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“Make America 2016 Again?” · Pod Save America

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Later in the pod, Mother Jones' Ari Berman talks to
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Dan about the Supreme Court case over Trump's attempt to
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: rig the census in favor of Republicans. Before that, we'll
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: talk about how the president has responded to evidence that
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: he obstructed justice by obstructing justice even more. The threat
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: of foreign sabotage in 2020 and Joe Biden's entry into
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the Democratic primary. Also, be sure to check out this
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: week's episode of Pod Save the World, where Tommy talks
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: about the Trump administration's decision to reverse Obama's Cuba policy.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: And good news, Pod Save America is heading to Vegas
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: for the Life is Beautiful Festival, September 20th through September 22nd.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Tickets went live today. More info for that show and
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: for other touring dates at crooked.com slash events. And finally,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: we've got new Pod Save America merch. Go to store.crooked.com
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: to find our new Pod Save America mug and three
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: new tumblers, including an audience-requested design that says... It's not great, Dan.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: By popular demand.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Well done, crooked merch people.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: We're selling a Tumblr that says it's not great, Dan.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: And we also have some new Vote Save America t-shirts,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: so check it out. All right, let's get to the news.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: In the wake of what amounted to an impeachment referral
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: from special counsel Robert Mueller over the president's multiple attempts
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: to obstruct justice, Many Democrats, like Nancy Pelosi, have argued
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: that the House should first conduct a series of additional
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: investigations before making any decisions on impeachment. Well, here's how
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Trump has responded to that strategy over the last week. First,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: he refused to follow the law and make his tax
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: returns available to Congress. Second, he sued House Democrats to
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: prevent them from getting his financial records. And finally, he
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: announced that the White House will be fighting all the
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: subpoenas issued by Congress because he doesn't want any of
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: his staff testifying against about any of the many scandals
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and potential crimes committed by the president and his administration. So, Dan,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the president is once again placing himself above the law
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: and above an equal branch of government. What's his bet here?
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Does he think he's going to get away with this,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: or is it just that he thinks he'll get away
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: with this at least until 2020 in the election?
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Both, probably.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: I think he has a two-pronged strategy here, which, one,
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: you point out, which which is to run out the clock,
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: try to get as much distance as he can, make
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: these things work their way slowly through a court that
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: is tilted in his favor and hope that he can
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: get to the election, get past the election before having
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: to turn over all of these fairly incriminating documents or
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: have these incriminating witnesses speak in public. And the second
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: one is to fight, right? He, like he fights everything.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: It is good for his base to be seen as fighting.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: He is a, person who needs a grievous to get
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: up in the morning. And so this is like he
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: wants to muddy the waters. He's very good at this, right?
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: Which is to take everything, make it seem like a
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: giant fucking mess, and then try to cast blame on
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: both sides. So now if he is fighting with the Democrats,
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: that allows him to proclaim his exoneration, say he's innocent
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: and saying he is being persecuted by a group of
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: liberal socialist AOC replicants or whatever, however he wants to
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: describe it.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, demagogues need villains and they need to
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: play victim. And they need to then say that not
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: only are they victims, but all their supporters are victims.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: And we are fighting against all of the same enemies,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: all the people who don't like us. This has been
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Trump's message since 2016. And just because now he's the
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: guy in power... He doesn't want to give up on
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: the fact that he's still, you know, this victim being
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: attacked by the establishment. I also think he's there's a
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: little bit of a bet here that he's betting Democrats
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: won't do anything about it or can't do anything about it. Right.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's possible. I think he. Yeah, definitely possible.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: He thinks that we'll back off and that they can
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: the Democrats can be bullied again.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: By Trump.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: There's not a lot of history that shows that Nancy
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: Pelosi is someone who can be bullied, but whatever you
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: want to try, Trump.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, how is what Trump's doing different than how
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: other presidents have responded to congressional oversight, and how is
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: it the same? How did we respond to when the
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: House Republicans tried to conduct oversight and all these investigations
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: into Benghazi and whatnot?
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: Well, I think there are two analogous examples, right? There
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: is how Bill Clinton responded to independent counsel investigations against
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: him and then impeachment. And then there's how Obama in
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: the more natural course of business responded to Republican oversight
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: from a very zealous, overly zealous conspiracy theory spewing Republican
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: majority in the House. So in the Bill Clinton example,
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: Trump is sort of rerunning some of that play, right?
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: He's been doing this for two years, which is uh,
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: prosecute the prosecutor, uh, you know, turn this into a,
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: try to turn into a big political fight, fight everything.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Um, and, and he's using a message.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: You know, it's sort of buried underneath all the insanity
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: as a lot of Trump strategy is, but a message of,
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: I want to legislate, they want to investigate. And that
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: was a very powerful message for Bill Clinton. Trump is
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: not hat. The concept, the context is very different here.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: The investigation is very different here. The Clinton impeachment was around, um,
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: a personal conduct issue, not a professional conduct issue, or
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: at least that's how the Clinton team was portraying it.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: And so they maybe had a better argument. In the
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: Obama administration, Republicans wanted the White House staff to testify,
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: and we did not testify. Now, there are legitimate issues
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: of executive privilege that deal with Congress getting into the
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: president's decision-making process via his or her staff, right? That
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: is something that has been litigated in the courts many times,
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: and presidents do have some rights there. And we exercise
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: those rights at time. Now, what we didn't do was
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: deny everything. We had non-White House officials testify. We didn't
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: order them not to testify. We negotiated to try to
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: find compromises, to try to find the ground between a
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: partisan fishing expedition and Congress's legitimate rights of oversight. So
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: Maybe a White House official didn't testify, but they would
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: conduct an interview about a topic like Benghazi or Fast
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: and Furious, where even though the motivations leading some of
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: the Republican oversight was absurd, their right to do so
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: was not. And so, you know, we try to find
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: a compromise. They are just trying to have a fight.
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: And I think that's very different.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We also didn't have a special counsel who concluded
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: that Barack Obama had obstructed justice and tried to impede
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: an investigation into foreign sabotage, in addition to another, I
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: don't know, 10 or so federal investigations into Barack Obama's businesses,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: his inauguration, his transition, his administration, and a whole bunch
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: of other things. So that was one big difference as well.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, as a fundamental difference, Obama was not running a
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: low-rent criminal conspiracy out of the Oval Office, and Trump is.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: So the situations are at least different.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: In that level.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Wasn't a mob boss in charge of the government. That
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: was a slight difference. So what can Democrats do here
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: and what should they do? Is it time for the
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Democrats to be more aggressive? Because it does seem, at
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: least from my point of view, that Trump is basically
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: forcing their hand in terms of impeachment proceedings because Pelosi's
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: over there and a lot of Democrats have said, okay,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: let's just conduct a bunch of oversight investigations. Let's not
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: jump the gun on impeachment here. But he is then,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: in response, Trump is saying, well, I'm not going to
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: let you conduct these oversight investigations because I'm going to stonewall.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to make any of my people available
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: for testimony. I'm not going to give you the documents
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: that you need. So fuck you.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: Well, let me ask you this question. Do you think
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: the Democrats have been not aggressive enough? Put aside what's
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: happened since the Mueller report came out on Thursday. But
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: do you think to date on the oversight investigation stuff,
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: do you think they haven't been aggressive enough?
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: So I don't know if the word is aggressive because
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: they've obviously been moving forward on a number of fronts
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: in terms of investigations and a number of committees, right?
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: You've got judiciary, you've got, you know, all the different
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: committees are investigating what they should be investigating. I don't
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: know that there has been a cohesive, consistent message and
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: drumbeat coming from the Democrats so that, the American people
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: know exactly what they're investigating and why. It has seemed
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: a bit scattershot. And so, yeah, so I don't know.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, some of this was Democrats were waiting
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: for the Mueller report. Now the Mueller report is here.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: And I do have this feeling like, okay, what are
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: we doing? What's the plan?
