remember Wesley Clark?
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: I do. There was a little Wesley Clark boomlet there
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: for a couple weeks.
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: There was. and then you had my guy, Dean, rise,
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: and then Dean and Gephardt got into basically a murder-suicide
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: pact in Iowa, which led the way for John Kerry
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: to come up the middle. And I think this time
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: around was a lot more like 2004 than 2016, and
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: I'll talk about why I think that is. So polling
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: that takes a look at the horse race number, and
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: you see Joe Biden right now leading in the polls,
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: although the Washington Post poll had him not as far
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: ahead as the field that some of the other polls did.
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: But that is basically name identification and who voters know
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: and they're comfortable with right now. But for campaigns, campaigns
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: are polling right now to figure out what's their lane.
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: You know, in a crowded primary field, there's going to
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: be several lanes. And who's in my lane? You know,
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: if you are a Beto, is Mayor Pete in your lane?
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: if you were Warren, is Sanders in your lane? Try
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: to figure out who's in your lane when you look
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: at the voters who are likely to move to you.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: And what are the arguments, what are the best arguments
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: to make for yourself to raise your, particularly if you're
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: the rest of the field, not Biden or Sanders, to
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: raise your name identification, get voters to know you, and
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: get voters comfortable with you. And then at some point,
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: and this is what people hate about politics, but But, John,
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: as you know, this is part of politics. And then
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: at some point, I'm going to have to figure out
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: how I'm going to contrast myself with the candidate that's
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: in my lane who's ahead of me. So, for example,
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: Biden is going to take a lot of shots over
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: the next couple of months, not because they just dislike Biden,
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: but because it's politics. And if Biden's ahead of you
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: and Biden's in your lane, you're going to have to
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: do something to contrast himself or to knock support down
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: away from him. That's just politics 101. So a lot
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: of the campaigns right now, that's what their polling is
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: doing and trying to figure out. And that's their internal
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: polling that we'll never see because it lays out their strategy.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: So tell me more about why you think this race
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: looks more like 2004 than anything else.
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: And look, it's... I think it looks more like 2004
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: because if you look at 2004, you had, again, you
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: had a very sort of crowded field of candidates, some
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: really well-established candidates. You know, Gephardt was a well-established Democrat.
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: John Kerry, Lieberman, you had a lot of well-established candidates
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: in a crowded field. I think this is more like 2004.
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: And no one was really a dominant, dominant frontrunner. 2008,
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: Hillary Clinton was a dominant frontrunner. She was. She was
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: ahead 20-plus points in all the polling from the field.
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: And she was just as dominant a frontrunner in 2008
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: as she was in 2016. So that's because when I
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: look at Vice President Biden... Yes, he's a frontrunner, but
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: is he as dominant a frontrunning figure now as Hillary
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: Clinton was in 2008? No. No, he wasn't. So I
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: think you have a more crowded, bunched-up field. And when
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: you look at most of the primary polling right now,
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: and again, it's all on name identification, but when you
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: look at most of the primary polling right now, and
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: Washington Post headlined this the other day, the field was
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: rather wide open. Yes, yes. Vice President Biden has advantage,
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: but there are a lot of voters out there shopping
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: around and looking for candidates. And just for my qualitative,
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: I've been doing some qualitative in some of the early states.
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: Voters know and they like Vice President Biden, like myself.
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: I know and I like Vice President Biden. But to
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: say that they are locked in on Vice President Biden now,
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: they're not. They're shopping around. And I think he and
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: his campaign know that they're going to have to work
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: very hard to hold on to a lead and expand
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: and break away from the pack. Yeah.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about the voters a little bit. You
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: said you've been doing some qualitative research, which is known
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: as focus groups also. What are the top qualities that
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: Democratic voters are looking for in a nominee this time around?
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Is it experience?
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: Is it?
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: Someone new or different? Is it competence, inspiration?
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: What, what are the different qualities that keep coming up
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: when you talk to people?
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: You know, that's, that's a really good question. And, and
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: there's no silver bullet. And this gets us back to
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: the conversation about lanes. So there are certainly, uh, a, a,
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: a segment of the democratic electorate that is, that is,
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: that's just straight up. We want whoever, whoever can beat Trump,
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: we'll take, we'll take him or her. Um, And it
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: is just whose best position, who do we think can
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: absolutely beat Trump? And then there's a segment out there
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: who's really looking for candidates who are going to push
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: a more progressive agenda and is going to really sort
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: of push the boundaries of things. And there's a segment
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: out there that's just looking for change. What I think
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: is interesting is There's always an element of or a
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: segment of the electorate, especially in the Democrat primary, who
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: will be driving and looking for the change-oriented candidate. Quite frankly,
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: I think you still let the Republican primary as well.
