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Debating the Trump Era with Abby Phillip · Pod Save America

• 0:00
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• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. You probably
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: know Abby Phillip as the host of Newsnight on CNN,
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: where she expertly and gracefully moderates... what you might call
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: boisterous panel discussions that often turn into viral moments. She's
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: also one of the most thoughtful journalists covering Trump, or
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  Speaker 2: at least attempting to, right now. And on top of that,
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  Speaker 2: she's also out with a fascinating new book that I'm loving,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: A Dream Deferred, Jesse Jackson and the Fight for Black
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Political Power, about Reverend Jackson's groundbreaking presidential campaigns in the 1980s,
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: and importantly, what those campaigns can teach us about where
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: the Democratic Party is today and where it needs to go.
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  Speaker 2: For all those reasons, I've been really eager to have
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: her on the show, and I'm so happy I was
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: able to get some time when she visited L.A. on Thursday.
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  Speaker 2: Here's our conversation. Hope you enjoy. Abby, welcome to Pod
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Save America.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: Hey, thanks for having me.
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  Speaker 2: A lot of people might know you from your job
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  Speaker 2: at CNN as the lead anchor and host of CNN Newsnight,
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  Speaker 2: but you're also the author of a brand new book,
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: A Dream Deferred, Jesse Jackson and the Fight for Black
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  Speaker 2: Political Power. which is now on sale.
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  Speaker 3: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Exciting. We'll get into that in a bit. I just
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: want to start with some questions about your day job.
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  Speaker 2: You've been covering politics for a long time now.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Since 2010, 2011? 2010.
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  Speaker 3: I was young. You were in the White House.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to say.
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  Speaker 3: We were both young, but I was younger, actually. I
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: was young enough that you had no idea who I
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: was at that time.
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  Speaker 2: Once I went into the White House, I didn't know
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  Speaker 2: who anyone was. I was just stuck in there all day.
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  Speaker 2: So you were a political reporter throughout the Obama administration,
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: 2016 election, the highly functioning democracy that we've had since then.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: In terms of processing, analyzing, reporting the news. How does
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: 2025 compare to everything before it? Do you feel like
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  Speaker 2: covering Trump's second term is just an acceleration of the
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  Speaker 2: craziness that's been building for a decade, or does it
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  Speaker 2: feel like something new?
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  Speaker 3: I think it is an acceleration of the craziness of
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: the first term. It's like, obviously, they had a lot
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: of time to think about this stuff. They learn from
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: their mistakes. And so a lot of things that are
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: happening now are things that they wanted to do then,
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  Speaker 3: but they couldn't because they couldn't figure out the government,
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: they couldn't get their act together, and now they're doing it.
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  Speaker 3: And also Trump is so much more in control now
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  Speaker 3: than he was then. I mean, he does not have
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  Speaker 3: a functional other branch of government in Congress. And so
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  Speaker 3: he literally can do whatever he wants. And it shows.
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  Speaker 3: And so, I mean, the first time around, it was
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: like covering a lot of hijinks, It was like a
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  Speaker 3: government that was just a bunch of people who wanted
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: to do a lot of things, and then they couldn't
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  Speaker 3: quite figure it out, and something always went wrong, and
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  Speaker 3: it was always just this almost like a clown show.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: And I think this time there are definitely some clown
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  Speaker 3: show elements still present, but they're much more organized, and
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: it's much more serious because I think they're thinking longer term.
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  Speaker 3: I don't think they were thinking that long term when
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: Trump was in the office the first time because they
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: weren't sure whether his politics were going to be lasting,
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: and now we know. And I think now they're thinking about, okay,
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: how do we really change this country permanently? And that's
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  Speaker 3: what we're operating on.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: I find it harder to somehow keep up with the
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: news this time around than even last time.
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  Speaker 3: There's more happening, for sure.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's more of consequence happening. Like last time, if
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: you missed the scandal or the outrage of the day,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: it's like, we'll have another one, whatever, it'll pass. This
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: time it's like, oh, well, we should cover that because
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: that's actually going to have a real impact on people
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: and people might not be paying attention to it.
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  Speaker 3: And I also think, the thing I think about actually
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: is the stuff that we're not covering. It's the stuff
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: that's happening that we don't really have eyes on because
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: they've gotten much better at keeping journalists sort of away
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: from the nitty gritty details of what's happening in the government.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: I think that's the stuff that kind of keeps me
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: up at night is that we don't, I think we
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: have less visibility now than we did before into the
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: inner workings of the government, into even Trump's world. I
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: find that the reporting this time around about, and I don't,
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: I'm not a sort of day-to-day Trump reporter anymore, but
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: the reporting that we have now about what's really going
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: on in the White House, the deliberations, the conversations, who's
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: influencing the president, how he's weighing in on things is
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  Speaker 3: much more limited than it was in the first term.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: And that's, there are consequences to that. I think we
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  Speaker 3: know less. I think there's still just as much happening,
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: if not more, but we know less about it.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: How do you feel about what's happened to the press
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  Speaker 2: pool in the White House? Because, you know, I just
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: feel like there are, you know, Caroline Leavitt and the
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  Speaker 2: staff are going to do what they do at briefings
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  Speaker 2: and just sort of deflect and whatever else. Trump, sometimes
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: when you're asking him questions, you actually get some interesting
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  Speaker 2: answers into his insight. And I just feel like aside
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: from Caitlin Collins, who you work with, and a few
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  Speaker 2: other reporters, we're just getting so many fewer real questions
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  Speaker 2: when he holds, even though he's holding more press availabilities,
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  Speaker 2: you're getting fewer questions that are not just congratulating him.
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  Speaker 3: That's on purpose. Because you know that they, I mean,
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: when they basically tried to take over the accreditation process
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: for a White House press pass, the goal was to
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  Speaker 3: fill the seats with people who were sycophants. And they
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: have done that pretty successfully. I mean, they call it
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: new media, but these are all just, it's all Trump media.