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right. I think.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: In the defense of some of the Democrats who I
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: think are very good at this, like Jerry Nadler and
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: Elijah Cummings, is that the courts have shown that Congress
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: has to show that they have made legitimate attempts to
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: acquire the documents or get the witnesses before subpoenas and
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: contempt motions and those sorts of things start to flow.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: And so they've been doing that.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: Now, the two challenges that I think the Democrats face is, one,
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: I do think they are more afraid of a backlash
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: for overreach in their investigations of Trump's than a backlash
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: for underreach. And I think that should be inverted, because
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: not being aggressive enough really does a disservice to the
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: voters who turned out to overwhelmingly elect a check on
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: the chaos and corruption in Washington. And then the second
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: piece is, I don't think that everyone, particularly the Ways
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: and Means Committee, which has been tasked with trying to
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: get Trump's tax returns, has fully embraced what Trump's strategy is, which,
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: as we said, is to run out the clock. So
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: the tax returns in particular are going to work their
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: way through the courts, probably all the way to the
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: Supreme Court, and that's going to take time. And so
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: every day that you're like letting Steve Mnookin analyze the
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: legality of the request is a day more that it's
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: more clock.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: That Trump has burned.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: And so I think in that sense, we should shorten
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: the timelines, but we still have to, they still have
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: to do the work of trying to get this stuff
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: through legitimate means. Cause even if we all know that
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: Trump has bashed through all the norms, I'm not sure
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: the course of the law have adjusted for that new
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: reality in American politics.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I also think, Look, I can be
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: persuaded that, I know we've debated whether or not they
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: should begin impeachment proceedings. All of us have debated this
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: now quite a few times. I can be persuaded that
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Democrats should pursue a series of investigations on the way
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: to potential impeachment proceedings. But I do think that Democrats
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: need to be very clear about what the roadmap is
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: and exactly what they're doing and what the timeline is
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: and what happens at the end of this process. Because
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: right now, I think a lot of people watching what
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Democrats are doing, you know, could rightly assume that Democrats
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: are just trying to say, like, we don't really want
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: to impeach the president. We're too afraid of the backlash.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: So we're going to say we're doing all these investigations
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: and hopefully By the time we finish the investigations, impeachment
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: fervor will have died down and no one will bug
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: us about this and we can all just move on
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: to the election. Like, it does feel like that's happening. Now,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: I think Hillary Clinton wrote an op-ed yesterday in the
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Washington Post also suggesting that Democrats conduct a series of
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: investigations on the way to impeachment. But I thought she
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: made an interesting point, which is, you know, she was
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: obviously a part of the Watergate hearings when she was
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: a young staffer. And she said in Watergate, Democrats held
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: a series of investigations and hearings very publicly so that
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: there wasn't just a report that the American people were digesting,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: but that people could see on television, you know, just
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: what Richard Nixon had done because there was a like
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: a long line of witnesses and everything was on people's
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: televisions and stuff like that. And so if the purpose
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: of the next couple months is to basically make the
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Mueller report come to life on television for people so
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: that in the course of all these congressional hearings, the
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: American people can see exactly what Trump has done and
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: hear from the witnesses themselves and see the evidence, then great.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: But if this is just a stalling tactic by Democrats,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: then I think that's going to be very problematic. And
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: I think you're right that people who voted in 2018,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: and obviously they voted, you know, to protect their health
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: care more than anything. But people did vote for a
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: check on Trump. That was part of what people voted for.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: And if they see the Democrats just sort of like
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: move along and try to tell people, you know, don't
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: don't worry, we're taking care of it. But then they
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: don't actually do anything. I think that could be a problem.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: I think the question I will I promised myself I
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: would not reopen the media.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: The Great Impeachment Debate of 2019.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Podcasts, in the Slack channel, everything else.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: And I thought you, John and Tommy, had just a
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: really great conversation about this on Tuesday. I do think
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: there is this question that underlies whatever your strategy is
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: if you want to get to impeachment, which is, Do
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: you use an impeachment inquiry to build the political support
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: for impeaching Trump, or do you build the political support
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: for impeaching Trump and then decide if you should open
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: an impeachment inquiry?
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: That is sort of the two.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: I don't think anyone, with the possible exception of a
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: brief moment in Steny Hoyer's life, anyone is advocating that
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: we take the Mueller report.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Stick it in a drawer.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: And pass some message bills on job training and tax
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: cuts for companies that ship jobs overseas. It's sort of
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: these two choices, which is hearings in the context of
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: an impeachment inquiry or hearings potentially followed by an impeachment inquiry.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: And I think that is an open question.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: The only other thing I'd say about it is you
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: only open an impeachment inquiry if Democrats are united around
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: that question. And it does not appear to me that
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: they are yet united around that question. So Whatever process,
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: if you're going to get there, you've got to get
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: Democrats united. Otherwise, it's a shit show of epic proportions
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: that will undoubtedly benefit Trump if we're divided on it.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and what I'm trying to figure out is I
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: just don't know what kind of aha moments might happen
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: over the next couple months through these hearings that are
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: as big as the release of the Mueller report. so
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: that Democrats who are wavering or other people can say,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, now he deserves impeachment. I don't know how
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: you can build more support for impeachment based on any
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: specific revelation or moment beyond what we just saw in
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the Mueller report. That's the only thing that I keep
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: wondering about. So we'll see. We'll keep talking about it. Yeah,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: we'll keep talking about it. But here's the thing. Whether
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Democrats pursue more investigations or impeachment, no matter what, this
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: is essentially a political and communications battle. Who has the
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: more persuasive message, Trump or the Democrats? So what is
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Trump's message in this fight? We talked about this a
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: little bit. As you mentioned, he's saying, you know, we
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: should be legislating, not investigating that. And, you know, these
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: are all my enemies and they're coming after me. And
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: this whole thing was a witch hunt and we should
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: investigate them. That seems to be Trump's message. Is there
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: anything else Trump's trying to say here or get across?
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, He doesn't have enough Twitter followers. Lou Dobbs
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: is awesome.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's very focused.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: This is the problem with Trump always is there is
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: actually a good message in, like, I want to legislate,
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: they want to investigate, in addition to just the general
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: rhyming couplet of it. But he also is spending so
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: much time doing other extremist shit that he's not a
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: good messenger for that, right? It's not just that he's undisciplined,
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: that he can't deliver the message, it's that he is...
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: doing just dumb things all over the place, live tweeting
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: Fox News. So he's just not a good avatar for
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: the idea of focus on good government use of time.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: And so that is the problem. Theoretically, he has a
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: good message. He's just a bad messenger for it.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Right. I mean, because there's been no evidence over the
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: last couple of years that Trump has ever tried to
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: legislate anything or push any number of issues onto the agenda, right?
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, except for the caravan's coming, and the Democrats
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: are out to get me. Those have been Trump's two
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: main messages since he has taken office. The Democrats are
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: out to get me. This is a witch hunt. And
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: by the way, brown people are invading the country, and
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: they're going to kill you in your sleep. That's the
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: entirety of Trump's message. Every once in a while, there's,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: I'm going to take away your health care. I'm going
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: to give you a tax cut. There's a couple trade
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: things going on. There's North Korea. I'm best friends with
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Kim Jong-un. So there's a couple other messages there, but
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: those are the primary messages. When Clinton was being investigated,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Clinton had a pretty, you know, tight message, which was like,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm trying to protect Medicare and Medicaid and
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: education funding and the environment. And also the economy is
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: going well. So why are you investigating with Obama when
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: the Republicans are investigating? He's saying we're just coming out
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: of this great recession. We're trying to bring jobs back.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to work hard to bring the economy back. So, like,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: these other presidents have had good messages to counter Obama.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: the investigations, Trump doesn't necessarily have that going for him.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: He could, but he just hasn't tried for the last
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: couple of years.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: Clinton had an identity that was built up since the
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: 92 campaign as someone that you may not trust, you
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: may not like personally, and as we learned in his presidency,
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: is capable of some pretty disgusting conduct. But People believed–
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Republicans and Democrats, independents believed that he worked his ass
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: off for the American people. He really finally honed that identity.
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: So he was the perfect avatar for this is the guy.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: He'll work for you until the last dog dies. He
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: was pushing on an open-door message-wise. Obama was someone that
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: the public, if you were to kind of saw out
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: the far, far right, but even– mainstream Republicans, independents, and
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: Democrats all believe Obama was a person of moral rectitude
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: and good ethics. And so it was not when Republicans
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: were trying to spin these crazy theories about Benghazi and
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: Fast and Furious and all these other things that Obama
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: was somehow corrupt, the American people didn't believe it. So
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: he had an advantage. Trump's problem is American people think
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: he's incredibly distracted. He doesn't really focus on his job
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: and is deeply corrupt. So he is not the right
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: person for this message. The problem is He is a messenger,
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: and the Democrats don't have a messenger. They have 1,000
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: people talking about this, none of whom people know and
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: none of whom have a Trump's got the world's biggest megaphone,
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: and they have no real way to get their message
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: out other than a couple of dayside cable hits and 10,000
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: Twitter followers.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: So whether it's investigations or impeachment, what should our message be?
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: What should Democrats' message be? And who exactly are we
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: trying to persuade here? What's the audience?
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: I think our.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: This is really hard because we are– we do know
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: that public opinion on Russia and obstruction of justice has
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: been pretty steady from the beginning. The Mueller report didn't
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: really change a lot. It didn't help Trump. The bar
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: exoneration bullshit letter didn't help Trump. Maybe his numbers have
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: dropped a point or two since the report came out,
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: but it's all kind of statistical noise.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: It's been pretty steady.
