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“Not my default.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: On today's pod, Mitch McConnell decides that he won't plunge
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the nation into a catastrophic recession for at least two
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: more months. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Sean Patrick Maloney
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: joins to talk about the party's midterm strategy. And we
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: bring you a brand new segment where Dan and I
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: rate bad takes on a scale of one to four
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: politicos in a game we're calling the take appreciators. Brought
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: to you by our own Elijah Cohn, who's very excited
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: to moderate this game with us in a bit. But first,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Keep It is celebrating its 200th episode this week. 200
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: episodes without ever inviting me on. You can listen to
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: the latest episode with Ira Lewis and guest host Leslie Grossman.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: New episodes of Keep It drop every Wednesday. Also, be
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: sure to check out the latest episode of 544 Days.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Crooked's newest series about what it took to free Washington
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Post journalist Jason Rezaian from an Iranian prison hosted by
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Jason himself. The latest episode is about all the people
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: who joined the Free Jason movement from Muhammad Ali to
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Anthony Bourdain. Listen and follow for free only on Spotify.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Can I say something about the keep it thing for
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: one sec?
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sure.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: I feel like Ira missed a huge opportunity to not
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: celebrate the two on this episode by having Emily on.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, I just rub it in your face.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Honestly, I think they tried that for the 100th episode.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: They get really creative in figuring out ways to piss
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: me off and also keep me off the show, which is,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: you know, I tip my hat to them for that.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: But I said something on Twitter and then I realized
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Ira couldn't respond because he is, I think this is
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the second time he's been banned.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: What did he get banned for this time?
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know what happened.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: We don't actually, you know, we shouldn't even discuss it here.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's not even bring it up. All right, let's
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: get to the news. I can't think of any dumber
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: fights with bigger consequences in Congress than Again, lifting the
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: debt ceiling doesn't cost any money. It doesn't add any debt.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: It merely allows the government to pay the bills that
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Congress has already racked up. But if Congress doesn't lift
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the debt ceiling, the United States government would default on
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: its debt, causing a global economic meltdown. For weeks, Senate
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Republicans have been filibustering Democrats' attempt to lift the debt ceiling.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: But with just two weeks to go until default, Mitch
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: McConnell made an offer on Wednesday to drop the filibuster
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: and let Democrats raise the debt ceiling, but only until
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: December 3rd, which also happens to be the day the
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: government runs out of money again. And of course, Schumer
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: accepted the deal today. They announced that this deal is
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: going to go through. Democrats are saying that McConnell blinked
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: and are calling this a victory. What do you think, Dan?
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: I think we learned a very important piece of information
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: this week. What's that? Mitch McConnell has eyelids.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Just otherwise, just sort of an undead soul staring and
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: a Grim Reaper just sort of staring into your eyes
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: kind of thing.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: My favorite relatively unfunny joke is when people say on Twitter,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: how does Mitch McConnell sleep at night? I always say
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: he sleeps during the day hanging upside down, but.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: That's not funny. That's right.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he 100% blinked. And to the credit of Senate Democrats,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: I think we can talk about why. It's temporary relief.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: But everyone said, every Capitol Hill reporter who loves to
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: just write Mitch McConnell's talking points in the form of articles,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: mostly held in Politico, but not just Politico, said he
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: would never blink. And he 100% blinked.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: I I'll argue the other side just because why not?
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Because you love Mitch.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Team Mitch.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: Cocaine Mitch.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: It's clearly look, it is clear. I'll give you the
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: benefits of the blink. Right. So we get two more
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: months in those two more months that we get until
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: the government potentially defaults. Democrats get to hopefully finish negotiations
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: over Build Back Better. Pass that. Pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Pass everything without. the threat of default or an actual default,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: even worse, hanging over them. So in that sense, Democrats
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: are quite happy that they get to do this for
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: two more months. But aren't we just in the same
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: exact place in another two months? And like, doesn't McConnell,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, is he going to blink then? What would
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: make him blink then in two more months?
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: The first blink's the hardest, John. I mean, yes, like
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: this is, Crisis deferred, not crisis averted, 100%. Which is
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: basically we've gone from a huge fear that the global
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: economy will collapse before Halloween to huge fear that the
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: economy will collapse before Christmas. That is all we've achieved here.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: But I think that buried in this is a real
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: admission of weakness from McConnell. And this whole time, no one...
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: pretends to be strong to hide weakness better than McConnell.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: And I'm not saying McConnell is weak in the sense
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: that if we just give enough money to Amy McGrath again,
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: we'll defeat him in 2026, or he's going to be
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: deposed by Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz. He benefits from
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: the fact that the senators on his far right flank
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: have never had a single friend in their life, so
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: they're not likely to persuade a majority of their colleagues
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: to ditch him. But he is weak because the most
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: influential member of his party hates him. hates him, wants
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: to depose him, attacks him in statements that we only
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: see when certain reporters tweet them out. The senators who
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: hope to run for president know that they strengthen their
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: hand by doing so by bucking McConnell. And McConnell is
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: incredibly unpopular. And not unpopular in the way most congressional
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: leaders are, where it's like they're liked by their party,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: but disliked by independents and the other party. Mitch McConnell's
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: approval rating in the most recent Politico morning consult poll
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: is seven points underwater with Trump 2020 voters. He has
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: no juice in this situation. And that is why he
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: pushed Democrats to budget reconciliation, because every path that does
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: include budget reconciliation of Democrats doing it without him ends
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: up with him looking really weak and further inflaming a
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: base that is trying to defeat his candidates in 2022.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Do you understand this reconciliation thing? Because it's one thing
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: I didn't mention in the intro because it is quite complicated.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: But like, why don't Democrats want to lift the debt
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: ceiling on their own through reconciliation? And why do Republicans
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: want them to so badly?