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  Speaker 3: And so that's why, I mean, I get frustrated when
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: people are like, the media is not doing anything, but
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  Speaker 3: they don't realize that the nuts and bolts of who's
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: in the room matters and is now more controlled by
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  Speaker 3: the White House than it has ever been. And so
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  Speaker 3: it's not the fault of the day-to-day reporters who are
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: still asking questions and are still doing their job. It's
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: just that now the deck is stacked, like the room
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: is pact with people that they handpicked because of their
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: loyalty to Trump. And that is completely shifting what comes
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: out of these press briefings and media avails. And, you know,
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: at the end of the day, you made the point
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: about Trump taking questions. I think Trump actually likes the
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: back and forth. He doesn't mind getting the tough question
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: from Caitlyn or whatever. And he takes them because he
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: knows it makes for good TV. And that's probably the
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: one thing that is still kind of allowing the system
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: to somewhat get information out of this White House.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's obviously been a rough decade for journalism as
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: an industry. Corporate consolidation, mass layoffs, audiences now can get
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: information from a million different sources, many of them for free,
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  Speaker 2: many of them not trustworthy. Trust in media is at
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: lowest level ever. And then Trump comes along, and especially
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: in the second term, backs up his rhetorical attacks on
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: the press that were a hallmark of the first term
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: with frivolous lawsuits, FCC threats, making sure his allies have
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: influence over certain outlets. What are the conversations like between
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: you and your colleagues about the future of your profession?
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, the truth is, I don't have a
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: ton of conversations about this with my colleagues. I'm not
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: joking you. I just think we're literally just working.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Just every day.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: Every day. And what are we going to do?
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: You know, we're, we're kind of in a place where
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: we don't have a lot of influence over the moves
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: that are happening above us. So, all we can do
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: is what we know how to do. I, I do,
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: I think about this broad, more broadly than in the
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: media because the media is just one sort of cog
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: in the capitalist system. And, and, consolidation usually is not
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: good for marketplaces. And I don't think it's necessarily great
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: for the media. I think that we are in a
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: place where a lot of consolidation needs to happen for
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: financial reasons, but the loser is going to be the
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: consumer of information. And it also is probably going to
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: push more and more of those consumers to alternative media sources.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: And so that's just looking at the industry broadly. That's
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: how I see it. And can I do anything about it? No.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: Can I do my job? Yes. And so I'm going
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: to do my job. And I really do think that
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: we can sit and complain about it all day long,
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: but we have to just be able to have enough
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: freedom to do the day-to-day work. And I still feel
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: like I do. I look at a lot of the
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: places where there are concerns about who owns them and
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: what kinds of corporate top-down mandates are they under, places
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: like The Washington Post, places like The Wall Street Journal,
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: and they're doing excellent journalism. They really are. And so
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: I just think people are going to need to make money,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: and they are going to. But the broader themes that
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: are going to drive what media looks like is actually
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: the fact that there are going to be a lot
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: of different places that people get information from, And the
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: mainstream media consolidation that's happening right now is only going
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: to hasten that shift. So we just have to be
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: honest about that. And I think we all try to
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: play in the pool of the new media landscape and
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: do what we can. But that's a shift that's inexorable.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: We're not going to stop that. And it's only going
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: to go faster and faster.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: I wonder if you worry about, I do, and as
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: someone whose job relies on other journalists doing this excellent
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: reporting that, you know, people are going to, consumers are
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: going to think, okay, you know, I'm watching punditry and analysis,
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: and am I really going to pay for, like, original reporting? Like,
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: I worry that sort of the balance with the incentives
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: for actual journalism and reporting, you know, have gotten to
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: the point where punditry is easier, cheaper, and more interesting
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: sometimes to people.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: Sure. But I... It's okay. I think it's fine. We
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: can walk and chew gum at the same time. Because
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: I think people like to crap on– I don't know
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: if I can curse. Can I curse?
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: You sure can.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: People like to shit on context and analysis. And you
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: can call it punditry. You can call it whatever you
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: want to call it. But I think that what the
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: marketplace is saying is that people are hungry for help understanding.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is true.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: And information is everywhere. It is ubiquitous everywhere. So it
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: is okay and good and normal and commendable that people
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: are saying, help me understand this. And I don't think
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: we should be on our high horse and be like, okay,
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: the only thing that matters is that we just keep
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: feeding you from the fire hose. People really want to
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: comprehend this moment. And we need to be able to
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: give people both of those things at the same time.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: And yes, it is cheaper sometimes. literally and figuratively cheaper
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: to do it that way. You know, I mean, I
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: think that there is so much bad that can happen
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: when it's just like a lot of people spouting their opinions.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: But I also think that doing that with integrity counts.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: And we should not be out of the game of that. So,
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: and leave it to the crazies on the internet to
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: provide this, you know, skewed so-called context. And so.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: I think, and having done this in a lot of
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: different parts of the media world at this point in
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: my career, that we have to provide a whole menu
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: of options to people who are consuming information. And it
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: is not enough to just say, well, this is good
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: for you, so eat your broccoli. No. People want a
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: range of things. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: to look down on. And context is hugely, hugely important.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: That's why opinion pages exist in newspapers because, you know,
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: people have points of view and it helps people digest
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: the facts. So that's my, you know, that's my little soapbox.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: I just think we can't be, we just cannot be
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: on this high horse about this stuff. We have to
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: give people what they really are craving, which is both
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: the news and the context.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think you can make an argument that in
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: this media environment where there's so many choices, that context
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: and curation are like more important than ever.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Because it's hard, right? When you're just like scrolling through
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff, a bunch of headlines, you don't
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: know what's true, you don't know what's not. Like it
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: becomes more important to have some trusted voices that you
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: know can help you make sense of the day.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: And I mean– when you leave it to the crazies
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: and they're out there, all they're doing is just sitting
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: around and they're spinning these webs of conspiracies in which
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: everything is just so conveniently linked together. And it makes
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: perfect sense. And I think that is so dangerous when
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: we cede all of that space to people who have
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: no moral compunction about just staring people wrong. And that's,
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: I see a lot of that happening. And that is
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: really one of the scarier parts of where we are.