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: And so it's not clear that additional focus on that
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: specific thing is going to move numbers dramatically.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: There's just not a lot of evidence of that.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: So I think– but we do know that Trump– that corruption,
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: including but not exclusive to Russia and obstruction of justice,
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: is a powerful message. So how do you wrap this
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: into a larger message about Trump putting himself– in his
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: own political and financial interests above the interests of the
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: American people. That is sort of the message. I think
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: Democrats should scream, what are you trying to hide? What
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: are you hiding? Why won't you be honest with the
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: American people? And then you say, the reason he won't
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: tell us the truth, the reason he is stonewalling here
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: is because he doesn't want you to know that he
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: is putting money in his own pocket.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: He's helping his businesses. He's putting himself before you.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: I think it has to be it has to ladder
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: up to a larger message of is simply about.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: This is this is not a trial.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: We are.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: This is not law and order. You're not trying to
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: convict Trump in the court of public opinion. You were
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: trying to tell a story about him. And that story
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: has to speak to something beyond an issue that has
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: already polarized people into their camps and they haven't really
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: moved from.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, he the guy ran promising to put
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: America first. All he's ever done is put Trump first.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: He betrayed the country to win an election. He betrayed
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: the country. to enrich himself with a big deal in
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Russia that he tried to hide from the American people.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: And then he refused to defend the country from, uh,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: foreign sabotage and, um, then tried to cover it up.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And if it happens again, he's still not going to
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: defend the country from foreign sabotage. He's, he's trying to
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: cover it up again and all because he's worried about
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: his own election, his own political legitimacy and, and his
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: financial gains. That's all he cares about. And I think,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: you know, that message is a drumbeat. Like people think
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: that about Trump anyway, or at least think something in
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the realm of that. They think he's corrupt. They think
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: he cares only about himself. They don't think he really
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: cares about them. They think he's a liar. They think
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: he's dishonest. This is all, you know, what people believe
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: about him. But I think the Democrats need to pound
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: on that message from now until the election. Yeah, you
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: need a flip side of that message for sure. Democrats
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: need to talk about what they're for, what they're going
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: to do for people. Absolutely huge part of the message.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: But the story that we tell about Trump has to
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: be that he puts himself first. He doesn't put America
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: first to me. That to me is the most salient message.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. And the challenge in it is people
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: know who Trump is. What Democrats have to do is
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: show why who Trump is is bad for them, right?
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: Trump comes with a bunch of chaos and corruption, but
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: how does that affect their lives? What are the consequences
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: to their lives of Trump.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Being who Trump is?
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: There are no available voters to Democrats who think Trump
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: is honest, forthright, ethical, etc.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: They don't.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: They mainly think he's a– they definitely think he's a liar.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: They think he's fairly absurd. But they think that that
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: doesn't affect their lives and that that is better than
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: whoever the corrupt, more traditional politician is that is the
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: potential alternative. And that is the sort of– the key
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: part of the story is not who Trump is but
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: how who Trump is affects your life. And that's how
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: you're going to get back some of those– you will
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: convince some people to come off the sidelines, the– you know,
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: the four plus million Obama voters who set out 2016,
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: how you're going to convince the voters who switched from
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: Obama to Trump. It's how you're going to keep the
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: voters who switched from Romney to.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Clinton in our fold.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: Those are the three target universes, and you've got to
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: make sure that message works with all of them.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look, going back to 2016, there was a cohort
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: of voters who told exit pollsters on election day, I
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: do not approve of Trump. I do not like Trump,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: but I voted for him. There's a cohort of voters
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: who said they didn't like Donald Trump and they didn't
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: like Hillary Clinton. And for voters who had unfavorable ratings
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: of both Trump and Clinton, Trump won those voters by,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know, seven to 10 points, something like that.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: And so it's like, why would these people who said
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: they don't, I mean, there's a bunch of people who
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: just like Trump and they like his racism and they
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: like his xenophobia and they like it all, right? That
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: was like a big part of his base. There's some
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: people said, I don't like Trump, but I'm voting for
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: him anyway. Because they don't like Hillary either. So why
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: did he win those voters? Because they thought, well, he's
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: going to blow up the system, right? Or he's going
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: to bring change to Washington. Or he's a fucking businessman.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: He's going to create jobs. Whatever bullshit people believed. But
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: you're right. What they thought is, even though I don't
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: like him, maybe he's going to make my life a
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: little better. And what Democrats have to say is, no,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: he fucking lied to you. He didn't make your life
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: better at all. He did what he's always done for
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: the last 70-something years of his miserable life. And he
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: looked out for himself, and he made sure that he
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: was okay, and he didn't give a shit about anyone else.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: That's what happened. And it's interesting that you can see
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: people from different sides of the ideological spectrum in the
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party making this argument. Bernie Sanders, of all people,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: is out there almost every day saying, Trump lied to you,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Trump broke his promise, he said he was going to
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: improve your life, and he didn't. And then you can
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: see people like Joe Biden with that message as well
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: and more moderate and centrist candidates. So it is an
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: interesting like it can unify people across the Democratic Party
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: that Trump basically broke his promise to people. Even if
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: even if you didn't like Trump and thought he was
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: going to fix things, he didn't fix anything.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: I always wonder and I'd like to see research on
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: this about whether the broken promise message is persuasive.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: Because people know he's a liar. So are they shocked
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: by it? And so is it more important that he
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: broke the promise or is it like, is that the
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: salient fact that he promised me X and.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: He didn't do X or is it what X is?
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: Is it just simply the mere fact that he, this
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: is less, it's less about the promises and more about
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: the populism, which is he said he was going to, uh,
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: take on wall street, protect Medicare, protect Medicaid, protect, uh,
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: you know, not give tax cuts.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: To rich people.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: And under Trump, you know, you can make this very
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: succinct argument that corporate profits are up, corporate taxes are down,
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: your wages are flat, your healthcare is up, the cost
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: of college is up, the cost of food is up.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Are you better off?
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: And you can make, like, is that the better argument
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: than Trump said he would do this, Trump said he
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: would do this, he didn't do those things, right?
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: And I think that, like, I don't know the answer
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: to that.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: I don't know if anyone knows the answer to that,
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: but it's going to be an interesting argument strategic calculus
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: going forward? Because with a normal politician, the broken promises
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: thing is incredibly important.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: It was the death of George H.W.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: Bush for saying he was going to, when he said,
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: read my lips, no new taxes, and then he gave
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: people new taxes. But is Trump unique in the sense
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: that the dishonesty is priced into the baseline?
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Although even with that George H.W. Bush example, the
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: broken promise was a promise that gets to a certain
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: economic populism, right? He said he wasn't going to raise
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: your taxes, and he did. I think it's a combination
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: of both, right? Like, I think if you just do
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: a ton of broken promises and they don't all have
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: an economic theme to them, it doesn't really work as well.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Though I will say that even for the immigration hawks
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: out there or the xenophobes out there, Trump promised that
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: he would fix immigration. Didn't do that. Trump promised he'd
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: build a wall. Didn't do that either. Now, a whole
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: bunch of people in Trump's base are going to say,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: I don't really care that he didn't build the wall.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Because I know that he acts like a xenophobe, and
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: that's really all I wanted in a president. So you're
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: certainly going to have a bunch of people like that.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: And there's some people who are just happy that Trump
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: gave the middle finger to Washington and to elites and
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: to the establishment, even if it didn't produce any real results,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: which it didn't. But again, those people were not really
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: trying to reach as much. We're trying to reach both
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: trying to get our base out to vote, trying to
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: get non-voters out to vote. And then trying to get
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: a bunch of people who, you know, some of the
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: swing voters that we captured in 2018 out to vote again.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: So we'll see. All right, on to the next cheery topic.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: The New York Times published a story this week that
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had wanted to make
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: election security a top priority issue. but was warned by
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: the White House chief of staff never to bring it
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: up around Trump because it would make him angry. The
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: piece said, quote, still equated any public discussion of malign
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: As a result, Ms. Nielsen eventually gave up on her
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: effort to organize a White House meeting of cabinet secretaries
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: to coordinate a strategy to protect next year's elections. Also
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: this week, Jared Kushner said he thinks the Mueller investigation
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than, quote,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: a couple of Facebook ads. Dan, what do you think?
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: If you're the Russians, do you even bother to change
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: up your strategy in 2020? Or do you just pretty
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: much double down on what worked so well in 2016,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: knowing that Trump's not going to do a damn thing
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: about it?
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: So that New York Times story caused me to nearly
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: spontaneously combust.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: For two reasons. One, just generally as a country, what
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: the fuck are we doing? The fact that we can't
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: even organize a single White House meeting around Trump A
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: looming threat to the country in actual attack on democracy
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: is bananas. Like that should scare the living shit out
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: of people because the meeting is the easy part. The
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: hard part is executing the plan that comes out of
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: the meeting. And so we should be very worried and
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: not just about Russia, but hurricane preparedness, natural disaster, the
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: fucking measles outbreak that's happening in America from our anti-vaxxer
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: commander in chief who's been tweeting about this stuff for
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: a long time. There's a lot of shit happening and
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: not a lot of competent people on deck to do
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: these things.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: And also, by the way, I would just say that
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: for that reason, this is why Democrats should be talking
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: about the Mueller report too, right? Because I do think
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: if all we do is say, Trump's committed a bunch
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: of crimes, he's a criminal, he's corrupt, whatever, people could say, well,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: are they petty crimes? What kind of crimes are they?