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Well, there is the, I'm not saying these are good
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: reasons on the other side, to be very clear. But
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: the main reason is that if you deal with the
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: debt ceiling through regular order, you can suspend it to
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: a date. You can say we're going to suspend dealing
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: with this until January 1st, 2023, or January 3rd, 2087, right?
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: If you do it through budget reconciliation, because of the
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: very stupid rules of budget reconciliation, you can only lift
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: it by a certain dollar amount. Democrats fear that by
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: lifting it to a certain dollar amount, it is opening
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: them up to additional attack ads. Mitch McConnell is telling
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: reporters or his aides or Winking and nodding at reporters.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: That is the brilliance of his plan, is he is
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: going to make Democrats take this vote so they can
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: run ads against Mark Kelly, Raphael Warnock, Maggie Hassan, whoever else.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: That is what is happening. The reason I think Mitch
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: McConnell really wants it, because that's a stupid fucking reason.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: It's so stupid. I just have to. It is this.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: It's the stupidest thing. It's one of the stupidest things
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I've ever heard. And we've had a lot of stupid
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: things on this show that we've had to talk about
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: for the last several years. But the idea that, OK,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Republicans already are going to run ads against Democrats that
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: they all voted for and proposed trillions of dollars of
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: spending that are going to add to the debt, even
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: though that's a lie. They're not going to because it's
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: all paid for. But they're going to say that.
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Um, then even if we lifted the debt ceiling without
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: a dollar amount and just lifted it, they'll say Democrats
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: allowed themselves to spend more money again, a lie, but
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: they're going to run the ad anyway. What the fuck
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: is the difference if they can put a dollar amount
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: on it when they already have trillions of dollars of
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: spending that they're going to run ads on? I wouldn't
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: be afraid of it. I wouldn't be excited about it
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: if I was Republicans. I wouldn't be afraid of it
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: if I was Democrats. I think both sides thinking about
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the number that you lift the debt ceiling to is
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: the stupidest fucking I just what is going on?
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: There is an old saying. And when I say it's
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: an old saying, I'm saying it is something that I
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: started saying 10 years ago and no one has picked
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: up since then. But the only people who believe Republican
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: talking points are Democratic members of Congress. So that– I
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: mean that is what is going on here. And it
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: is like– it makes no sense. But just because it
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: doesn't make sense doesn't mean the Democrats don't believe it.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: But the reason McConnell wants to do it, which is
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: very– I want to explain how this can work. So–
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: If the Democrats refuse to do it through budget reconciliation,
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: we have three options. Default, that seems not good for anyone.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Probably worse for Democrats, but not necessarily good for Republicans either.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Option two is the Republicans agree to Schumer's request, which
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: is Schumer saying, I don't want any of your votes.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Not one of you has to vote for this. Just
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: waive the fill and let us, all 50 Democrats vote
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: for it. They've already told me they're going to do it.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: You guys can all vote no. You can run your
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: ad saying you voted no, whatever. The problem for McConnell
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: is any single senator can block that unanimous consent request.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: And he does not have the juice to keep Josh Hawley,
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Ted Cruz ran Paul in line to a seat to that.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: So the other option is for 10 Republican senators to
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: cross party lines, theoretically buck McConnell and make him look weak,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: further inflame Trump and the MAGA base and make them
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: angry at the Senate Republicans. So he doesn't want to
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: do one, he can't do two, and three makes him
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: look bad. So his only option is to tell Democrats,
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: You go do it all on your own. All my
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: people can vote for it. None of my people can
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: stop you. Go do it.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Here's where it's challenging for Democrats. When McConnell and the
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Republicans said Democrats should do it alone through reconciliation, Democrats
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: not only said, no, we're not going to do that
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: because we're afraid of your very scary attack ad about this.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: They also said, look, we don't have time. It's two weeks.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: We're going to default. Reconciliation is a very long process.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: It's drawn out. There's these fucking voteramas. you know, we
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: have to take all these votes. We don't know that
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: we're going to have the time to do this. Now
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: McConnell's saying, I'm giving you two months. You can no
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: longer use the excuse that you don't have time to
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: lift the debt ceiling through reconciliation on your own. You
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: can absolutely do that in two months. And by the way,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: that's what Joe Manchin wants you to do. You need
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: his vote. And he doesn't want to get rid of
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the filibuster, he told me, to let you just vote
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: to lift the debt ceiling on your own. So Now
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: reporters are going to say, why won't Democrats do it?
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: The reconciliation they have two months.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Well, there's even one more giant complication there as well,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: which is theoretically in those two months, Democrats are going
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: to pass a budget reconciliation deal.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Which they could put a debt ceiling increase in.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: This is where I go back to like, I don't
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: know why this was a big win for anyone. I
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: know that it bought us time to negotiate BBB. Oh,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: I can't believe I just said that. Negotiate, build that better.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: I think we have to say jobs and families plan.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: The jobs and families plan?
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: I know that that goes against our wall.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: We're looking at the time right here.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: We've been trying to do this, but if the New
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: York Times is calling it the social welfare bill in
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: its headlines, it's turned out they're not going to adopt
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: the slogan on the bumper sticker to use in their stories.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: We need something else.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: I said that it should have been called the fucking
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: economic plan all along, which is something that reporters would
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: actually print, an economic plan instead of some fancy title. Anyway,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: but I digress. But, yeah, no, look, I get that
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: we get the extra time to negotiate the bill without default.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: That's good. We've saved off default. McConnell did clearly blink
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: in this scenario. I just one of the good arguments
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: that we had is that we don't have time to
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: do it. Now we have the time. And so I'm
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: a little concerned about how that plays out. So, you know,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: as we said, Manchin told reporters on Wednesday that. He
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: was still against changing the filibuster at all, even to
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: avoid default, even after Joe Biden, who's always been against
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: reforming the filibuster and maybe the entire rest of the
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Democratic caucus, except for possibly Sinema, said, yeah, we're ready
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: to get rid of the filibuster to avoid default. You know,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Manchin's still saying he wouldn't even reform the filibuster even
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: to avoid default. Like, Doesn't really bode well for filibuster
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: reform on voting rights or anything else, does it?