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• 17:46
  Speaker 2: I want to ask you about your CNN Newsnight role
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: as anchor, debate moderator, seemingly kindergarten teacher at times. First
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: of all, I just want to say like, You make
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: an incredibly difficult job look easy because I'm not sure
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: people fully understand how difficult it is to moderate a
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: contentious panel like that in a way that is, I think,
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: fair but still firm because you have to pick your moments,
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: all while fact-checking in real time and offering your own analysis.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Is there anything in your background or experience that helped
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: you prepare for this? And I'm just curious, like, what
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: you do to prepare for the show every night. Yeah.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I always say that I, like, I
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: come from a really big family. I'm one of six kids.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: And I'm just really used to being in the middle
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: of a lot of chaos. It's just, and also a
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: lot of people with different points of view. And I
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: do think, I know it sounds kind of cliche, but
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: I really do think that that helps because I've, I've
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: always just been able to deal with a lot of
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: different personalities. I mean, my siblings and I have the
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: same two parents, but we're all different, every single one
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: of us. And you have to, I love them. They're
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: my family. And when we sit at that table on Newsnight,
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: I think that the goal, what I'm trying to create
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: is this sense that we can have this debate. We
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: can you know, correct each other and question each other
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: and call each other out and still sit in the
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: breaks and not want to smack each other. Now, every
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: once in a while, you know, people go into the
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: breaks and they're still bickering and we're just like, okay,
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: calm down. You know, but the goal is to have
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: the ability to do that at the very least. And so,
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think I'm also just not that person.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: I'm down for a good debate, but I'm not the
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: first person who will get heated in a debate. And
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: it just so happens that I think works in this
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: context because I'm more than happy to let them have
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: their emotional ups and downs. And I usually try to
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: not be at that emotional register because I just, it's
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: not how I roll, just on a deeply human level.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: And the times when I do, when it does turn up,
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: the dial does turn up for me are rare and
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: I try to keep it as rare as possible. So
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: I think it's just helpful that my personality is just
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: not that. And I mean, it used to be that
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: people would be like, oh, she's too like even keeled
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: or whatever. And it just so turns out that this format,
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: it works for me right now. So there you go
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: to my, all my haters.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask like, are there times where
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: in your head you're thinking, okay, I should, maybe I
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: should step in or if I don't, I'm going to
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: get shit from people. Like how much does that enter your,
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, I.
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: Like transparently we've been doing this way, this version of
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: the show for a little over a year. And at
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: the beginning it was, I had to play around with it.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: How much am I involved? How much am I correcting?
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: How much am I fact-checking? Do I really want to
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: be fact-checking all the time? Do I really want to
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: just sit back and let them talk? Like, what is
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: my role? And I think there's a negotiation that happens there. And,
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: you know, there are some things that I don't fact
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: check maybe because I don't know. It's come out of nowhere.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: People do bring things up out of nowhere. And I'm
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: just like, I've never heard that one before. And then
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: we have to go back and be like, what was
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: that all about? So I'm not always able to. I'm
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: not a computer. But I am very well read and
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: prepared for a lot of the arguments that come up.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: So I miss things. And, you know, people will still
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: give me shit for missing things. But I'm a human being.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: And we are in a live setting. We're not scripting
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: these debates. We don't even have questions.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: People just go at it.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: We have information. We don't have questions. I come to
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: the table every night with a list of conversation aids,
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: but the conversation goes the way that the panelists take it.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: You have to be comfortable with a certain amount of
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: unpredictability and I think that I have more recently found,
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: I think, a good balance, right? I see myself as
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: trying to play the role of the incredulous questioner on
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: behalf of the people who are at home and are
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: kind of like, do you really believe that? Or just,
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: that's completely illogical. Or how do you square that with this?
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: And I think that some of these So some of
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: the role that I play is just impressing people, just
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: in kind of testing the argument and forcing them to
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: defend it and forcing them to see it through its
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: natural logical conclusion. And I think that's where I've landed
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: so far. So far, but it's always shifting. It changes
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: every single night. And we are always bringing new people
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: on who have, you know, it's always something new. And
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: that's great. That's what's nice about the show.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: It's funny. I think the only time I've been on
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: a– or the last time I've been on a panel
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: at CNN that was like people on the left, people
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: on the right. It was years ago. Yeah. And I
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: just remember watching people go at it as like it
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: was live. And then we went to a commercial break.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: And I was sitting next to Gloria Borger. And she
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: was like, you know, you can jump in. They like
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: when you jump in and mix it up. And I'm
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: just like, this is scary.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: You know what happened? During COVID, people stopped being able
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: to do it. because everybody was in these boxes. And
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: so the fact that we have everybody in the studio
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: every single night is helpful. And it's for a lot
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: of people, it's kind of a new experience. And they
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: don't get to do it that often. So a lot
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: of people have to figure out how to talk to
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: other people, like look them in the eye and say
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: the thing and keep the same energy that they would
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: otherwise have on social media. And I think that's part
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: of the psychology of it too, is that you really
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: have to be willing to, first of all, be on
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: your feet. You have to be quick on your feet.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: And you have to be ready for anything. And you
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: have to really be listening. Because, you know, a lot
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: of times people are just, they have their little talking points.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: And they get mad at me when I'm like, I'm
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: going to interrupt you because you're answering the question that
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: you want to be asked. And this is not that
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: kind of show. So that's a skill that I think
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: we have tried to cultivate What does it look like
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: to actually sit in front of a person you disagree
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: with and talk to them and challenge them and be challenged?
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: And the people who have figured that out have done
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: really well on our show. And I think it makes
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: for both good television and I think it's an important
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: thing to do.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: I've never been a huge fan of the debate, much
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: of it on the left, about, you know, platforming certain
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: political figures on the right or legitimizing people on the
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: right because you go on their shows.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: Especially since I think most of these figures have large
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: platforms already. But every time, you know, we've talked about
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: this and every time I think about like inviting a,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: like a MAGA person on the show to have that
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: like in-person debate, the only thing that gives me pause
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: is it's like, it's hard to spend the entire time
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: or I don't want to spend the entire time correcting
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: or saying that's not true or let's fact check. And
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: then they fact check and I fact check and suddenly
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: it's just like, 30 minutes of a fact check.
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I hear you on that.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: And so it's like, I would love to have the
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: debate about deeply held beliefs that are different. Sometimes it's
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: hard to get past the talking points.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: I'm with you. It happens. I mean, there are plenty
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: of times where we've had people on and it's like.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: You're just doing your thing.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: I'm just throwing my hands up. It's just, what's the point?