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: But what Trump has done is to impede an investigation
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: into foreign sabotage of our democracy that may happen again.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: It does get to a national security argument that Trump
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: is not defending the country. He is not willing to
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: keep you safe because he cares more about his own
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: political standing. I do think that's a powerful message, as
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: you just demonstrated.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: The second reason that story drove me insane, which was
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: there is this world in which Trump actually benefits from
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: the low expectations that the media puts on him. The
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: way that story is written is that Trump can't have
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: the meeting because he is too much of a toddler
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: to have a conversation about Russian interference because it goes
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: to his insecurity or his anger at the Mueller investigation.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: And it puts the motivation in the most benign way
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: possible for him. It doesn't speak highly of him as
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: a human being or his qualifications to be president, but
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: it also doesn't even contemplate The other possibility, which is
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: just as likely or more likely, which is that he
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: wants Russian interference in this election because he knows it
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: will benefit him. He is someone with a long documented
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: history of cheating. We know for a fact he cheated
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: to win this election, both in the illegal payments of
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: Stormy Daniels to prevent that story from coming out, the
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: efforts to collect, quote unquote, dirt on Hillary Clinton from
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: the Russians, asking the Russians to hack her emails. Two,
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: he cheats it on his taxes, we know. We know
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: in the new book that he cheats at golf, which
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: is the least fucking surprising thing ever. And so why
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: is the assumption not that he is openly inviting Russian
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: interference because he thinks he needs it to win what
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: is a very close election? And so we should spend
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: as much time thinking about that as just, oh, there
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: goes Trump again, forgot to take his nap, and he's
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: grumpy so we can't talk about an attack on America.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he's... publicly asked Russia to help him
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: win an election before when he asked them to get
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Hillary's emails back in July of 2016. So this is
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: nothing new. He has invited foreign sabotage of our elections.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: His TV lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, just the other day said,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: what's wrong with getting information from the Russians to help
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: you win an election? I mean, it's just, it's all
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: there in plain sight. It's all there in plain sight.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: And look, what we know from The Mueller report and
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: from reports, you know, over the last month is not only,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, to Jared's fucking stupid point, this
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: wasn't a couple of Facebook ads either. They hacked into
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Democrats' email systems. They stole emails. They stole documents. They
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: tried to then publish those documents through WikiLeaks. And they
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: targeted voting systems in all 50 states. They actually targeted
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: the voting systems themselves.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: And.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: if we think that they're not going to do that
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: this time around, we're sort of crazy. Because, like, why wouldn't,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: what incentive would the Russians have not to pursue this again?
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: You know, Mueller said they did it, but no one
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: in the U.S. government has really done anything to stop them,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: punish them. We've sort of dragged our feet on sanctions.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: There have been a few sanctions here and there, but
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration has dragged their feet on sanctions on
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: really punishing Russia. Trump is out there saying, a million times,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: including when he stood next to Vladimir Putin, that the
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: election sabotage didn't really happen. And as you said, we
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: know that Trump really wants to have help winning the election,
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: no matter who he gets it from, whether it's illegal,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: not illegal, cheating, he just doesn't care. He wants the
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: help to win the election. He'll take it from anywhere
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: and anyone.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: I used to.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: Believe, based on our experience working in the government, when
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: I talk to people, you know, Friends and family who
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: haven't worked in government who just would be panicked about
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: the state of our ability to protect America against terrorism
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: or crime or hurricanes or whatever else because Trump is
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: an idiot and he is staffed by idiots. And so
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: this sort of view is like, is the country totally screwed?
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: And I would say on the– and I would argue
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: that on a certain set of things– And we know this,
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: that there are career professionals, bureaucrats, patriots who would be
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: working on these things. And what Trump tweeted or whether
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: he was going on Fox News or not or Stephen
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Miller's presence in the White House were pretty irrelevant to
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: that fact. The government was kind of going on beneath
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: the chaos. And I actually no longer believe that. I
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: believe that to be true in 2017. In 2019, I'm
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: much more worried about it because the government is a
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: fucking ghost town. The White House has not hired people
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: to replace the people who've left. Half the cabinet is
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: acting officials. It's basically being run by a temp agency.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: We don't have a secretary of defense. We don't have
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: a secretary of Homeland Security.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: So all up and down. And that has an impact, right?
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: The competent people are leaving because they're being pushed out.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: It's empty, right?
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: We don't even have people to do the jobs. And
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: that is worrisome. And it allows sort of the nefarious
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: motivations around something like potential Russian interference in the 2020
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: election to like trickle down and have a real impact.
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: We are, I don't, we, there is no sort of
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: quote unquote patriotic deep state protecting us from Trump's incompetence anymore.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: Sorry if that's scary to people, but.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: No, it should be scary. And the question is what
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: can Democrats do about it? One thing Democrats have decided
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: to do is pledge that they will not take advantage
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: of any hacked or illegally obtained information for political or
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: campaign purposes and something that obviously the Trump campaign will
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: not commit to. Dan, was this the right move for
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Democratic campaigns and the DNC and Democratic super PACs and
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: all the rest to take this pledge? Or are we
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: putting ourselves at a disadvantage here, considering that the Trump
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: campaign is welcoming foreign interference in the election? And, by
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: the way, reporters and journalists are surely going to print this.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: information about hacked and stolen emails again. They haven't made
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: any indication that they're going to change their ways from
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: 2016 when they all had running blogs about various WikiLeaks dumps.
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: I'm really torn on this question. I think for 100% certainty,
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: Democrats should not use any stolen or hacked materials against
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: other Democrats in the primary.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: For some, if the Russians somehow were to penetrate Joe
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: Biden or Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders' email
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: systems and release those emails, Democrats should pledge not to
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: use that against other Democrats.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Now, in some ways, maybe this is.
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: A hypothetical situation that will never come to pass because
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: we didn't face this in 2016. It wasn't like there
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: were a bunch of hacked Trump emails that the Clinton
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: campaign or the DNC decided not to use because– even
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: though the RNC and some of the other Republican party
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: entities were reportedly hacked, those emails somehow didn't make it
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: through the WikiLeaks editing process. And we never saw those,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: but were they to come like, let's say we're in
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: a general election and it's democratic nominee X against Trump.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: And somehow a, someone has hacked Trump's tax returns or
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: other stuff. Should a Democrat not use that? I'm not
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: so sure about that. I, I, I mean, I don't
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: feel good about it, but this world of unilateral disarmament
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: against Trump seems– I'm not sure that's wise.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: It's not great. I don't feel great about it.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: But I don't know that we're not going to get–
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: as Tommy said, recounting his high school football glory days,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: he's fucking sick of moral victories.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Tommy's glory days. I'm not sure whether it's right or wrong.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: I just don't know if it's feasible. There is a
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: debate about whether it's very wrong, but what I'm wondering
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: about is whether it's feasible, because the way this plays
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: out in the general election is not that someone hacks
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Trump's tax returns and then privately gives it to the
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Democratic nominee and says, OK, do with this what you will.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: What happens is they get hacked. It's out in the public.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Every single media outlet does a story on Trump's hacked
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: tax returns. And what is the Democratic nominee going to do?
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to comment on those stories about Trump's
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: leaked tax returns because I had a pledge not to
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: use stolen information to our advantage. Like, that's not going
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: to happen. right? When everyone in the country and the
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: world is talking about it because it's been made public.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: So I don't know if it's a feasible pledge for
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the general election because of the way hacked information is
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: disseminated through today's media environment. Yes.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: So I think you're exactly right that this is probably
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: a dumb discussion because the real problem here is not
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: the Trump campaign, it's not the Democrats, it's the media, right?
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: So the one scenario is it's sort of the equivalent
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: of the Trump Tower meeting. So all of a sudden,
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: the research director of the Democratic nominee opens their email
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: and it's Trump's tax returns.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: So what do you do there?
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: That's a different question than, does someone hack Trump's tax
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: returns and give them to the New York Times? The
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: New York Times reports on them. And then obviously in
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: that world, you're not going to pretend like they don't exist.
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: That would be an absurd proposition. I think A Democratic
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: campaign that receives stolen materials has to call the FBI
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: like that. That is the only viable right thing to do.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: And I say that as someone who worked on the
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: Gore campaign when the Gore campaign received stolen debate materials
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: from George W.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Bush's debate prepped. And the first thing that our campaign
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: did was call the FBI.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: You mean you didn't write back and say, if it's
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: what I think this is, I love it, especially in
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: the summer.
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: Well, my 24-year-old self would have done that, but I wasn't.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Someone higher up on the food chain received the debate
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: prep materials.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Okay. Let's turn to 2020. After months of speculation, Vice
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: President Joe Biden has made it official. He is once
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: again running for president. In a video released this morning,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Biden skipped the usual talk of policy or his record
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: or his biography and instead talked about Trump's reaction to
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017. He said
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: in the video, quote, We are in the battle for
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: the soul of this nation. Biden would be 78 the
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: day he takes office. He served in the Senate for
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: decades before joining Barack Obama's presidential ticket in 2008. In
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: the months leading up to his announcement, Biden's long record
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: has come under close scrutiny, particularly on criminal justice reform
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: and abortion. But he comes into the race with significant
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: name recognition, and he's consistently performed at the top of
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: polls of Democratic primary voters thus far. His advisers are
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: telling reporters that their strategy is to just let Joe
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: be Joe. Dan, what did you think of his video
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: and his overall plan to win the nomination?