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: No, John, it doesn't. It does not bode well for that.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's– Manchin will only– it may be that
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Manchin will never get rid of the filibuster. It could
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: be that if Republicans were– filibustering, allowing firefighters into a
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: burning Capitol, Joe Manchin would be okay with that. It
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: may be, but it's.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Certainly not going to, that's certainly what it seems like.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But because like, this is, you know, you have
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: had this theory that maybe this is what, I don't know,
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: maybe I'm revealing your private text thread theory here that
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: maybe one.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Of your arguments. We talked about it. We talked about
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: it right on this, and this, and this podcast, just
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: no one, no one gave me credit for my theory,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: but yeah, go ahead.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, the, the John, do you have a
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: name for your theory? The filibuster theory?
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: The theory that will never come to pass. Go ahead.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, the theory that will never come to pass. And
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: there is some reporting that.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Today— We should say that the theory is that Schumer's
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: plan all along was to bring this right to the
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: brink so that Manchin and Sinema finally felt pressure to
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: either reform the filibuster or let the country default, knowing
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: that the two of them wouldn't let the country default,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: even though Republicans probably would. And then once they reform
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: the filibuster for this, it becomes easier to reform the
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: filibuster for everything else. That was my very overly optimistic theory,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: though it does seem like that might be what Schumer
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: was thinking.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: And there is reporting that that is one of the
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: reasons why McConnell blinked. Actually, I take the reporting. He
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: said it on the floor of the Senate, right, was
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: that this was– that his concern was that Democrats would
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: wreck the Senate, an institution to which he has lit
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: multiple fires over the course of time. But– it's still,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: it's not, it seems like that's not where we're going
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: to end up here in part, because there is this
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: off ramp of budget reconciliation, which has been the off
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: ramp that allows the set, the filibuster to exist under
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: all scenarios. And we should be, I think, realistic, you know,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: some people have said, well, once the filibuster is gone
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: for this, it's gone for everything. That is theoretically true
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: in a world where votes 49 and 50 are not
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: And so just because it were to go away for
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: in a very narrow avoid default, uh, scenario doesn't mean
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: that all of a sudden they're going to pass voting
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: rights or $ 15 minimum wage or $ 11 minimum wage or
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: the Women's Health Act or any of those things. But
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: it would be a positive step towards making the Senate
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: a wee bit more democratic and any bit of progress
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: would be positive.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: We should quickly talk about the latest update on the
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: budget negotiations. Bernie Sanders, who chairs the Budget Committee, held
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: a press conference on Wednesday where he called on Joe
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to be specific about what they're
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: willing to support in a final budget agreement, saying two
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: people do not have a right to sabotage what the
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: other 48 senators, plus the president of the United States,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: plus most of the American people actually want. In response,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Manchin said, respectfully, Senator Sanders and I share very different
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: policy and political beliefs, as he and I have discussed. Wow,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: they talk, who knew? Senator Sanders believes America should be
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: moving towards an entitlement society, while I believe we should
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: have a compassionate and rewarding society. What an asshole.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: So.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: What do you think that says about the status of
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: the negotiation that Bernie's out there Wednesday giving a press
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: conference yelling at Manchin and Sinema?
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: You know how we often say that Democrats need to
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: stop communicating with each other through op-eds or through anonymous
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: leaks to Capitol Hill reporters? Do you know what's one
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: step worse than that? Calling a press conference to yell
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: at someone that you have lunch with every week. He
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: yelled at him on Wednesday. they had lunch together on Tuesday.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Like it seems bad. I would say it seems very,
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: very bad.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Is that, is that similar to when you attack, um,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Ben Rhodes for having soup with Bob Woodward on this podcast,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: instead of just texting him on our text chain.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Similar, but I have not seen Ben Rhodes in person
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: in a year and a half. So if we had
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: to have lunch on Tuesday, I would have mentioned it.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Um, Yeah, no, it gets me a little worried because
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: I kind of thought that we were there's a lot
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: of other reports that say the Democrats are actually narrowing
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: their differences right now, which I do think overall that's
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: where it's headed. But I am guessing that if if
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: you're Bernie Sanders and you thought that three point five
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: trillion was the compromise, which it was, and now Manchin
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: is still saying one point five, one point five, one
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: point five, and he won't even go above that a
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, I'd probably be pretty pissed at that point, too.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: I'm sure Bernie has every right to be pissed. If
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: you look at the long arc of Bernie's career, he
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: has never played this role on a core policy priority.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: He did not say, oh, you want the Affordable Care Act?