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: Because we can't have a debate unless we at least
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: agree to agree on facts.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: Like, facts have to actually matter to you in order
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: for us to have this conversation.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: Now, I also grant people that sometimes people have other
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: facts that matter to them more, and that is okay.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: But there are definitely some people who are just living
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: in a different world, and it's really hard, and it's not,
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: and I think that is, yeah, definitely a situation in
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: which it is very difficult, if not impossible, to have
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: that conversation. And so, You kind of have to find
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: the right people who are willing to kind of level
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: with you in a– at least in an open-minded way.
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: And I would kind of argue that that's not just
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: unique to Republicans, although I think their information silo is
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: probably more closed off. But it's– in general, are you
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: willing to concede something, anything, anything? And some people are not.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: And so people aren't because I think there's this pressure
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: that if you concede something on live on national television,
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: then suddenly your side is going to be like, why
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: did you just do that? And what's wrong with you?
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: And you gave in and it's a real.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: It's a, yeah, it's a psychological thing. It's about social
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: media cloud. It's about you're standing in, you know, in
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: the group, you know, because you're standing in the group.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: becomes the most important thing to you. Because your people
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: might not like you as much anymore. And that's, we
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: have to come to terms with that in politics. That
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: is such a big thing in terms of how people
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: are willing to show up politically is that they're so
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: afraid of being ostracized by people in their group that
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: they're not willing to admit when they're wrong or when
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: something needs to change or when, you know, the other
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: person might be right.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and especially... I think on the left now,
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: there's another reason not to do it, which is, well,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: if they're going to do this, then we can't be
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: the ones that are always saying we're wrong and we
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: change our mind because we're in a fight against these
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: people who are in a different kind of reality, you know?
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: And it's sort of like, I think if you have
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: values and beliefs and principles, they've got to be universal,
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: like no matter what the other side does.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: But do you, I mean, but I thought, you know,
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: I've been talking about this a lot lately because I
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: feel like this has really come up. And I mean,
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: I wonder, as you are a card-carrying Democrat, do you
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: see that happening and do you think that's a problem?
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: Because I think some people think that Democrats unilaterally disarm
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: too often and leave Republicans to just do whatever they want.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: And then like in redistricting, for example, is an example
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: of this. Yeah.
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: Do you think that that's bad?
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: The Democrats are doing?
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: No, on that kind of thing, I'm like, that's an
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: easy one for me just because it's like we proposed
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: national nonpartisan gerrymandering and we couldn't get a Republican vote
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: for it. And if Republicans want to join us, then
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: I'm like, let's stop the race to the bottom and
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: do no more gerrymandering and let's reverse it. But otherwise,
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: we're not going to unilaterally disarm. I have sort of
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: a different take on the broader– Republicans are always fighting
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: and Dems don't fight. And the whole like, you know,
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: everyone likes to bring up the Michelle Obama quote, like,
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: you know, when they go low, we go high. And
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: everyone's like, we can't do that ever again. And I'm like,
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: it's not. I just think that our political goals are
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: different in a way. which makes it asymmetrical. I think
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: that Donald Trump and a lot of the MAGA movement
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: would be quite happy if people were more cynical about
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: politics and not paying as much attention and they would
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: get to do what they want to do. And I
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: think that Democrats at their best believe that government should
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: be a tool for people to come together across like
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: different ideologies, races, identities, and try to figure out something together.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: And if you're going to believe that, it's much tougher
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: to then go and just destroy the other side all day,
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: because we believe in a bigger community than that.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like the government shutdown debate is
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: a little bit of that, where it's like, I mean,
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: I was there all the years that Republicans shut the
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: government down, even when Trump was president. And in a way,
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: Democrats have just are just doing what they did and
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: justified for all those years. However, the government is still
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: shut down.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: And people are still not getting paychecks and so on
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: and so forth. I don't have any answers to that,
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: but I feel like that is the dilemma the Democrats
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: are facing, which is, do we really take on their tactics,
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: even if people get hurt? Or do we have a
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: higher bar for ourselves?
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: And what has heightened that challenge for Democrats is, of course,
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump and particularly how he's acting. in the second term, right?
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Because I'm very much like, I don't want, I'm in
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: politics so that people are helped and I don't want
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: them to get hurt. But like, I also think that
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: there's masked agents on the street, like arresting people who
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: are American citizens and nothing's stopping them. And I don't,
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: like my view on the government shutdown was I would
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: not have gone, I would not have made it about
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: healthcare because healthcare to me is a policy issue that
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: under a different Republican president or a different president whatever,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: you would say, okay, we had an election, they won,
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: this is the government, they get to do what they want, right?
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: People should feel the consequences of what they voted for. Yeah,
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: shutting down the government over a typical policy fight, to me,
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: is not as important, I think, or I wouldn't have
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: done it unless it was shutting down the government over, like,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: you know, I think Chris Murphy has been saying this, like,
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: why am I going to fund a government that's, like,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: destroying democracy right now? You know, you guys can find
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: the votes yourself.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: I think that, you know, my... my humble opinion as
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: an observer of politics is I actually don't think that
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: a government shutdown over capital D democracy would have worked.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: I don't think, I don't know that it would have. Yeah.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: I think, I think it would have gone way over
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: people's heads and I, but I, and this is not
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: an endorsement of a government shutdown over anything, but it's,
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: but it's just to say that the, the uniqueness of
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: this one is, is that the underlying issue is one
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: that is a political vulnerability for the other side, whereas
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: the other stuff is much less so.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: It's true. Then if you get to the nerdy legislative
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: part of it, though, you say, okay, why would we
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: make a spending deal when they're going to go back
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: after the spending deal and just be like, well, we're
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: going to spend whatever we want. And we're going to
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: shut down whatever we want, fire whoever we want, and
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: it doesn't really matter.
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: And look, I hear that. But at the same time,
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, some– deal has to be made.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: I know. I know.
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: So, you know.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: It's a tough situation.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Do you feel like you better understand what drives MAGA
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: politics because of this show?
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: You feel like you got enough of the.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: Like, people's true feelings?