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, I guess I would give the caveat first that,
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: like Joe Biden, I am from Delaware and Delaware is
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: a small place. I have seen Joe Biden, known Joe Biden,
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: been around Joe Biden my entire life. I have very
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: vivid memories of meeting him for the first time when
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: I was, I think in first grade or second grade, uh,
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: at the flower market, which is sort of like our
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: state fair in Wilmington, Delaware. Um, so I'm not like I,
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: and we worked with him in the white house. He's been,
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: you know, up to 20, up to 2017. And this
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: speaks to his age and law in long.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Time in Washington.
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: Up through 2017, he had been either my senator or
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: my vice president my entire life. And as has been
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: well reported, I'm not that young. So I can't pretend
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: to be completely objective here.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: But I thought the video was good.
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, very traditional, right? Like Biden seems to be
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: making an argument that is a different version of Trump's, right?
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Normally in a lot of campaigns, you have a.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: Argument for nostalgia on one side and an argument for
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: progress on the other. Trump, make America great again is
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: an argument for a older, more conservative, whiter version of America.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: And Trump was able to win with that.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden seems to be arguing for a different form
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: of nostalgia. I saw someone say this on Twitter, an
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: argument to make America 2016 again. Dave Weigel quoted uh
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: an organizer saying that it's unusual to have two people
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: making nostalgic arguments just for different versions.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: Of the past um.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: So you know it's hard to say how it'll go
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: i think you know we'll have a conversation shortly about
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: his strengths and weaknesses but i thought as an announcement
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: video it if he is making a nostalgia argument of
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: sorts it worked very well as that because it you
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: when i was watching it and this is partially i
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: think related to sort of my like in all of
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: our long-term relationship with Joe Biden in our political lives,
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: is it felt like a, something that happened before the
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: time of Trump. Like if you didn't see the videos
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: of the Nazis and the words of Trump, it's sort of,
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: you have this Joe Biden making a case, quoting, you know,
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: Thomas Jefferson or whatever else, and talking in these sort
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: of platitudes about the soul of America felt just like
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: a different version of politics, or maybe a, a, you know,
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: a politician and a version of politics that existed in
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: a pre-Trump television show or movie.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, look, I will make the same stipulation.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: I have not known Joe Biden as long as you have.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: But ever since he joined the campaign in 08 and
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: then worked in the White House with us, I have
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: come to know him well. I think he is a
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: good man. I don't think he's a perfect person. I
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: think he's made plenty of mistakes. But he is someone
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: who has shown the capacity to learn from his mistakes.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: He has shown the capacity to grow, to change. And
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: I think he's just a fundamentally decent and good human being.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: And so that's what I think about Joe Biden. I
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: think the question is, and the question revolves around basically
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: him claiming that Trump is some sort of aberration, right?
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: And I don't think that is a settled question among voters.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: I think for a lot of liberals, especially those of
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: us who pay close attention to politics, We don't believe
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Trump is an aberration. We believe that he is a symptom,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: not the cause. We have said this before. And that
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party has become rotten to its core and
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: has sort of radicalized over the last 10, 15, 20 years.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: And the question is, has Joe Biden not seen that
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: radicalization of the Republican Party? Or does he still believe
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: that the Republican Party today is the Republican Party that
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: he worked with back when he was a 29-year-old senator,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: 30-year-old senator in the early 70s, which is a Republican
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: Party where you could disagree on big issues, but still
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: come together and forge compromise. And there's probably a lot
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: of people out there, a lot of older Democrats, some
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Republicans who don't like Trump, some independents who don't like Trump,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: who do believe that Trump is some kind of an aberration.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: And I think Biden's video basically makes that argument too
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: by using Charlottesville. It's like, why did he decide to
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: focus the whole video on Charlottesville? Because Charlottesville is the
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: most extreme example of this isn't just a Republican president
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: we disagree with. This is someone who said there's very
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: fine people on both sides when Nazis and white supremacists
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: march through the streets of Charlottesville. And that is while
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: you may have disagreed fundamentally with George W. Bush and
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: thought he was the worst president in history, you know,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: mostly because he took us to war in the wrong country,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: you know, even he would not have called neo-Nazis and
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: white supremacists very fine people and other Republican presidents wouldn't either.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump has, and so he's different. That's Joe Biden's argument, basically.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: And the question is, you know, do enough people buy
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: that argument or do they think, no, Trump is just
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: the latest example of the Republican Party's radicalization and we
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: need big sweeping progressive change to fix this country. And
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: I think that's the big question here.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that there is an open question about
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: the political appeal of Trump as an aberration. And Trump
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: as an aberration is important if you're making a nostalgia-based
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: argument for your candidacy, which is if we get rid
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: of Trump and you put me in, we will go
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: back to this politics as usual that you didn't love,
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: but was better, right? Where Democrats and Republicans could, we
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: would disagree, but get along. There'd be less yelling, less tweeting.
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: And frankly, you'd probably pay a lot less attention to politics,
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: which is probably very appealing to a lot of people.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: Maybe not people who have podcasts, but generally appealing.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: But there may be a question about the political appeal
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: of that argument, but there is no question about Right.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: To everything that happened since the day Barack Obama stepped
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: onto the national scene. And this like, like win or lose,
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: if we beat Trump, we still have a giant fucking
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: problem in this country because the Republican party is the
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: party of Trump. It was the party of Trump before
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: Trump showed up. He just put his fucking name on it,
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: like a third tier building in New York. And so
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: we like, it may work politically as a governing strategy.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: If you walk in there thinking you're going to be
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: able to cut deals with Mitch McConnell because of your
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: old relationships, that to me is a very naive approach.
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: And Joe Biden's not the only person who's taken that approach.
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: There's a handful of Democrats who are yearning for this
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: politics of the past. But I think Democrats have to
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: recognize that. that politics is behind us and that it's
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: going to take real aggressive action to change it. And that,
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: I think that that is, that is going to be
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: an important aspect of the Biden candidacy.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: That's good. That'll be worth discussing.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I, I, people ask me all the time, like, well,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: what are you guys going to do? What's, what's going
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: to happen if we, uh, you get rid of Trump
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: in 2020 and then everything's back to normal, you know?
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: And it's like, no, if we get rid of Trump
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: in 2020, um, First of all, Trump's not going away.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: He's going to be an ex-president who's going to be
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: on Twitter all the time. He's going to be booked
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: on every fucking cable show and news show.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: Unless he's in jail, John.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: Unless he's in jail, right, yeah. So he'll still be around,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: but Trumpism will still be around, too, because that is
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party now. The Republican Party is not going
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: to go back to some wonderful time when there were
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: a bunch of moderates in the party and stuff like that.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: That's gone. That is gone for good. Fox News is
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: still there. you know, the Breitbarts of the world are
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: still there, the right-wing lunatics of the world are still there,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: and a lot of them are populating the elected ranks
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: of the Republican Party. In fact, most of the elected
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: ranks of the Republican Party. And Democrats have to understand
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: that and reckon with it, right? Like, that's not to
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: say we have to be at total war all the time,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: or that total war is something we should aspire to,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: but we should at least be realistic about the party
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: that we're dealing with. That's what we're asking for here,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: is just a realism about the party that we're dealing
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: with here. So, is Biden immediately the front runner? Yes. Yeah.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, just some fat, you know, he's out polling
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders, who is the next closest candidate to him
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: by about eight points nationally and seven to eight points
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: in Iowa, according to the average polls. Uh, he's got
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: the highest favorability ratings in the field and he has
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: relatively low, pretty low unfavorability ratings. Um, So, yeah, that's,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: you know, we had this conversation a couple weeks ago
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: about how Bernie Sanders was the frontrunner, and he was
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: because Biden hadn't officially announced yet. But now that Biden announces,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, we'll see what happens to the polls over
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: the next couple weeks, but I think it's pretty fair
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: to claim that he's a frontrunner right now.
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's worth discussing his sort of strengths
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: and weaknesses as a candidate.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, right now his numbers are held up
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: by three things. Name ID, a perception that he is
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: the most electable Democrat with the obvious and consistent caveat
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: that no one knows what electability is.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: And those who think.
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: They do are often operating on gender and racial stereotypes
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: that lead some people to believe somehow for some reason
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: a white man is the most electable person, which we
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: know from 2008, 2012 and the 2018 midterm that that
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: is not the case. Not to mention Hillary Clinton winning
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: the popular vote in 2016. And the third thing is
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: a close association with Barack Obama, who has a 95%
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: approval rating among Democrats.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: Which is leading.