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: I am. Yeah, and no one else will vote for it? Well,
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: I demand Medicare for all. He did not do that.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: And he pointed this out at the press conference on Wednesday.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: He said, I could have gone to Joe Biden and said,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: you're not going to include Medicare for all? in this
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: budget reconciliation, then I'm going to vote it down. He
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: could have done that. He didn't do it. He's been
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: playing really well. Very practical, very pragmatic, Bernie Sanders, this
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: whole time. So have all the progressives. So look, it
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: really sucks, but it goes back to the point we've
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: made a bunch, which is the reason that I think
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: some of these centrists have more leverage is that they
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: have made it clear that they're fine walking away with nothing.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: um even walking away without the bipartisan infrastructure bill that
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: they love so much they negotiated they seem like they
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: would rather some of them seem like they would rather
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: let that die than go with a bigger proposal that
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: uh has more policies that would help more people which
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: is really fucking unfortunate but exactly where we are yeah
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: it's depressing in that sense politico reported yesterday that the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: white house is leaning towards keeping most proposals in the
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: bill but spending less money on each for a shorter
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: period of time what do you think of that strategy.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: I think it's probably a mistake. I understand why you're
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: doing that because you guys made this point on Monday,
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: which is you can lose no votes. And so if
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: you cut this thing out, all of a sudden these
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: members say we, you know, elder care is incredibly important
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: to us. It's our signature priority. It's the last chance
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: to do this. And it's not in the bill. Well,
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: you don't have my vote. So I understand from a
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: purely legislative wrangling perspective that probably makes passage easier. From
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: a substantive impact, political impact in 2022 and beyond, I
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: think that that is a mistake. And as always, as
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: a general rule of life, no choice is never the
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: right choice, right? So like if you spend it, you
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: The little amount of money around in such so broadly
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: that it's going to have very limited impact on people
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: is going to make these policies mean less to more people.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: We're already seeing how hard it is in some of
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: the polling on the child tax credit and other things
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: to get people to view this as a policy that
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: should continue, that is incredibly impactful, that is an argument
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: for electing Democrats. And so and the thing that I
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: think drives all of this is what does it do
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: to the climate spending? Because that to me is more
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: important than anything else, because there is not The reasons
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: that it may be the last chance for a while
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: at least for child care or child tax or all
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: these other things has to do with the political environment.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Climate change has to do with the planet, right? And
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: there may not– like time is ticking there.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: I think the climate is the exception in that– Congresswoman
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Jayapal has said this before that they still want 10-year
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: funding on climate change because it doesn't work. to do
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: this for a couple of years. It's got to be permanent.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: So I think that's the major exception. Though, again, that's
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: going to be determined by whether Joe Manchin wants like
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: a real clean energy standard that actually punishes polluters or
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: makes polluters pay and not just one that rewards companies
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: that are transitioning to clean energy, which wouldn't have the
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: same punch. I think on everything else, look, if you,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: as Joe Manchin wants to do, start means testing a
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: lot of these proposals so that a lot of people
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: who are working class, middle class don't get the benefits,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: then I agree with you that it's a huge problem.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: But if you're saying on a lot of these proposals,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: let's do more proposals for two years or three years
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: or four years, as opposed to 10 years, but make
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: sure we get all the proposals in there or as
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: many as we can, then I think you're actually delivering
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: benefits to more people across more policy proposals and more
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: programs over a shorter period of time. And that actually
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: will have more of an impact on people ahead of
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the 2022 midterm. So let's say you do paid family
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: leave and helping people attend community college and a child
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: tax credit, and you're expanding Medicare benefits to cover dental
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: and hearing. And all of these things aren't going to
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: last now 10 years, but they're going to be funded
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: for three years or four years. That's a lot more people,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: different groups of people who are going to feel the
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: benefits of this legislation than if you say just child
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: tax credit Um, which only goes to people with children.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: You see what I'm saying? I actually think that that's
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: why I actually pulled just from a pure, I don't think,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I don't necessarily know that that's good policy to have
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: all these cliffs on programs that are, uh, that are
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: going to run out in four years. But politically, if
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: you're the white house and the democratic party, and you
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: want people, you want more people to feel the benefits
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: of the legislation you're passing soon before the midterms, that
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: might be one way to do it.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: I guess the nuance to my position would be I
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: do not mind the cliffs from a political perspective. If
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: you could nearly fully fund all these things for two
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: years or three years or four years, I would pick
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: probably– maybe things expired in 2025. Let's deal with that.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right. Exactly.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Or maybe 2023 is better just from a political imperative
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: to get it done. But either way, the cliff doesn't
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: bother me. There is always going to be a cliff
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: that is– unfortunately it's the only way our Congress can
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: operate now. It's more about whether by funding everything, do
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: you have to only do the length of the program
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: or do you also have to cut down on the
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: number of people who receive it and how much they receive, right?
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Is the sub, does the subsidy go down to the
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: point where it is not significant enough or the number
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: of people who get it or the number of people
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: who are angry about not getting it so high that
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: it outweighs it? Like this is people much smarter and
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: more substantive than us. We'll figure that out, but that's
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: the issue.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: I completely agree with you on that.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Um, All right.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: When we come back, we will talk to the chair
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Sean Patrick Maloney. Thanks
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: to Republican gerrymandering, new voter suppression laws and a three
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: vote margin in the House, Democrats have quite a challenge
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: when it comes to holding the majority in 2022. leading
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: them into battle is the chairman of the democratic congressional
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: campaign committee representative sean patrick maloney of new york congressman
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: thanks for joining us my pleasure uh last time a
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: president's party didn't lose seats in a midterm was 20
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: years ago uh why did you want this job are
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: you crazy are you a glutton for punishment what's going on.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: I get that question a lot um Look, you guys know,
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, what's at stake. This is the most important
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: election I've ever lived through. I don't think the stakes
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: could be higher. We got to win because there's some dangerous,
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: reckless people on the other side. And we're doing historic
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: work that will create a whole new generation of prosperity
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: that for the first time in our history is truly inclusive.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: So I describe it as building a bridge to the future.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: And it's not easy doing that. And Give the president
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: credit for leading on that. And I'm proud to be
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: a part of that effort of maintaining the political capacity
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: to get it done.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: It seems like we're going to need a much bigger
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: infrastructure package to build that bridge. It's just something that
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking of here.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Great joke.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: It's hilarious, isn't it?