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, I talk to tried and true, dyed in
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: the wool MAGA people every single day. And so... Yeah,
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: I understand where they come from. I understand the information
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: silos that they're in that make it hard to see
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: outside of it. And it's not that complicated. I mean,
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: I think that they like winning. And Trump is winning
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: in their minds. So in a way, to me it
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: boils down to mostly that. Because we have all shades
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: of this sort of Trump supporter. We have people who
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: are not really that into him, who are now, people
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: who are not even all that into him right now,
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: but would prefer to defend him to the alternative. You know,
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: I see it all. And at the end of the day,
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: the biggest thing that works for Trump is that they've
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: figured out how to use raw political power to dominate
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: their opposition. And turns out that's very appealing to a
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: lot of people on the right. And they're willing to
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: They're willing to gloss over a lot of conduct in
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: order to be on the team that is winning. So
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: I think that's a lot of what's going on right now.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Do you feel like you understand Scott Jennings' politics better?
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, he's a– I think what I just
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: described accurately describes him that– Because.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: He's taken a journey. He's taken a journey.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's taken a journey as we've talked about. I
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: think he– as he said– He would prefer Trump over
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: the alternative, but I also think that he has seen
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  Speaker 3: Trump win on the culture issues, on the economic issues,
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• 35:06
  Speaker 3: privately because I think he believes that going against Trump
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: is a bad idea because Trump keeps winning. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: $ 100 or more. Okay, seamless pivot from Scott Jennings to
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Jesse Jackson, about whom you wrote this fantastic book. So
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: much in common. So what was your sense of Jesse
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Jackson and his legacy before you started writing the book?
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: And what questions did you want to answer?
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: My sense of him was what I think a lot
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: of people's sense of him is, which is that he's
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: an activist. He's a leader of the civil rights generation
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: and is ubiquitous, right? that he's in everything and that
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: mostly it's just showing up. I think that was the
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: sense that a lot of people had of him, have
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: of him. And one of the reasons I wrote this
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: book is because I found that this particular chapter, when
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: he ran for president two times, is arguably one of
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: the most significant parts of his legacy that rarely gets
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: talked about. And It is the part of his legacy
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: that actually I think kind of undermines the view of
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: him as somebody who's just sort of surface deep and
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: only just shows up and so on and so forth.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: Because I do think that running, you know this, running
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: for president is a real difficult task.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: And a little insane.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a little crazy. And it attracts a
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: certain type of person. And Jesse Jackson certainly is in
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: that same category of people. But For a black man
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: in the 1980s who grew up in the segregated South,
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: who did not have much, for him to end up
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: on the same debate stage with all of these figures,
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: not just Michael Dukakis, but Al Gore and Joe Biden
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: and all these other people who later on went on
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: to do other things. But he was on the debate
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: stage with all of those people and holding his own
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: on foreign policy, on economic policy, on a whole host
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: of things. And then he comes in second place in 1988.
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: And then it's kind of promptly forgotten about, partly because
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: Bill Clinton, but also partly because Barack Obama. And I
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: think that there's a lot there that is worth exploring,
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: including explaining how we even got to Barack Obama. I
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: think he's a huge part of that story.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, Jesse Jackson and Obama actually politically... to
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: be honest, don't have a huge amount in common. So
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: it's not so much about that because I think Obama
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: is way more centrist than Jesse Jackson was. However, I
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: also think Jesse Jackson's sort of left-wing politics of the
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: 80s actually became kind of centrist in the 2010s or whatever.
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: But more to the point, I mean, just from a
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: nuts and bolts perspective, had Jesse Jackson not changed the
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: rules of the Democratic Party to make it easier for
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: outsider candidates to come in and run against the establishment
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: and still rack up delegates and still get to the convention...
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: Obama wouldn't have beaten Hillary.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: This is how we beat Hillary Clinton.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: Period. Yeah. It just wouldn't have happened.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. If it was winner take all like the Republicans
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: have in the primaries, we wouldn't have done it.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: And I mean, in a way, it's like think about
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: the foresight of that because there were so many people
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: in the 80s who were like, why run a black
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: candidate for the presidency? You know you're not going to win.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: This country isn't going to do that in this moment.
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: And they were right about that. But I also think
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: Jesse Jackson had this sort of, tactical intelligence about the
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: value of leverage. Some of that was built up for
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: years and years of using leverage to get concessions from
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: private companies on diversity and all kinds of other stuff.
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: But he understood leverage really well. And he really pushed
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: in both of those campaigns toward getting to the convention,
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: getting changes to the platform, getting changes to the nominating
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: process for the Democratic Party. the nuts and bolts of
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: how you even get a candidate, let alone what that
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: candidate stands for. And it turns out that foresight was
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: exactly correct because 20 years later, and this is why
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: the book is called A Dream Deferred, is because it
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: took 20 years for this to actually be seen. But
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: that became the thing that allowed Barack Obama to bypass
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: what would have been a blowout from a much more
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: establishment candidate. It's also the thing that allowed Bernie Sanders
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: to have as much leverage and influence as he did
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: in 2016 and in 2020. And so there's so much
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: about how he conducted politics. And we didn't even talk
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: about the issues. But all of those things make him
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: a very consequential figure who doesn't get a lot of
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: credit for that chapter in his life.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Why do you think that is on the credit that
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: he doesn't– like he's not– he hasn't gotten his due,
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: I think, either as a civil rights leader like John
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Lewis or a political leader, not only from, I think,
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: the public, but even from like his contemporaries.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: Totally.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of drama.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's the truth is that his relationships personally,
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: I think, are very fraught. And I get into this
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: in the book that, you know, when he ran for president,
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: he did not have many endorsements, even from black elected officials.