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: I think Trump's an incredible unethical and corrupt person. But
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: he was, to a certain extent, the anti-establishment change candidate
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: for the Republicans, just the way Barack Obama was the
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: anti-establishment change candidate in 2008. And I think the candidate
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: who can own that anti-establishment change lane and can dominate
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: that lane, that candidate has a pretty good chance of
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: still be one of the few candidates standing in six
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: or seven months. I think there's a lane that's clearly
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: the establishment, safe lane, experienced lane. And I think Vice
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: President Biden has a clear advantage to owning that lane,
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: although I think there's some candidates going to try to
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: trip away at him in that lane. But I think
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: he's clearly going to own that lane. For me, John,
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: the question is, and this was sort of like to
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: me in 2008, Who's going to be the candidate where
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: the voters who are– and there's always a cohort of
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: them– who are change-oriented, anti-establishment, shake things up? And who
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: can dominate that? And I think, frankly, I think we
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: saw that in 2016 with Sanders. And look, Sanders, I think,
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: did really well in the last Democratic primary and wasn't
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: on the base– and this is the question I think
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: that's hanging out there. What so much of that surge
• 56:47
  Speaker 4: for Sanders, was that really about Sanders and sort of
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: who he was? Or was that anti-establishment change-oriented voter that
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: he was a safe place for them, he was a
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: safe place for them to land, he was the only
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: place for them to land and be against the establishment
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: and be anti-Hillary Clinton?
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I imagine... people like candidates like Elizabeth Warren
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: and potentially, I guess, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke, a whole
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: bunch of others are probably trying to compete in that
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: lane in some ways, I guess, trying to be more
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: of a change candidate. Does that seem right?
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: I think that seems right, but each candidate has to
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: run their own race because there's not credibility. Who can
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: most credibly hold that change and that shake-things-up reign. And
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: it's how they unfold their stories and show that, you know,
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: one of the things that I think was brilliant about
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: the 2008 Obama campaign was how Obama made Hillary's experience
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: a negative. And you'll remember how he talks about about
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: her vote on the war. So to a certain extent,
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: he went after what was her, a large part of
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: her predicate was his experience and his readiness and know-how
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: to get the job done. He undermined that by going
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: after the experience, but he was also credible at it.
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: Which candidate can credibly hold that change-oriented lane, anti-establishment lane?
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: And one of the other things that I'm finding in
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: focus groups is, frankly, a candidate who has a really
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: good story that doesn't sound like the pack, that candidate
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: has a pretty good chance of breaking through. And when
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: you look at Mayor Pete right now, Mayor Pete has
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: a great story, John. And I think people resonate toward
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: good stories. Now, can he hold that and build it?
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: I don't know. But if you look at the field
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: of candidates right now and the one who's telling the
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: best story about who he is, where he's come from,
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: and how he got to this place right now, to me,
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: without question, it's Mayor Pete. Now, I'm also going to
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: be controversial. I'm going to be... I'm going to push
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: back a lot of... a little bit on what I
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: think is is progressive conventional think. Not even progressive conventional think,
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: I think it's sort of conventional political think. And say this,
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: are policy positions important? Yes, they're absolutely important. Are people
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: making their decisions about who to vote for in a linear, rational,
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: well thought out way around closest to them on a
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: whole set of policy positions. History would tell us that
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: that's just not true, although we want to believe it's true. Look,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: if voters were deciding in a linear policy way, Al
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: Gore would be president. Certainly, Hillary would be trumped by
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: double digits. But there's also that likability and charisma thing.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: You know, I had a lot of policies with George Bush,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: but in the end, there was something about George Bush
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: that made people want to have a beer with him.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: And you cannot underestimate how important that is for a politician,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: someone running for office, is that people gravitate towards you
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: because they like you and they trust you. Yeah.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: No, look, I totally get that, too. And I always
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: have this. I mean, I think.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: I think Elizabeth Warren, for example, because she's the candidate
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: that everyone says, you know, every day there's a new, bold,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: ambitious plan from Elizabeth Warren.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: She has a plan for that. It now gets an
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: applause line. She's got T-shirts.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: It's great.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: But I would say that I find Elizabeth Warren compelling
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: as a candidate, not just because she has a bunch
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: of policies, because I agree with you since I've been
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: in politics for a long time and seen this. The
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: policies that you lay out are not what gets you elected.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: And when Elizabeth Warren talks to people, what she's constantly
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: doing is talking about her story, her background, how her
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: policies fits in with her background. So she seems to
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: get that it's not just about plans, that it's about
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: your story. Even though I feel like a lot of
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: the coverage of it is like, well, the candidates who
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: have a lot of plans aren't getting ahead in the polls.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: Like, why is that?