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: I have plenty of Biff jokes if you want those too.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: That's what I've been reduced to here.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: But it is a bridge to somewhere, right? It is
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: a bridge to the future. And kidding aside, look, we're
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: the party of John Lewis, right? And sometimes when you
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: march across the bridge to the future, there's people trying
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: to stop you. And we shouldn't be surprised that it's hard,
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: but I do think we're getting there. And if you
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: look at what's going on, I know there's been some
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: twisted metal and broken glass, and it's been great for
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: cable news business models. But the truth is, is that
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: we are moving methodically toward two historic pieces of legislation
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: that are going to make a big difference.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: You reportedly told House Democrats in August that if the
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: midterm election were held, then they'd lose the majority. Do
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: you still think that if the election were held today?
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: Well, that was August, so good news.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: And September was awesome.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: I was going to say things have only gotten more
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: amazing since then.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: There's only one more August between now and the election,
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: so really. No, look, I know that that's been reported widely.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: I think what I was relaying, first of all, was
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: that we weren't going to sugarcoat stuff, that we were
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: going to give people the accurate information of our best
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: understanding of where our we were succeeding and failing and
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: communicating with people what we're doing. We know that what
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: we're doing is popular. We know that it'll make a difference.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: It's another thing entirely, whether people have heard about it,
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: whether they see it and feel it in their own lives.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: And what's going on in our country right now is
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: you've got a massive, well-funded machine telling them things are terrible,
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: number one. Number two, you've got some really difficult problems
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: that we are tackling and it's not going to happen overnight.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: And while we've done a lot, We're still in the
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: process of putting those solutions in place. But man, there's
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: tens of millions of families who are benefiting from the
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: child tax cut right now. Ask them what it means
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: in their family budget. So the point is, is that
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: when we put all these pieces in place, we are
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: going to be able to run on a record of
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: results because the best message is impact, right? The best
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: message is when people feel it and they know it's happening.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: And then we got to remind them that the other
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: side fought us every step of the way. And if
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: they want to keep this progress going, they got to
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: support us.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Congressman, in 2020, Democrats took the White House, took the Senate,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: but the House was a surprising disappointment. Most people expected
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: us to gain seats. We lost seats. You've gone back
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: and looked at those races. What lessons did you learn
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: about what went wrong with our strategy then? And what
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: are you doing in 2022 to adjust for that?
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: I think the biggest thing people miss about the 2020
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: election is they think it was some big message contest.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: And the messages are important, don't get me wrong. But fundamentally,
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: what Trump succeeded in doing was bringing out a large
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: number of low propensity voters And they beat us in
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: pretty much every category of voter in terms of their
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: likelihood to vote. And what that means is when you're
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: flooding the polls with your voters, your message looks a
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: lot better, right? I mean, Warren Buffett jokes that you
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: find out who's skinny dipping when the tide goes out, right? Well,
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: everybody looks brilliant in their political messaging when their voters
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: come in. And so I think it was a 10
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: foot wall and Trump's turnout gave him a seven foot
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: ladder is my argument to you. And I think the
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: data supports it. Doesn't mean the message doesn't matter. It does.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: But if you look nationally, we actually beat him by
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: four point seven million votes in House races and lost seats. Right.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: So that tells you what kind of districts we're running in.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: Number one. Right. But it also tells you that they
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: are not persuading a majority of the American people with
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: their messaging. So I think what we've got to do
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: is we've got to project into what I believe will
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: be a low turnout cycle, the kind of massive investments
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: in field and community engagement that we have not done
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: successfully in the past. We're doing that right now. And
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: we need to make absolutely sure that we confront their
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: distortions and lies and win that message war, but that
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: we also have a substantive record of results to run on.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: But I really believe that the most important investments we're
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: making right now and earlier than ever are on mobilization,
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: community engagement, voter registration, getting on the ground. And I've
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: told my people, if we have to be in moon suits,
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: we are going to be knocking on doors. We're going
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: to do it safely and responsibly. But we are going
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: to own the ground.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, I 100% agree with your assessment about... the
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: impact that Trump's turnout had, but his turnout was also
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: tied to his message, right? He had a message that was,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: you know, I think utter bullshit, but fear-inducing about who
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: Democrats are, right? He called your, you know, your colleagues,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: you know, police defunding, socialists, Antifa, et cetera. And that message,
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: at least by some measures, broke through in some ways.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: That process is already beginning this time. What advice are
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: you giving to your frontline members or your top challengers
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: on how to navigate the well-funded machine that you talked
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: about that is pushing these messages out at a very
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: alarming rate?