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: Biden to receive north of 40% of the African-American vote
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: in polling. And that is both important in terms of
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: propping up his numbers, but when you are trying to
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: the Democratic nomination, the African-American votes are actually, because of
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: the way congressional districts are drawn, more valuable than any
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: other group because you have the ability to net the
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: most delegates from majority African-American districts if you're polling strongly
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: with that group. Now, the question is, are those sustainable
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: over time? Name ID is, by its very nature, a
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: diminishing resource. As more people get name ID, then your
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: advantage for that goes down. Electability is he is going–
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: how he runs– right now, he has seen his most
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: electable candidate based on what people know of him and
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: his association with two winning national campaigns. But now he's
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: a candidate, right? Now he's got to show his electability
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: every day. If his campaign in 2016 looks at all
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: like his campaigns in 2008 and 1988, then that perception
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: of electability could erode very quickly. And the third question
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: is there's going to be a battle over just who
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: is the heir to the Obama legacy? Is it someone who,
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: is it someone like Biden who can be seen as
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: a throwback to that legacy or can it be seen
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: as someone like Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris or Cory
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: Booker or Beto O'Rourke or Mayor Pete who can be
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: seen as the next step, right? The person who's going
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: to take the baton from Obama and sort of finish
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: that work, right? Sort of the next generation of young
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: progressive leadership in this country. And that Those are all
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: open questions. Now, the challenges are very long voting record
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: with a lot of troubling votes, particularly with the view
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: of hindsight, but even– many of them even troubling at
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: the time. And we'd be remiss to not mention that
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: he was most recently involved in a controversy with a
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: lot of criticism for being inappropriate– inappropriate touching, getting inappropriately
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: close to women that– and that– certainly is, you know,
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: he's had to deal with that and how he dealt
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: with that didn't indicate, I think, a lot of, I
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: don't know what the right word is, but it didn't
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: indicate a real understanding of the gravity of that situation.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: And if that is not dealt with, that is also
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: a huge problem in this election.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think all that is right. For people who
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: do not want Joe Biden to be the party's nominee,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: of which there are, you know, quite a few in
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: the activist and base community and probably other people as well,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: One thing I would caution against is making the argument
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: that Joe Biden is out of step or out of
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: touch with where the Democratic Party is right now, because
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know that that's true. I mean, he you know,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: roughly half the voters in the Democratic primary describe themselves
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: as moderate or conservative. Another thing to keep in mind,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: 56 percent of Democratic voters in 2018 in these last
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: midterms were over 50, while just 29 percent were below 40.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: So you do have quite a big cohort in this
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: party of older Democrats who are more moderate or conservative
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: who won't necessarily see Joe Biden's troublesome record as a
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: deal breaker, partly because these are people who may have
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: evolved on all of these positions themselves, and partly because
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: when they think about Joe Biden and like, as you said,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: he's got near universal name recognition. Almost everyone knows who
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden is. When they think of Joe Biden, they
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: have a strong correlation to Barack Obama. And they think, okay,
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: this is, this, this is a guy who was vice
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: president to the most popular democratic president in my lifetime.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: And he was a good progressive vice president. He, you know,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: jumped the gun, came out for gay marriage, even before
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: Obama did, because he let it slip on meet the press, right? Like,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: These are the memories that a lot of voters and
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: not just older voters, by the way, but like you said,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: African-American voters, young voters, all kinds of voters. These are
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: the memories that people have of Joe Biden. So then
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: to say, oh, but look at this record in the 70s,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: 80s and 90s, that's way more conservative than it should be,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: which is true to say, look at that record is
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: going to cause some cognitive dissonance with a lot of voters. Now,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: can that change over time? If one or more candidates
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: makes a sustained argument against Joe Biden for the policies
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: that he has supported in the past in his record, yeah, possibly.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: But that is not where we start this race. It's
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: just not.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: I think reporters and pundits and political operatives probably spend
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: more time thinking about older positions and not enough time
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: thinking about current positions.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: And I think voters sort of think about the opposite, right?
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: I totally agree.
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: Biden's past votes, everyone's past votes, whether it's Bernie's votes
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: on guns, Kamala Harris's support on policies on criminal justice,
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: or Beto O'Rourke's votes in the House, everyone's past positions
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: are relevant. But voters put a lot more value on
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: where you stand today, and they give people a wide
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: berth for evolution if they can explain why they did
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: what they did and why they would do something differently now.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: And so.
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: What's going to be much more relevant to Biden's success
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: or failure in the race is not what he did
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: in 1975 or 1993, but what he says he's going
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: to do in January of 2021.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: And that is real because we don't really know.
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: Like his policy agenda is a blank slate. Like we've
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: assigned sort of this moderate, you know, we the I
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: don't know, people with blue check marks and podcasts and
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: cable TV, cable TV jobs or whatever, you know, assigned
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: him this sort of moderate lane. But what is his
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: position on health care going to be? Is he going
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: to be for a public option? Is he going to
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: be for Medicare for All or simply improving the ACA?
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: Where is he going to be? What's his taxation plan?
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: Where is he going to be on regulation of Wall Street?
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: All of those things are going to be more relevant
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: than what he did before, although the stuff he did
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: before is, I'm not saying it's irrelevant, but people often
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: are more looking forward than looking back when it comes
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: to what a politician has said and done.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, I think
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: that if I was running a campaign, a primary campaign
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: against Joe Biden, I would look at the policies proposing
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: now and try to draw differences and not necessarily spend
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: too much time on the record. The exception is where he...
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: his past record, what it tells you about the policies
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: he's proposing now. So for example, in 2008, in that primary,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton's vote for the Iraq war was a very
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: big issue in that election because Barack Obama was against it.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't just that Obama kept harping on the vote.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: First of all, the vote wasn't that far in the past.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: It was, it had just been, you know, a couple
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: of years ago and we were still involved in the war, right?
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: But Barack Obama talked about that vote to say, this
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: is the kind of commander in chief she'll be now.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: She's more likely to get us into war or to
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: take us to war because of this vote and because
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: of her past foreign policy positions. That was the argument
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: that he made. So if Joe Biden comes out with
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: economic policies that are not sufficiently progressive, for example, then saying, oh,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: and by the way, he supported this bankruptcy bill in
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: 2005 that made it harder for people to declare bankruptcy,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: working families to declare bankruptcy, and now he refuses to
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: go far enough on X economic issue, then I think
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: that's a more salient argument and that might be more
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: effective than just pointing to things he said in the
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: early 70s and positions he took in the early 70s
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: that he has since completely changed.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: I thought a model for the way to handle this
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: is how Kamala Harris responded to your question on the
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: podcast a few weeks ago about the much maligned and
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: rightfully maligned truancy policy that she had as Syracuse District Attorney.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: And to say, I was wrong, here's why I wouldn't
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: do it again, is how you have to do it.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: And I think if you can explain that well, you'll
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: get a pass. if, but it's hard. Biden is not
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: someone who spent a lot of his time in life apologizing, right?
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: He's a very prideful individual. Um, he has been, so,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: you know, he, his explanations of things like the, um,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: the inappropriate touching from the Lucy that Lucy Flores and
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: others have talked about the Anita, Anita Hill hearing have
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: not been, uh, I would say full of remorse, right.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: Or full of explanation. Um, and so that, that will
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: be a challenge. It's, it is hard for, you know,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: I think it's hard for him to do that, but
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: he's going to have to if he wants to win
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: this nomination.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I do think the most important thing here
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: is where does he come down on the issues of
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: the day, right? Like we know, you know, in 2016,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: he came out for a $ 15 minimum wage. He's come
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: out for a free college for four years for public universities.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: But like you said, we still don't know exactly where
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: he stands on healthcare, a whole bunch of other issues. So, um,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: you know, the policy pronouncements he makes in the coming weeks,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: I think will be very important to what happens in
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: this race. Last question on this. How much should Democrats
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: worry about two men in their late 70s, Joe Biden
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: and Bernie Sanders, potentially battling it out for the nomination
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: since they are the, you know, number one, number two
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: candidates in polling right now?
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: I worry about it. I worry in two ways. I
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: worry about.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: Two 70-year-old white men battling for the Democratic nomination. And
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: although that's ultimately the choice of the voters, not the activists.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: And I worry about how young people and people of
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: color and other people around this country who are most
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: affected by the policies the government makes feels about a
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: general election between two white men in their 70s battling
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: it out. You know, I think that that you know,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: I think one of the challenges we had in 2016
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: was despite Hillary Clinton's, uh, history making role as the first, uh,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: female nominee of a, of a major party, because of
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: all of the baggage that came from years of investigations
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: and caricatures and unfair coverage of Hillary Clinton for a
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: lot of people, that election felt removed from people's lives, right?