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: In fact, he had none in 1984. And in 1988,
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: he had a few more. But overwhelmingly, a lot of
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: his friends and colleagues, they endorsed the establishment Democratic candidate.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: And I think some of that has to do with
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: not just the political part of it, but also just
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: his relationships with people. And I think also, Jesse Jackson
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: is a character. He has like real main character energy
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: in the sense that he has a lot of personality
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: traits that are double-edged swords. This incredible skill of connecting
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: and oratory and also an incredible amount of, I don't know,
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: A desire to be in the public eye. Some people
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: would say arrogance. Ego.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: Not unfamiliar if you know people who run for president.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: Psychological turmoil around his father and how he grew up.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: And so there's all of that mixed together in this person.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: And so he was really polarizing. And I was talking
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: to someone else just recently also about just the fact
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: that he has lived as long as he has.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: And that contributes to it too. He is 84 years old.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: And so for the last 60-something years of American history,
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: people have known who Jesse Jackson is. Very, very few
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: people have that many years on the books in public life.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: And inevitably, that means that you are going to have
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: people who have all kinds of different views about you.
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: All kinds of chapters of your life are going to
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: get forgotten. And I think that just the longevity of
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: his life has been a part of the picture. It's
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: just very easy to lionize people when they leave us
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: in an untimely fashion.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: Because it's easier. You don't have to deal with the
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: full scope of their life. And I think in some ways,
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: he was blessed to live a long life, but I
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: think the length of his life and the range of
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: things that he did sometimes works against him.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: You broke made me think, I was talking to some
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: of my old Obama colleagues today. And I'm like, what?
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: I don't have like a real sharp memory of Obama
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: saying a ton about Jesse Jackson.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: There's a reason for that.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: Well, that's because what I remember is, I remember that
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: his daughter was Michelle's maid of honor at their wedding.
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Santita.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: So I was always like- And Jesse Jr.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: they were very close.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: And Jesse Jr. was close.
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: Before In 2008, but before that.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: And then I remember towards the end of the campaign,
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: there was a whole thing with Obama and... The hot
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: mic moment. Yeah, the hot mic moment where he was
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: upset about how Obama was going to black churches and
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: he thought he was talking down to... And I think
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: he said, like, I want to cut his nuts out
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: or something like that. I remember that being a thing
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: on the campaign.
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: Which, by the way, that's a whole thing in terms of, like,
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: taking something that somebody says in a break and then
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: publishing it.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: And then I remember Bill Clinton... inserting him into the
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: Democratic primary after Obama won South Carolina and Bill Clinton
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: was like, well, Jesse Jackson won some states too.
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: God.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: I mean... That is... But I've never seen like... I
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: don't think I remember hearing Obama talk about him.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: Well, there's a very important reason for that. And it's
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: because their relationship was not great. And despite their... The
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: Chicago ties and the family ties and all of that stuff.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: I mean, I explore this in the book and it's complicated.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: Because I think that a lot of people involved in
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: that have a lot of regret, are kind of confused
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: about why it turned out that way. I think people
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: acknowledge that Jesse Jackson and some degree of resentment played
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: a role.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: Right, that Obama was, I don't know. I mean, I
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: think the truth is Obama allowed people, not him personally,
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: but the fact of Obama was sort of a permission
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: structure for people to sort of put Jesse Jackson to
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: the side, or at least that's how he felt about it.
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: And I do think that some of that psychologically played
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: a role here. I mean, I talked to people on
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: the Obama side and people on the Jesse Jackson side,
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: people caught in the middle of the two. And I
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: think that ego, right? Jesse Jackson wants to be remembered.
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: He wants to be honored. He wants to be given
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: his due. He didn't always feel like he got it
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: from both Obama and his team. He lashed out in
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: certain moments as a result of that. In other moments,
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: like in the hot mic moment, He was actually saying
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: something that other people were saying, but it was unwise
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: for him to say it where he said it. And
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: the fact that it became public was a huge problem.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: And afterwards, you know, he gave interviews where he's, Jesse did,
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: where he said, I regret that so deeply. Because the
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: truth is, when Obama won, Jesse Jackson was It related.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: I know. I remember the picture of him in Grant
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: Park with tears on his face.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: I mean, all of that said, when Barack Obama won,
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: Jesse Jackson reacted the way a man who was standing
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: feet from Dr. King when he was killed would react
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: to a black man being elected president. Disbelief, hope, fear, love,
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: you know. and a little bit of regret that he
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: wasn't able to do it, but joy that Obama was.
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: And so those emotions were very real. And I think
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: he had a lot of regret, he said so, about
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: how that relationship transpired. And I mean, your lack of,
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: the fact that you don't have a memory of Jesse
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: Jackson being part of the Obama world is because he
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: really wasn't there. He hardly ever went to the White House.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: After the fact, They're both in Chicago. They've met. I
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: wrote about a recent, a relatively recent meeting that they had.
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: And that meeting meant a lot to him. It meant
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: a huge amount to him, because I think that he
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: does live with some regret over that lost opportunity to
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: have a relationship with the first black president, somebody who
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: probably wouldn't be in the White House had it not
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: been for what he first did.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: I also think even if they had a close relationship,
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: there was an effort on the campaign to make it a,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: you know, that he wasn't just the first, he wouldn't
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: just be the first black president, right? Like the history-making
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: nature of the campaign was always intended to be a
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: light touch.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: And unspoken. I mean, like, I remember he gave the
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: convention speech. He accepted the nomination in 2008 on the
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: day of the, I believe it was the 40th anniversary
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: of the March on Washington. And there were a few
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: consultants who were like, in the first draft, we had
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: King at the end, a light touch King, not like
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: a heavy touch. And it was like, I don't know
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: if we want to mention Martin Luther King. It's like
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: a little too black. And I'm like, He is about
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: to be the first black nominee of the party.
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: And look, I think that that's a common theme. You know,
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: when Jesse Jackson ran in the 80s, the fact that
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: he came out of the civil rights movement was a
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: problem because it coded radical to a lot of white Americans.
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: And I think, you know, the Obama campaign, and I
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: don't want to speak too much, you're part of that world,
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: but understood that. That for some people, you know, I
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: think for most of us, we think, wow, these people
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: are heroes. This was such an amazing time where we
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: pushed the country into a period of, you know, reaching
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: its true potential. But there are a lot of people
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: who think civil rights movement and they think radical black
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: power activists. And it is politically very dangerous to be
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: in that space. And Jackson couldn't avoid it because that
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: is the history that he came out of. But even
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: at that time in 1983, when Harold Washington was running
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: for mayor of Chicago, and Jesse Jackson was a really
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: big part of helping make that happen, even Harold Washington
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: had to keep him at arm's length. Because again, like
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: for the white Chicagoans who he needed for the general election,
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: Jesse Jackson coded radical and civil rights and black power.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: And so even in the 80s, And he and Harold
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: Washington were friends.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: He was kept at arm's length. So that was nothing new.