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: Right. I'm not quibbling with what you're saying, but I
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: think there's an important gloss on that, which is that
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: you've got to ask yourself whether the Trump message works
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: without the messenger, whether you can get those voters out
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: without the messenger, right? In other words, was it defunding
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: the police or socialism, those lies they told about us
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: that motivated their voters? Or was it Trump? I mean,
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: you guys worked for a president who had the same
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: effect on our low propensity voters, right? You had a
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: bunch of people who came out for Barack Obama. And
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: there was a lot of good messaging there. And there
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: was a lot of good things we were pushing and saying.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: But really, he was this enormous, right, accelerant to our
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: turnout machine. And so I do think if the Republicans
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: are trying to do toxic Trump messaging and branding in
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: suburban swing districts, they better ask themselves whether that message
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: turns out voters or whether it was Trump. But so
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: what I'm telling my people is you gotta tell them
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: what we're doing because it's popular. We gotta get it done.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: To do that, we gotta stick together, right? And you
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: gotta remind them the other side is for insurrection when
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: we're trying to do infrastructure and therefore fighting when we're
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: trying to fix problems. And we're still the hope guys
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: and they're the hate guys. And if you look at
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: what they've done on the vaccine and what you've done
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: when on the insurrection, I think the Republicans have real
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: vulnerability on how dangerous and reckless they've been, particularly in
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: swing districts where I don't think that's good politics.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, Trump is definitely not on the ballot this time,
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: but Joe Biden isn't either. How are we going to
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: turn our voters out? Because to succeed in this midterm,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: we're going to have to reduce the typical drop-off voters
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: between presidentials and midterms.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: Totally right. And that's why I think you've got to
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: resource it and everything else is kind of hoping for
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: the best. And so what we're doing at the DCCC
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: is is I've got dozens of people already working in
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: the field at a senior level, community organizers, organizing directors,
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: people who are on the ground a year earlier than
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: they normally would be, layering in with those campaigns, working
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: with cultural competence. And this is important in communities of
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: color and in different communities and not seeing all Latino
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: communities as a monolith or not seeing all types of
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: subgroups within the Democratic coalition is the same. But doing
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: it with some nuance and some savvy and doing it
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: early and so that we don't just show up before
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: the election. And so you've got to put a bunch
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: of money behind that. And you've got to, I think,
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: shatter the conventional thinking that we need to pinch pennies
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: all the way up to the last couple of months
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: and then burn bags of money on TV. I don't
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: think that works that well. I think that the ROI
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: on early investments in field and in organizing voter registration,
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: community engagement have been undervalued. And I think that we
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: also have some work to do on getting our media
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: mix right, on doing better digital and doing better social,
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: not just TV. But on the off here, there's two
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: big things you're doing. You're achieving substantive results with the
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: opportunity you've been given. I think we're doing that. I
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: give the president a lot of credit for going big
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: and we're getting it done. And you organize it. You
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: get out there and you own the ground and you
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: do it early.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Your counterpart at the Democratic Governors Association, New Mexico Governor
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Michelle Lujan Grisham, said that the midterms will be a
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: referendum on the pandemic. Do you agree with that?
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: In some ways, you bet. I think that you've got
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: to grow this economy and end the pandemic. That's on us.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: It's not fair. It's not easy. But the president has
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: tackled a bunch of hard things. from ending a 20
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: year war to tackling a global pandemic, to growing this
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: American economy, to really rebalancing for the first time in decades,
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: the opportunity for stability and wealth creation that working and
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: middle-class families have versus the very rich. We're doing the
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: most important work for, I think, for the economic threads
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: that hold together our democracy since the New Deal, certainly
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: since the Great Society. And we're this close. And if
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: we get it done, then I think the race we're
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: in is finding out whether people give a shit, whether
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: we've told them or not, whether it's actually impacting their lives.
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, you guys saw this movie with the Affordable
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: Care Act, right? Everybody loves it now. But it took
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: years to convince people why it was so important and
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: why it would make such a critical difference in their lives.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: We have an advantage, which is that the changes we're
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: making are more immediate. Child tax cuts. I think you'll
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: see this in lowering people's health insurance premiums, expanding Medicaid coverage,
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: and even things that will take a little longer, but
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: that are really important, like universal pre-K, paid family medical leave,
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: universal community college. These things go right at what matters
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: to a family's hopes, dreams, budget, and we can get
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: them all done.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Well, let me ask one more question about that, because
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: obviously the negotiations are still ongoing over Build Back Better
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: and what's going to make it into the final bill.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: which proposals are most important to your frontline members? What
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: are you hearing people who are in the toughest districts say,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: this has got to be in the bill, or this
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: is really important to get in the bill?
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: Well, I think that progressives may undervalue how important state
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: and local tax deductions are as something that a lot
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: of frontliners ran on, as something that their voters really
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: care about. So think about the extraordinary overlap, and this
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: is a conversation only pundits would love, but think about
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: the overlap between competitive congressional districts and higher taxed, higher
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: property valued suburbs. It's the best overlap in the House
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: of Representatives, right? And so it's no accident that swing
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: districts in Long Island, New York, in the Hudson Valley
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: where I live, in New Jersey, in Orange County, California,
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: in Illinois, all are very focused on this. So that's
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: an important issue that I think you'll see included in
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: a final package. That's good. But there's a lot of others.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: I think that more broadly, absolutely what I just spoke about,
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: the child tax cut is really important. And so I
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: think you'll see the debate on whether it's permanent or
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: whether it's authorized for a number of years, but it's
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: going to be there, right? And then I'm, look, really
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: focused on the infrastructure bill as well as something that
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: people really understand and want and think is a real
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: win in competitive seats.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: We're going to put a cap on that SALT deduction
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: to make sure that like super rich people can't take
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: advantage of it. I know it hits some middle-class people in, uh,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: in these suburban districts, which is totally fair, but I
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: feel like some of the, uh, there, there should be
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: a cap at some point. Are you open to that?
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Listen, I mean, you're, you're in danger of bringing
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: us into a policy conversation and I'm talking about politics.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: If you want to get all substantive, I guess, I
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: guess we can do that too. But look, there's different
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: proposals out there. I mean, my friend Katie Forty would
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: tell you that if you get the cap high enough,
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: you'll actually make money on the restoration over 10 years
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: because it's going away completely in 2027.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: She made the best case, I thought, for it when
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: we had her.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: Look, that's a clever argument. I think my preference is
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: a little cleaner. I would give people their deductions back
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: full stop, and I would do it for the next
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: couple of years. And if you can't afford it, you know,
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: do it for less time, not for fewer people. But,
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm chairing the DCCC.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: Stipulating that the most important thing to do, as you
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: said over here, is deliver for people by getting the
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: pandemic under control, passing these very important bills. You're also
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: a huge part of this election to be making a
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: case against allowing Republicans back into control of any part
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: of government. What is your most current thinking on the
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: best narrative to use against Republicans? Because there's no shortage
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: of bad things they have done or things to be
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: afraid of. So how do you think is the best
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: way to frame the argument against Republicans?