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: But that's also how they cover, you know, that's also
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: how if you look at I had the coverage, and
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: I'm guilty of this because I've been on television talking about,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: you know, how great, you know, her policy, she has
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: some laying out policies, but how many of those voters
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: really know her backstory? How many of those voters really know,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: you know, the rationale for why she's landed on this
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: set of policies? You know, she's right now, she's looked
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: at it as certainly you can with the most policies
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: out there, and people like those policies. but they don't
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: really know who to vote for.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: So you've got a few of the leading candidates, Biden,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: Bernie to some extent, Buttigieg to some extent, a couple others,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: making a case that the fastest way to win 270
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: electoral votes is to rebuild the blue wall in the Midwest,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: win back some of those Obama-Trump voters who left the
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: party in 2016. You and I have talked in the
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: past about you know, another way to think about building
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: a coalition is to mobilize those, I think it's like
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: 4 million Obama voters who sat out, who sat out
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: in 2016. How do you see sort of the path
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: to 270? I mean, you know, we talk a lot
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: about like, it's a false choice. Obviously you can do both,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: but as you assemble coalitions and think about messaging and
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: candidates and all that, how do you see the coalition building?
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 4: John, can we curse on your podcast?
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: We sure can.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: We sure can. I, That bullshit is making my head
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: want to explode.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: Right, all right, perfect.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: It is un-fucking-believable to me that, you know, who was
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: the last, you know, I'll wait on this. When was
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: the last time, other than Barack Obama, a Democrat has
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: won back-to-back majorities? FDR?
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: FDR, I think that's right.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: Right, that's a long, long time ago. Heck, you've got
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: to go a long way in our history to look
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: at a Republican who's won back-to-back majorities. Barack Obama won
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: back-to-back majorities. So the idea that we can't rebuild and
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: expand that coalition of Obama voters as opposed to us
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: wasting– waste is the wrong word– as opposed to us
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: spending such a disproportionate amount of time and effort and
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: resources chasing voters who support Donald Trump. It's mind-boggling to me,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: and the only way– and I'm sorry, John– the only
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: way I understand it is I have to understand that
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: a lot of the cabal that runs the party and
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: the party organizations, be it the DTRIP, the DSCC, they
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: are old white guys who are disconnected from this broader understanding.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: And I understand the romanticism that we have about about
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 4: non-college white voters or sort of these working class white voters.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: And should we compete for working class white voters? Absolutely,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: we should compete for working class white voters. And if
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: you ask, who's Nancy Pelosi fighting for? When Nancy Pelosi
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: goes to the floor of the House, who's she fighting for?
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: She's fighting for working class voters. So yes, we should
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: champion working class issues. But from a campaign standpoint... Look,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: when you look at the Washington Post poll that just
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: came out, nearly 60% of non-college white voters approve of
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump. On the flip side, so how many in
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: approval from 2018 and from historically has lined up fairly
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: closely with the vote. So if you have 60 or
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: 60 plus percent of of what they're defining as working
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: class white voters still today approving and for Trump, I
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: would argue that perhaps you shouldn't put so much of
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: your resources and time chasing those voters as opposed to,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: for example, when you have millennials who, on the flip side,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: are disapproving of Donald Trump by better than 60 percent,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: or you have college white voters who who disapprove of
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump by 58%. So it's this argument that, no,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: I'm not saying that we shouldn't target and we shouldn't
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: try to win working class or these working class white voters,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: these non-college white voters. Absolutely we should. But should so
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: much of our time and resources be spent chasing a
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: group that's approving of Donald Trump? And by the way,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump didn't win a majority in Michigan. He didn't
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: win a majority in Pennsylvania. He didn't win a majority
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: in Wisconsin. And if you look at what Donald Trump's
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: winning percentage was in those industrial blue wall states, they
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: would have been losing percentages to Barack Obama. And this
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: myth that there was all these Obama– Trump voters. I
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: fail to see from a numbers standpoint something that really
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: backs up that there was this huge swap of Obama-Trump voters.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: Were there Obama-Trump voters? Absolutely. But there were also Romney-Hillary voters.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: And if Trump had won over so many Obama voters...