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: And the fact that that did not really change after
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: all that time, I think it just says a lot
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: about the country and just how you have to navigate
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: race and how you have to navigate the people who
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: do have ties to those movements who were seen to
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: have been asking for too much from– particularly the white
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: power structures that, you know, especially in the 70s and
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: the 80s, controlled most of our politics.
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• 54:07
  Speaker 2: The other reaction I had coming through the book was
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: just this feeling of frustration and anger that there aren't
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: many potential Democratic candidates today who have the ability, I
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: think like Jackson did, to speak from a place of
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: passion and and moral conviction about social and economic injustice,
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: while also very explicitly trying to build a multiracial working
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: class coalition, going everywhere, talking to everyone, campaigning in pretty
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: creative ways.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: Did any of that jump out at you when you were.
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: That's the thing. I mean, that's the thing that you
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: come away from this, you know, all... when you really
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: dig into how that campaign unfolded, his unpredictability, his ability
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: to kind of capture the moment, to be creative, but
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: also to speak to people in a certain way. I
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: just think that the last few campaigns that I've covered,
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: especially candidates who have run for president in the Democratic Party,
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: they substitute reaching people on a soul level for a
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: laundry list of policies. And I cannot for the life
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: of me understand why anybody would think that that's a
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: good substitute. It's not a good substitute.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: I think it because it codes. If you don't, if
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: you talk about morals and you're passionate, it codes like
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: too progressive. And then if you give you a laundry list,
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: then it's like your laundry list of policies that poll well,
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: and so then you can code more moderate. But I
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: think it's a false choice.
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is a false choice. But also, I don't know,
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: politics is the art of persuasion. And you have to
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: move people. You have to reach them.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: And we're moved by stories and emotion.
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. You've got to tell a story. And I
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: do think that that is a lost art, or it's
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: increasingly so, a lost art. I don't know what kind
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: of candidate school– some people need to be put through,
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: but I just think there's definitely a rise of the
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: sort of dominant Democratic candidate that doesn't know how to
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: reach people on an emotional level. And, but also, but
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: to be fair, to be fair, Jesse Jackson was running
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: in the 80s. He was running against those types of
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: like almost technocratic candidates, right? And that's one of the
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: reasons that they lost spectacularly against Ronald Reagan, who was
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: very much not that, who actually was the sort of like,
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: how do you move people kind of figure on the right.
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: And so it is such an, to me, it's such
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: an important takeaway from Jesse Jackson's that some of it's
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: a skill, you can't really teach it. But selecting for
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: that in candidates, I think, can be really important because,
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: you know, if you if you have a candidate who
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: can speak to people, who can understand how to craft
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: an argument that addresses the practical day-to-day needs, economic needs, safety,
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: you know, education, people's futures, you can actually speak to
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: them on that level. That probably should be the price
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: to entry, and it's not really anymore. And, you know,
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, in this moment, you have to ask the question, okay,
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: there are probably some Democrats who do this, but the
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: Democratic Party doesn't know what to do with them. Maybe it's,
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: you know, and that's, they have to figure that out.
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: But the one thing I will say is that Jesse
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: Jackson had this base that was so energized. It was
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: a lot of young people. It was a lot of
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: disaffected voters. It was a lot of new voters. And
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: He brought them into the political process. And then the
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: party was kind of like, we don't really need them.
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: It just wasn't a priority to sort of bring those
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: people fully into the process, even while he lost the
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: primary into the general election. And I think that is
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: a sort of lesson, right? That it can be a mistake,
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: even if you don't endorse the sort of left-wing politics
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: of a certain candidate. What do you do with their people?
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: What do you do with their people? And the failure
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: to do anything with Jesse Jackson's people I think really
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: hurt Democrats.
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: We've had that problem over time.
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: But it's also like it's– the reason that he has
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: those people is not just because of his issue positions,
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: though that's a big part of it, but it's also
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: because of something unique that he had. And I think
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: that that's part of what we are missing. I mean,
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: just like you write about this, that he campaigned with
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: poor white people. Farmers. And went places where you would
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: not think that Jesse Jackson would go. And his rhetoric.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, I went back and read His 1984 speech
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: at the convention because that was always one of my
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: favorite speeches.
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: It's funny.
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: It made me go back to when I was first
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: in politics and I first loved speeches, I would go
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: to this website, AmericanRhetoric.com, and they rank the.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: 100 best speeches. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: That's a great resource.
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: And so I went back there last night because I
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: was looking at Jesse's 1984 speech again, and it's like
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: his speech, Mario Cuomo's speech at the convention, Lyndon Johnson's
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: We Shall Overcome speech. King, obviously. When you look at
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: those top 10 speeches, they are all speeches that are powerful,
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: telling a story, really just searing in a way. But also,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: Jesse Jackson, for all the, well, he's on the left
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: in the politics and maybe he's radical. He was constructing
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: a pretty persuasive argument and trying to reach people who
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: were not with him.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. And that's part of the misconception about his candidacy.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: was that he spent a lot of time in places
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: that Democrats don't go anymore. You know, he was at
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: Farm Aid with Willie Nelson talking to a sea of
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: white people about progressive politics.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: And this is like RFK's campaign, too. We used to
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: have candidates like that.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: He was with farmers between the two campaigns, between 84
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: and 88, with farmers whose farms were being foreclosed, rallying
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: with them. He was going down to the Deep South,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: back to Selma, And talking to the guy who, you know, 15,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: 20 years earlier had been on the bridge beating the
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: civil rights protesters. So he went places that I think
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: even today you don't see a lot of Democratic candidates
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: willing to go to, trying to persuade people who normally
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: wouldn't be inclined to talk to him and actually succeeding
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: in large part. And then those speeches, both the 84
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: candidates a convention speech and the 88 Convention speech are
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: very good speeches. They are arguably some of the best
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: ever to be delivered at a political convention. And they also,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: when you read them, you're like, oh yeah, he's talking
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: about hollowed out factory towns and steel workers who need
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: to get back to work and how we need to
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: stop being engaged in foreign wars and spend the money
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: on bridges and roads at home. And it's like, wait,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: who does that sound like?