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is where I might be a little different
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: than some of my colleagues. I mean, remember, it's unusual
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: to have a DCCC chair from a super competitive seat, right?
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: But Donald Trump won my seat in 2016. So I
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: kind of live and breathe this stuff. And you're talking
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: to a guy who's a gay guy with an interracial
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: family in a Trump district, right? So I don't I
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: don't win my seat by hoping for the best or
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: thinking everybody will change all their views about Democrats or
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: things that maybe they don't like about us. The way
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: you win in a competitive seat is you invalidate the
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: other choice and you let people hold on to enough
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: of kind of who they see themselves as and their
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: cultural values and some of their other kind of drivers
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: that might not always be in our direction, but they're
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: voting for you. And so you do that, it seems
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: to me, by delivering in a real way for your district.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: And so that's really important. And I think that therefore,
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: what I'm trying to tell you is my narrative centers around,
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: you can't do that. Like, you don't have to love
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: everything about the Democratic Party, but you can't do those
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: guys right now. Because whether you're talking about storming the
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: Capitol and asking us to look the other way when
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: a bunch of cops got hurt and killed, whether you're
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: talking about spreading dangerous conspiracy theories like QAnon, or getting
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: in the way of our efforts to get the vaccine
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: out and end the pandemic, whether you're talking about people
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: who question whether victims of school shootings were child actors,
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: as some of them do, who form a white supremacy caucus,
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: you see the point. Point is, is you can't do that.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: And look at what we're doing. You may not think
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: we're perfect, but man, you're getting that child tax cut
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: and it's working a miracle in your family budget. And
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: if you don't vote for the Democrat, you're going to
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: lose it. So what do you want to do? So
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: I think for me, the core messaging in the competitive
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: seats is to say, We got a plan for the future.
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: It's helping you. It's happening right now. And the other
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: side is a dangerous group of people. And so you
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: got to stick with us for a little while longer
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: until we heal our country and get us back to
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: a better place.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: Is talking about Trump and the looming threat of him
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: returning to the White House or staying on the political
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: stage part of that narrative? Or is that counterproductive in
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: the sense that may generate some of that turnout that
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: was so problematic in 2020?
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: I don't think my fear is that it generates the
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: Trump turnout. I think that's uniquely about whether or not
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: he's on the ballot. I mean, look at what happened
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: in the Georgia special elections. Right. I mean, it was
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: just a couple of weeks later. They're using all the
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: same message. And we elected an African-American and the first
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: Jewish senator from Georgia, for goodness sake. Look at look
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: at the California recall. Pretty good matchup between the right.
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: Newsom and Elder was not a bad proxy for Biden,
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: Trump or for Democrats, Republicans. And we kicked their butt,
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: including in the competitive areas like Orange County, not just statewide.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Watch the Virginia governor's race. I'm very focused on that.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: I think that's good data. Right. But I think that
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: I think that the key right now is to is
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: to understand the parts of Trump that invalidate the Republicans
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: who try to run on that toxicity without them. Meaning,
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: the big lie about the election, the big lie about
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: the pandemic and the vaccine, those are real vulnerabilities for
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: any Republican. Or how about taking away a woman's reproductive freedom?
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: I mean, that is Trump toxicity without Trump on the ballot.
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: I would argue that if they keep going down that road,
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: that's an anvil on which we can hammer them in
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: competitive swing districts, right? And so I think that I
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: wouldn't kind of just go against Trump as a blanket message,
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: but I do think the toxic elements of what his
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: presidency represented are really bad politics in swing seats.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: I have one last pretty nerdy question. Polling was once
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: again pretty bad in 2020. Have the pollsters that you
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: guys work with done anything to adjust? And do you
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: feel confident in the numbers just in terms of, being
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: able to move the resources to the most important districts?
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: Because for the public, who cares? We follow the polls
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: up and down. But for you guys, getting polling right
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: really matters because it's about the resources campaigns have and
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: where they go.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: Absolutely critical. My whole job is efficient resource allocation, right?
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: And I can't do that if I don't have good data.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: So you better believe the pollsters have heard from us
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: on that. We're also going to grade them, by the way,
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: on how well they do. That's never happened before. And
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: so we've communicated a set of metrics to them around
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: what we really need from polls to make good allocation decisions.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: And we want them to manage to that test. We
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: want them to get better at those things. And we're
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: going to grade them after the next election as a
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: way to say we're holding you accountable. But more to
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: your point, I think we have a very good handle
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: on what happened in the polling this cycle. It's a
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: harder job to fix it, but it basically falls into
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: two buckets, right? We saw a little of this in 2016,
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: by the way. We thought it corrected in 2018. It
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: did as a practical matter, but not in a way
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: that set us up well for 2020. Here's what happened.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: What happened is that you've got a bad set of
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: models being used on who's going to turn out, right?
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: And when you get your model wrong, because people assume
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: polls are just about kind of tallying up right what
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: people tell you, but they're really about guessing right who's
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: going to show up in the election, right? Yeah. And
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: if you guess wrong, even by a small degree, because
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: you're wrong on how powerful Trump's attraction was for low
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: propensity voters, then those small differences in your model can
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: be a big swing in the polling results. So we
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: went back and looked at a bunch of the polls
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: and then corrected for that turnout mistake. And guess what?