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: He certainly would have done a lot better than Mitt
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: Romney did in Florida. He certainly would have done several
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 4: points better, perhaps even reaching a majority of the vote
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, but he didn't. So what is
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: going on with our party when we have some 4 million,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: to your point, Obama voters who just flat out sat
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: out the last election? because they rejected the binary choice
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: of the lesser of two evils, that all of a sudden,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: wouldn't from a campaign standpoint, wouldn't that be lower-hanging fruit?
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 4: And if you look at the protest vote, and you
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: and I have talked about this before, those voters who
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: voted third party in 2016, who were once upon a
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: time Obama voters, but they again rejected the binary choice
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: of the lesser two evils, rejected the ideal of Hillary Clinton.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 4: And by the way, we now know that the Russians
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: were helping drive some of that negative towards Hillary Clinton.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: Isn't that lower hanging fruit to winning back a majority
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 4: than going after a Trump voter? Yeah.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, have you talked to some of those voters? Like,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: what are those voters looking for in a candidate? What
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: messages appeal to those voters? Like, if that's sort of
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: maybe the key to reassembling a coalition or building an
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: even broader coalition, how do we reach out and get
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: those voters?
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: Well, one of the things is, and again, it really
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 4: isn't rocket science. If you look at 2000, and you
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 4: remember this, David Plouffe said in 2008, we're not going
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: to be sitting around on election night waiting for the
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: results of one state to come in to determine whether
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: or not we're president. It is about expanding, expanding, expanding
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: the electorate, expanding the playing field, and putting more states
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: in play. What I fear is that Democrats are going to, again,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 4: put all of our eggs in one or two baskets.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: So on election night, we're going to be sitting around
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 4: waiting for Ohio and Florida to come in to determine
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: the election. And I think that's an absolute losing strategy.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: I think that strategy benefits Republicans, you know, as opposed to, look,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: Stacey Abrams lost Georgia by a hair. And even in 2012,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: Seamus did allow us to at least poll in Georgia.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: Seamus being one of the Obama campaign folks. So I
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: did polling in Georgia to look at what Georgia looked like,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: and even back then, Obama was only running behind Romney
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: by a couple points in Georgia. And the idea was,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: you know, Georgia's state is coming online. North Carolina's a state.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 4: Is North Carolina the next Virginia? Yeah. So, you know,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 4: is Arizona, you know, absolutely should we be playing and
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 4: putting them on the defensive in Arizona? Yes. And part
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: of it is, and it's an old Dean thing, half
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: of it is showing up. Going into 2008, we heard
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: a lot of conversations about, well, young people don't vote. Well,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: Obama knew he couldn't win without young people voting. So
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: guess what we did? We put our resources and time
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: and effort And reaching young people and talking to young
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: people and engaging young people in a conversation of where
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: they were in a way that no other campaign has.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: So if I look at what's happening right now in
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: the party, will we make the same investment at going
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: after millennials? Millennials are no longer a secondary consideration of vote.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: They are potentially a larger swath of voters than baby boomers.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: Are we going to put the time and resources in
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: chasing millennials? that I think we need. And by the way,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: if you're putting that time and resources in millennials, millennials
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: are also the most diverse generation of Americans in American history.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 4: So it also means you also have to make investments
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 4: in Latino and African American and Asian American communities in
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 4: a very different way than I think the party has
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: in the past. And that's how you expand the electorate.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 4: That's how you build upon the Obama legacy, which I
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: think And of course, I'm biased, and I think you're
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: a little biased too, John. But I think that's the
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 4: way you win back a majority if you're a Democrat.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I agree. Cornell, thank you so much for
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: joining us. I could talk about this stuff all day. Well,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: you'll have to come back again as this crazy primary unfolds.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: We'd love to have you back on.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: Thanks to Cornell Belcher for joining us today, and we'll
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: see you on Thursday. Any closing thoughts on Game of Thrones? Spoilers, spoilers,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: if you haven't seen it, just turn the fucking podcast off.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: Look, I think the bottom line is we saw one
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: guy yell at a dragon, and then we saw a
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: woman come in with the policies we needed. That's all
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: I'm going to say, you know?