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: It didn't feel, it felt more like the past and
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: the future in a, in a, 2020 general election that
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: feels more like the past than the future is worrisome. Now,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: to Bernie Sanders' credit in this, he has a demonstrated
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: record of exciting young people. And maybe his age has
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: not been relevant, has not been something that.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: Has been prohibited from exciting young people. And so if
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: he were the.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: Nominee, then there's a chance he could replicate that on
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: the national scale. This goes to the– our friend David
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: Oxelrod always says that voters look for the remedy, not
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: the replica. And so when you look at the Democratic field,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: you have lots of– what Axe means by that is
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: they usually want the opposite. If they're going to unseat
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: a president or replace a term-limited incumbent president, they usually
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: want the opposite. Thoughtful Obama was the opposite of impetuous,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: intellectually uncurious Bush who got us into Iraq. Trump– was
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: the opposite of Obama. Who is the candidate who is
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: the most opposite of Trump in this race? And, you know,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: some people have argued, I think I actually even saw,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: you know, Axelrod's quote used to describe this as, you know,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: that's part of the appeal of Mayor Pete. That's part
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: of the appeal of an Elizabeth Warren or a Kamala Harris.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: It feels very different. It feels more like the future
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: than the past. And I think that's just, as we
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: try to figure out what the fuck electability means, the future,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: you know, who represents an exciting future for America is
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: an interesting question.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: And, as to who is best.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: To be Trump. Part of the problem with the remedy
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: replica saying with regard to Trump is Trump has so
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: many uniquely awful qualities, like he is one of our
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: worst people, as Lovett always says, that there's a ton
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: of people who are the opposite of Trump. It is
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: not clear in this field who is the most opposite
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: of Donald Trump. There are a number of candidates that
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: can lay claim to being opposite of Trump. So it's
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: sort of a tougher thing to figure out. My thoughts
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: on the age factor here, partly because, as you said,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders has dominated with younger voters, did in 2016,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: and so far in polls is today. It's hard to
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: say that for a lot of those younger voters who
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: are supporting Bernie, that he represents the past or something
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: like that, because they don't believe that. I actually am
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: thinking more of like what it means to serve as president, um,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: in your late seventies, because I do know that in 2008,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: there was a very big issue made of John McCain's age,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: partly by us, partly by the media. Um, and he
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: was in his early seventies. And I think the job
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: of president is very difficult and it is trying and
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: it wears you down and it's tiring. And imagining two
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: men in their late seventies, um, serving in that role,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: you know, it's tough. And perhaps they're both up for
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: it and they're both very energetic. And you can see,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: you know, Bernie's been running all around the country and
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden ran all around the country in 2018. So,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: you know, perhaps they're fine, but it does worry you
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: that people in there, you know, it's a very, very
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: difficult job being president. And these, you know, both Bernie
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: and Biden would be the oldest presidents by far.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very fair point.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: So that's, that's one thing, but you know, they could
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: surprise us and just be as energetic as the young folks. So, okay.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: When we come back, we will have Dan's interview with
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: mother Jones's Ari Berman.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: We are now pleased to be joined by Ari Berman.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: Ari is a senior reporter at mother Jones covering voting rights.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: He's the author of give us the ballot, the modern
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: struggle for voting rights in America.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: Ari, thanks for joining us. Hey, Dan. Thank you for
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: having me.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: I want to start with some basic table setting. You
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: have been, as much as anyone, covering the question around
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: the Trump administration adding a question about citizenship to the census.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: Can you explain how that question came.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: To be and why it is so unusual? Well, you're right, Dan.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: On the face of it, it seems like a really
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: basic question. It's a nine-word question that basically asks, are
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: you a citizen of the United States? And I think
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 4: for a lot of people, that doesn't seem like a
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: big deal. But the Trump administration added this question in
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: March of 2018. And the problem is that the census
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: is supposed to count everyone in America, not just every citizen,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: not just everyone who's here legally, everyone who is here,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: whether they are legal or not. It is a just
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 4: and perfect enumeration of the population, which is what the
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: founders intended. And the problem with this question about U.S.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: citizenship is that immigrant communities, particularly non-citizens, particularly Latinos, are
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: going to be very uncomfortable giving the Trump administration their
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: citizenship information, giving everything that we've seen with the Trump
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: administration's immigration policies and the incredible climate of fear that
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 4: now exists in this country. And so if immigrant communities,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: if Latinos do not respond to the census, what's going
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 4: to happen is that the areas where they live, places
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: like California where you live, places like New York where
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 4: I live, we are going to have less economic resources
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 4: devoted to us. We're going to have less political representation.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 4: We are going to have fewer House seats. We are
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 4: going to have fewer electoral college votes because the big
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: picture here is that the census does so much important
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: stuff in our country. The census is how we allocate
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: $ 880 billion in federal funding. It's how we draw voting districts.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 4: It's how we decide how many students seats states get
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 4: in the House, how many electoral college votes they get.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: So if the census is rigged, if the census is manipulated,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: then basically all of American democracy is rigged as a result.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 4: Can you sort of just, not to get too basic
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: about it, explain how the census fits into the allocation
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: of political power in America, just so our listeners understand
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: the stakes here? The census is really the basis for
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 4: American political power. It is the survey that then determines
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: how political power is allocated. So every 10 years, we
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: do a census of the entire country to count every
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: person who is here. And once we figure that out,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: then we decide, okay, this state gained X number of people,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: so they should get X number of House seats. This
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: is how their state legislative map should look. This is
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 4: the number of votes they get in the electoral college.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: So if we have a census that doesn't count immigrants
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: in large numbers, then states with a lot of immigrants,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: places like New York and California, and some Republican states
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: like Texas that are fast-growing, that have a lot of immigrants,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: they are going to have less political power than places
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: that are whiter, more rural, and have fewer immigrants. So
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: that's why the census is such a big deal. It
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 4: really is the baseline for how we allocate political power
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: in America.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: And just to be super specific, that means fewer House
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: seats and fewer electoral votes in places that generally elect Democrats, correct?
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, by and large.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: I mean, there are some places with a lot of immigrants,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 4: like Texas, that are controlled by Republicans or they are
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: trending democratically. But what's happening here is that the country
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: is becoming more democratic, more urban, and more progressive. And
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: the census, if we have an accurate census done in 2020,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 4: it's going to show that the is more diverse than ever,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: that we are heading towards a minority-majority future, meaning that
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 4: white people are going closer and closer to becoming the
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 4: minority in this country. What the Trump administration is trying
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: to do in the census is to halt the impact
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: of that demographic change. So instead of resources being allocated
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 4: to more diverse, more progressive, more urban places, instead resources
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 4: will be redistributed to more rural, more conservative, wider places
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: for the next decade. And if the census is rigged,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: we won't be able to get any do-overs. It's not
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 4: like we do another census in 2021 or 2022. We
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: do it in April of 2020, and that's it. And
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 4: then we have to live with the consequences for the
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 4: next decade.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: And so this issue has been working its way through
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: the courts. There was a hearing in the Supreme Court
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: this week. I believe you were there. What has the
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: legal arguments been about, and what are the prospects for
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: the courts stopping this issue?
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: I was there in the Supreme Court. And the thing
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 4: to remember is that three different federal courts have already
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: struck down this question. So there's been lawsuits filed against
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: it by New York and 17 other states, by California,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 4: and by Maryland and some other places. And so this
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 4: has already gone through pretty extensive litigation in the lower courts.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: And the federal courts in all three cases have been
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: withering in their assessment of why Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: added this question and basically called him a liar and
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 4: without exactly saying so. Because Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: who oversees the Census Bureau, he added this question about
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: citizenship in March of 2018 and claimed it was needed for, quote,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: better enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. And this is
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: really a laughable argument because the Trump administration hasn't filed
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: a single lawsuit to enforce the Voting Rights Act. They
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 4: have been actively hostile to voting rights in just about
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 4: every area The census hasn't asked about U.S. citizenship since 1950.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: And of course, the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: So we hadn't needed a citizenship question on the census
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: to enforce the Voting Rights Act for more than 50 years.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: And basically what the federal court said was that this
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: was pretextual, that Ross added this question for other reasons.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: And the other reasons included trying to diminish political power
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 4: for areas with lots of immigrants, possibly trying to draw
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: districts to exclude immigrants from counting altogether. that Ross, when
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 4: he made this decision, consulted with people like Steve Bannon,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: people like Chris Kobach, the former Secretary of State of Kansas,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 4: who are among the most anti-immigrant people in the country,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: the architect of the Trump administration's white nativist strategy. So
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 4: this had nothing to do with the Voting Rights Act.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: But the interesting thing, Dan, is when this came before
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: the Supreme Court, the conservative justices seemed to buy this argument,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 4: that John Roberts in particular said, well, don't we need
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: this question to enforce the Voting Rights Act? What's wrong
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: with that? And this was incredibly ironic because it was Roberts,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: of course, who wrote the majority opinion in 2013 gutting.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: The Voting Rights Act.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: So the same people that had gutted the Voting Rights
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 4: Act are now turning around and saying, we need this
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 4: question to enforce the Voting Rights Act, which is just
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 4: a complete farce if you look at it.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: And let's say.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: The doomsday scenario comes true and the Supreme Court rules
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: in the Trump's administration Is there like there is no recourse?