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: I know, I know.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: And that's... I mean, that's not to say that Jesse
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: Jackson and Donald Trump have anything policy-wise in common, except
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: that they understand that you have to talk to people
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: about their actual lives in really concrete ways and paint
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: a picture for them of their existing life and then
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: the version of it that you're arguing you can change.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: And I think he really understood that well. And I
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: think Trump understands that really well. That's why, you know,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: it's been really hard, I think, for Democrats to respond
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: to Trump because I think he's kind of stolen some
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: of their messaging on some key issues. And figuring out
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: how to get that back is going to be part
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: of the task ahead.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: It's become such a cliche in politics to meet people
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: where they are, but I kind of want some Democratic
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: candidate to take that literally and launch their presidential campaign
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: by going to West Virginia, going to Mississippi, going to
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: these places that are going to have no electoral value
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: to the Democratic nominee. Yeah, Jesse Jackson was in West Virginia.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: He was in all those places. And don't set up
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: an event where it seems like it's all artificial and
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: you have your advance. Just go. Go. You know, we're
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: in a national environment. Someone's going to film it anyway.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: It's going to end up on social media. I mean,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: Trump did a little of this in 24 where we
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: were like, why is he going to Madison Square Garden?
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: Why is he going here? And part of it was
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: just the message that the place sends.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's exactly right. I mean, Jesse Jackson
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: launched his campaign in 88 in this small Iowa town
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: called Greenville. He had gone there like the year before.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: and was invited by locals and went to this church.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: And it was like, I think it was like Super
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: Bowl Sunday or something. And a thousand people showed up.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: And then so he really had a connection to this place.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: It was literally a small town, a tiny, tiny town.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: And there was nothing there. It was so, it's close
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: to Missouri. So then when he announces his campaign, all
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: these farmers from across the border come just to hear him.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: And it's this kind of like, they're in this old,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: this barn area, and they've got people on tractors and
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: It's that kind of vibe. And here he was, this
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: candidate that everybody was like, well, that's the black candidate.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: And he doesn't launch in Des Moines. He doesn't launch
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: in one of the bigger Iowa cities. He goes to
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: the country where there are really only white people. And
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: there are a lot of farmers and there are a
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: lot of people who otherwise have no reason to be
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: interested in his message and drew a big crowd and
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: launched his campaign there. And that was symbolic of not
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: just for the press, but for himself, because I think he,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: it was important to him that people saw that he
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: envisioned his campaign as encompassing more than just people who
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: looked like him. He really did believe that the message
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: that he had had resonance with those people too. And
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: they did more so than I think people recognize because
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: it just doesn't get remembered. I mean, in the book,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: there's this great photo that I am obsessed with because
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: it's like a Jesse Jackson, and he's standing, I think
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: he's on a tractor, and there's like a young boy,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: like a young white boy in the photo standing next
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: to him. But then all these men, farmers, with sacks
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: of brown paper bags on their heads with their eyes
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: cut out. And they had the sacks on their heads
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: because their farms were being foreclosed on. They were protesting
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: against that. And they were hiding from the people foreclosing
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: their farms. But they wanted to show up at this
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: Jesse Jackson rally. And I tell the story in the
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: book about how he did this rally with them. And
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: then they went to a church down the street. And
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: the farmers sat with the sacks on their heads in
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: the front row in the pews of the church listening
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: to Jesse Jackson give this like stem winder of a
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: speech in a church. And it's the story of this
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: candidate who was so different from everything else that was
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: going on. But I think part of it was the
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: media environment. There was no internet. So a lot of
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: that never really broke through. I mean, some of those stories.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: He probably would have done much better in an attention
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: environment like we have today.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, some of those stories were not even reported on.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: I talked to some people who were there, which is
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: how I was able to write about it. But in
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: the newspapers, people weren't writing articles about Jesse Jackson talking
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: to farmers all that often. And you imagine what would
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: have happened if they did.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: What a quintessential American scene, though. Just the church and the,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, just it's, well, a good version of an
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: American scene in my view.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the brown paper sacks could be a
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: lot of different things. It could be very nefarious. But
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: in that case, it was not. But it just tells
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: the story of also those people, they're just, They were
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: the type of people who their family and friends would
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: have not wanted to see them at a Jesse Jackson rally. Yeah.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: But they showed up anyway because he was the only
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: candidate talking to them.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: The only one. Yeah. Last question and I'll let you go.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: How did you find the time to write this book?
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: I think you were like a new mom when you
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: were starting to write it and you still had your
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: day job.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: I was pregnant with my one and only daughter when
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: I started it.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: And I just started anchoring my first show, Inside Politics,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: when I started this. So, I mean, bad timing. I
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: will concede. Yeah, I mean, it took a while. It
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: took a while. But I also think, you know, part
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: of it was in writing this book, I kept struggling
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: with how does the story end? Like what's the conclusion
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: about today's politics? And because every– Every four years, right,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: something massive happens in our politics. You know, in 2020,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: when I first started writing the book, Biden had won.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: Then in 2024, Biden loses.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: So, like, where are we going? And I think that's
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: still kind of unclear. But I think one thing that
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: is not unclear is that this fight for the working
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: class American is well underway. And that is the pitched
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: battle that both parties are in right now. And I
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: think that's what this book is about. How do you
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: reach those people? And if you are a Democrat, how
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: do you reach those people while also not abandoning the
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: coalition of voters that makes up the Democratic Party? And
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: I think that is where there are so many lessons
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: from Jesse Jackson. But I also just, I mean, as
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: a writer, sometimes you want to be able to say, well,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: this is what you do with this information. And I
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: think the answer is actually that It's TBD because we're
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: still in the middle of this very important consequential conversation
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: about the future of economic populism and political populism in
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: this country.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, and we have been for several decades. But this
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: is an important part of it, of that discussion. Abby,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining. Thanks for having me.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: The book is A Dream Deferred, Jesse Jackson and the
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: Fight for Black Political Power. It's fantastic. Everyone go pick
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: it up. Thanks.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:09:17
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