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: That ruined it for me. I have nothing else to say.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: Immediately taken it to politics. Plundered over here. I was excited.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: It was so tense. I couldn't calm down for like
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: hours afterwards.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: It was tense. I also, look, no shade to our
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: friends at HBO, but man, when you're watching it and
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: it's light out, it is really hard to see. That
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: was my one critique. It was hard to see. So dark.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: It's been like that before in battle scenes. I feel
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: as though... It's always a game of turnstiles. Fight during
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: the day. I feel as though... I like the fire.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: The fire made me feel like, oh, I can see now.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: There's fire.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: I feel as though I've also been preparing for this
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: battle for some time because I pulled down two blackout shades,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: I adjusted the contrast on my magnificent television, and I
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: sat back and I thought, I'm watching.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: It the right way.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: We hung a blanket up over the window to reduce
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: the glare. I will say, for some people complaining about
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: this episode, one thing to remember... Some of the most
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: crushing deaths in Game of Thrones have come not during
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: the battles, but at unexpected moments.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: It's good to hear you do this, because is this
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: what it sounds like when we reassure people about politics?
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly what it sounds like. I did not
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: like it. The one thing I didn't like, I really
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: enjoyed the episode. I didn't like seeing the Night King
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: up close, like smirking, becoming a full person with a personality.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: Keep him far away. Keep that steely, you know, grimace.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: I'm there. I'm hoping we still get some more backstory
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: on the Night King.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: Yes, please.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: Because it would be criminal if they just ended it
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: there and you didn't hear anything else about it.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: I just, I'm very frustrated by everybody dies except the
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: six people you care about. You know, it's like, there
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: was one shot where you're panning across and it was like.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: Three episodes left.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: I know, but like, we had two episodes of buildup
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: waiting for these people to go head to head. And
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: then you kind of pan across and it's like, almost
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: out but still fighting is Brianne and Jamie and Podrick
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: and Gendry. And it's like, well, what are the odds?
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: There were a lot of improbable survivals.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: And there's something they've been doing where it's basically, you know,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: the zombies get on top of somebody you love, but
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: don't worry, right behind them is somebody else you love,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: and they're going to get rid of those zombies and
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: they're going to keep on fighting. And then, right when
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: everybody is fully fucked, like, we have fought, they're exhausted,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: they've been doing basically two hours of heavy lifting and cardio,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: and then... Everyone, then all of a sudden the Night
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: King makes that catty little smirk and he's like, wake.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: Up everybody, you're fucked again.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: And then they're still gonna fight some more and they're
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: still okay. I got some, I got some, the odds
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: were too great. Deck was stacked too hard against them.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: It was a little World War Z-ish.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: And also, I have no idea what the dragon count
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: is currently. Someone's gotta figure it out.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: I think we still got two live dragons because in
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: the preview for next episode, you saw the two, there
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: were two dragons in the sky. So I know I
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: wasn't- You shouldn't have to rely on the preview. Oh,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: and also, Ghost- Dire Wolf. John's Dire Wolf.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: I've been wondering where they... Ran off. Never see him again. Like,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: did he die?
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: No, in the preview for the next episode, you also
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: see him standing in the back there. So ghost, we
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: got a ghost, we got two dragons.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: Also, Melisandre disappears for years. She comes back. She's a
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: human fucking Zippo.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: I knew she'd be useful. Just like, like, Daenerys flies away.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: They clearly had a plan and the plan was, Daenerys,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 3: at a key moment, All right, we're going to, for
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: some reason, kill all the Disaraki at once right before
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: we start.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: Not really clear why.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 3: But once they're dead, there's going to be a key
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: moment where we need you to use your dragon to
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: set this shit on fire. And then just sort of
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: misses her cue.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: I think the Night King had some power to stop
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: them from breathing fire.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was the weather. He brought in a storm.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: That was winter.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: So she got grounded in Atlanta? So we had a
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: fucking weather delay?
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: I think it was Chicago, but yes. She got stuck
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: at O'Hare? How about Theon just charging the Night King?
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: I was like, you know what?
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: That's the least surprising thing that happened in the episode.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: Imagine if Theon was the one who killed the Night King.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: I will say, my friend Dan said this, which I
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: thought was really funny, which is that Jorah Mormont got
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: friend-zoned to death.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: His whole life in the friend-zone. Just like his.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: Final words are just like, and she's like, I'm just
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: going to kiss you on the cheek.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: The only surprise I had was I thought, I was
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: very worried that Arya might die, and boy, did that
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: not happen.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: Jaime, I knew.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: They could not have killed Jaime because Jaime needs another
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: scene with Cersei. No matter what he was fighting, I
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: was like, they're not killing him. He's got to see
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: Cersei one more time.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: We just had to get that out. I'm sure some
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: of you will still complain even though we told you
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: to turn it off.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: Bye, everyone.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: Bye. Thank you.