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: We're just fucked for a decade. Is that I mean,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: it sounds like a depressing question, but people are wondering.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think I think people are going to
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: try to figure out what the recourse is. I think
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: that people are going to try to convince people to
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: still respond to the census to make sure that the
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: citizenship information, if it's given, is confidential so that immigrants
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: aren't afraid of answering this question, that people may respond
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 4: to the census, but actually skip this question. And I
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: think it's very possible that if we get a bad count,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: that if it's obvious in some way or another that
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: immigrants were not counted in large numbers, I could then
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: see groups challenging the validity of the census itself. And
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: that would be a whole nother battleground. But of course,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: that would have to happen after April 2020. And what
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: I'm really concerned about is even without the citizenship question,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: the census is going to take place in April of 2020,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: right in the middle of the presidential campaign. And can
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 4: you imagine the impact If Donald Trump tweets that day
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: that the census begins, that we are making the census
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: great again, I mean, that would have probably a catastrophic
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: impact on people responding to the census. And so this
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: issue really needs to become depoliticized. This, at the end
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 4: of the day, is a survey. It's a survey of
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: who we are as a country. And the more politicized
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: it becomes, the less likely people are going to respond
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: to it.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: Who is running the census within the Trump administration? Is
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: that someone who gives you confidence?
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 4: Well, that's another problem is that for a long time,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: we didn't have a leader of the Census Bureau. There
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: was an acting leader. The longtime leader of the Census
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 4: Bureau who started under Obama was a guy who was
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: very well respected. He stepped down for about a year.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 4: There was no leader. Now there is a new guy
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: by the name of Stephen Dillingham, who is fine. I
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: don't think he's a career bureaucrat. People don't have any
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: problems with him. But the feeling is that Wilbur Ross
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 4: is running this show. And that he's running the show
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 4: with people like Chris Kobach whispering in his ear, saying
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 4: we need to do, and people like Stephen Miller most
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 4: likely whispering in his ear, and saying we need to
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 4: do everything to try to make it so that white
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: political power is protected in the census. And that immigrants
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 4: and the areas where they live have less clout than
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 4: they should have. And that this is our grand strategy
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 4: to try to halt the impact of demographic change. to
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 4: make sure that even after Trump leaves office, that white
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 4: political power is protected and Republican political power is protected
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 4: to the next decade. So really, I think it's Wilbur
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: Ross and then the anti-immigration hardliners inside and outside the
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: administration that are running the show. And that's what makes
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 4: me so nervous.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: Do you know of.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: Any nonprofits or other groups out there who intend to
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: work with the immigrant community or others to try to
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: maximize census response?
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: A lot of groups are working on this. And in fact,
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: there is a big coalition of philanthropic and nonprofit groups
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: working to get out of the count, whether it's groups
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 4: like MALDEF working on the Latino community or groups like
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 4: Asian Americans Advancing Justice working in the Asian American community
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 4: or the NAACP working in the African American community. Groups
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 4: like the Ford Foundation are funding this. There is a
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 4: big coalition to try to get the count out. But
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 4: it's going to be very difficult if the citizenship question
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 4: is on the census. I was in the Central Valley
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 4: of California, Dan. where there are a lot of Latino immigrants,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 4: a lot of undocumented immigrants, reporting on a story about
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 4: the census in the spring of 2018. And I met
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: a lot of undocumented immigrants, and I asked them, would
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 4: you respond to the census if it had a question
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: about U.S.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: Citizenship? And they all told me no.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: There wasn't a single person that I knew that was
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 4: undocumented that said that they would respond to that question.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 4: And it's going to be very, very difficult to convince
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: people that are incredibly afraid of the Trump administration's immigration
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 4: policies that feel like they could be deported at any minute,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 4: to then turn around and say, you should trust the
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: Trump administration with your confidential information. That is going to
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 4: be a very, very difficult argument, no matter how many
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: resources are devoted to it to be able to make.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: You've talked about the census question in the context of
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: a larger Republican strategy about curtailing the political power of
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: a growing, progressive, diversifying majority in this country.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: What else around the country.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: Are you seeing that gives you great concern about the
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: fate of our democracy and the fate of people's right
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: to vote?
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 4: Well, the rigging of the census has to be seen
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: as part of a broader strategy to try to dampen
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 4: the voices of an increasingly diverse, increasingly non-white emerging majority.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 4: And so you can put the census alongside things like
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: the extreme gerrymandering we've seen over the past decade in
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: places like Wisconsin and North Carolina to try to entrench
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: white Republicans in power for the past decade, which has
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 4: been remarkably successful. You can put it alongside efforts to
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 4: make it harder to vote, which had a big impact
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: in the 2016 election in places like Wisconsin. are having
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 4: a big impact now. Republicans have not taken their foot
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 4: off the gas pedal when it comes to disenfranchising voters.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: We're seeing efforts right now in Florida, in Texas, in
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: other really important states to try to make it harder
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: for people of color to be able to vote. And
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: so if you just had this question about citizenship and
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: nothing else was going on, it might be possible to
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 4: justify it. But when you look at it as part
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 4: of the attack on voting rights, as part of the
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 4: extreme gerrymandering, as part of the attack to undercut the
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 4: power of Democratic election officials, which we're seeing across the country,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 4: both in lame duck sessions and now. You see this
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 4: as part of a broader whole, where basically Republicans are
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 4: becoming the minority in this country, but they're trying to
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 4: hold on to power as long as possible. And they
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 4: are manipulating the institutions of democracy to be able to
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 4: carry out that grand plan.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: You know, we always.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: Talk here on Pod Save America about the best and
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: perhaps only solution to these efforts beyond putting our faith
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: in an increasingly conservative court, is electing Democrats at the
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: state and local level. Obviously, 2018 was a very good
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: election for Democrats, not just in taking the House, but governorships,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: state legislatures. Have you seen anything from the newly elected
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: Democratic leadership of some of these states that suggests that
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 3: we are going on offense on voting rights?
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. And 2018 was a really.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 4: Key hinge moment in which Democrats and I think the
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 4: public more broadly went on offense on voting rights. You
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 4: had eight states that passed ballot initiatives to make it
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 4: easier to vote, to put in place policies like automatic registration,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 4: like election day registration, to draw districts in a nonpartisan way.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 4: This passed not only in liberal places, but in conservative
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 4: states like Utah and Missouri, they did this as well.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: Now we have to be very vigilant about people trying
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 4: to roll back these initiatives, which they're doing in a
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 4: bunch of places. But the fact that these initiatives passed
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 4: so overwhelmingly was really important. And then when Democrats have
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 4: gotten majorities in places like Washington State, for example, they've
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 4: been very aggressive in expanding voting rights. New York, where
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 4: I live, is a great example. We have had some
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 4: of the worst voting laws in the country in New
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: York for decades. And then when Democrats got a majority
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 4: in the state legislature for the first time in what
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 4: felt like a million years, they went on offense.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: They did things like early voting, like online voting.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 4: Registration that are really, really, really important that a bunch
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 4: of places have had for decades, but that New York
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 4: didn't have. So I think it's really, really important that
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: when Democrats and progressives get power at the state and
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 4: local level, they do things to expand democracy, which is
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 4: not only good for their party, but is good for
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 4: democracy writ large. My one concern here, Dan, I imagine
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 4: you share this concern, is that so much attention is
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 4: going to the presidential race right now that I think
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 4: it's in some ways eclipsing the importance of these state.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: And local races.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 4: And I hope people realize that in 2020, we're not
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 4: just electing a president, we are electing, in particular, governors
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 4: and state legislators that are going to then draw the
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 4: redistricting maps for the next decade. And it's really, really
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 4: important we don't lose sight of that.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: All right, that's such a great point. And I guess
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 3: my last question for you before I let you go is,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: do you think the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are talking
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: enough about voting rights and the health of our democracy?
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: Would you like to see more from them?
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: I would like to see more from them, and I'd
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 4: like to see it be targeted. So, I mean, I
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 4: think it's great to have a hypothetical discussion about whether
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 4: prisoners can vote. But right now, for example, there are
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 4: critical elections in places like Virginia in 2019 that's going
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 4: to determine who draws redistricting maps for the next decade.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 4: I would like to see the Democrats running for president
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 4: campaign for down-ballot offices. talk about the importance of voting
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: rights at the local level, and not just have a
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 4: hypothetical conversation about what we should do, but a practical
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 4: discussion and say, hey, listen, if you elect a Democratic
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 4: legislature in Virginia in 2019, they already have a Democratic governor,
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: we can then draw redistricting maps that are more fair
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 4: for the next decade. And that is really, really critical.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 4: And I think some Democrats have talked a little bit
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 4: about this, but I would like this to be a
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 4: central issue of the campaign, that democracy is on the line,
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: not just in the presidency, but democracy is on the
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 4: line in the states in 2020. And the Democratic presidential
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 4: candidates have to highlight that and draw attention to it
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 4: so that people don't forget.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 3: Ari, thank you so much for joining us. And we
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: hope to talk to you again soon.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Dan.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Ari Berman for joining us today. Everyone have
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Bye, everyone.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: Thank you.