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: You see most of the error in most of the
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: polls corrected. If you're DMP in Southern Florida and somebody
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: tells you you're up six points and you lose by two,
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: you're pretty pissed that the poll was off by eight.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: In fact, that's a very minor shift in the assumptions
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: about turnout among low propensity Republican voters. You're correct for that.
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: You see the poll come back in line. There's a
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: second problem, which is that, and it's a sloppy way
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: to say it, but basically Trump people don't like to
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: talk to pollsters, right? And so even if you're getting
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: your Democrat, and we've known this for a while, the
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: fancy term is non-response bias. And what it means is
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: that you think you got the right demographics in your poll,
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: but there's something about, for example, your high school educated
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: white guys, they aren't the right high school educated white guys.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: They're the ones that are picking up the phone, talking
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: to a pollster. And we've seen that skew the results
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: a little bit. And you put those two things together,
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: you get about 95% of the polling error in 2020.
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: Some of that will correct naturally without that kind of
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: Trump surge in turnout, but a lot of it also
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: requires some work. And we're We're pretty confident that we've
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: got a pretty good beat on it. Our data was
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: really good. We ran some tests in the special election
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: in New Mexico where Melanie Stansbury kicked butt. And our
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: data was pretty good on that race. So I can't
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: tell you we've wrestled everything to the ground. Remember, polling
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: has some problems of its own because nobody answers their
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: phone anymore and talks to a pollster. So just the
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: general response rates have come way down from, say, 20
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: years ago. So so we're also elevating qualitative metrics, more
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: focus groups. There's a bunch of new technologies you can
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: use that are better than traditional polling. So there's a
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: lot of work to do. But I hope that's not
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: too expansive an answer. But we really are focused on it.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: No, it's great. It does seem like the optimistic scenario
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: for 2022 is that the sort of college educated voters
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: who came out in 2018, many for the first time,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: to vote for Democrats continue to turn out in 2022,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: even without Trump on the ballot. And yet the low
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: propensity voters who turned out for Trump in 2020 don't
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: show up in 2022. Is that what you guys are thinking?
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: I think that's such an interesting point. I think that's
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: a hypothesis. I tend to share it. Yes. And it's
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: an interesting way of saying we're kind of switching voters.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: For a long time, it was that the more reliable
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: voters were Republican voters in midterms, it may be the opposite, right?
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: It may be that those low propensity voters who turned
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: out for Trump are actually not reliable voters in the midterm.
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: And our surge among college educated voters means we have
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: a more stable group of voters who will turn out.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: But it's not going to stop me from piling resources
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: into the efforts to win the ground and to do
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: the kind of community engagement and mobilization I think we
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: really need to do. But here's hoping, yeah.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, thank you so much for joining us.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Come on again soon and let us know what you're
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: hearing on the ground.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: Hey, happy to do it.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: All right. Before we go, Crooked's own digital guru, Elijah Cohn,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: has a brand new game called Take Appreciators that we're
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: going to try today. Elijah, take it away.
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: Hi, guys.
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: Welcome to the Take Appreciators.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Great to be here.
• 47:02
  Speaker 5: I'm going to share some notably bad commentary with you.
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: The producers have seen these takes. John and Dan have not.
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: They will give their reactions in real time and then
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: rate them on a scale of one to four politicos.
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: Bear with us as we work out the kinks of
• 47:16
  Speaker 5: this game in real time. John and Dan, are you ready?
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Ready as I'll ever be.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Let's find out.
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: The first one is a banger.
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: This piece in the Daily Beast titled, Kyrsten Sinema and
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: Liz Cheney are America's best and bravest politicians.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: Here's a quote.
• 47:35
  Speaker 5: You can't lobby or intimidate them because it's impossible to
• 47:38
  Speaker 5: push or mock someone with that level of confidence.
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: Indifference is the ultimate form of power. Your thoughts?
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Can I get an author on this? Matt Lewis.
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: You know what? If you had given me a multiple
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: choice of people likely to have made that take, Matt
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: Lewis would have been high on the list.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: What was the last sentence of the take, Elijah?
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: Indifference is the ultimate form of power.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: Oh my god.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: I don't even know. I want to go back to the...
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: The take itself was pretty bad. The headline is really
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: what got me going. That Liz Cheney and Kyrsten Sinema
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: together are America's heroes because it is heroic if you're
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Kyrsten Sinema to, I don't know, say nothing about what
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: you believe, not reflect the will of your constituents, and what?
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: What the fuck is heroic about that? I guess what's
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: heroic to Matt Lewis is that they're both doing things
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: that Matt Lewis likes.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: Elijah did not read the subtitle of that article, which
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: I believe is Accepting invitations to DC cocktail parties, whether
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: hosted by Democrats or Republicans. It's like tattooing both sides
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: on your forehead and walking out in public. Like what? Yeah.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: You know, I think I think I guess we should
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: probably rate this take. Like, it definitely bothered me, but
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: it is a very I'm Matt Lewis. Here's my beliefs.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a never Trumper, but I'm still pretty
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Republican in a lot of other ways. So this is
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: my sweet spot. I like Kirsten Sinema and Liz Cheney. Like,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: it's not like I will appreciate the. take, but I won't.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: It's I've seen worse takes. So I'm going to give it,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give it two politicos.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: I'm going to give it one politico. Like in the
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: slam dunk contest, you never give out your highest scores
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: in the first round. So you see what else is coming.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: That's really smart. That's really smart.
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: All right, we're off.
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: Number two, this piece in the Washington Post titled, Protest
• 49:40
  Speaker 5: Kyrsten Sinema all you want, but have some decency while
• 49:43
  Speaker 5: doing it.
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: Ah!
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Wait a minute. I think I just heard something. Red Hen.
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: Civility alert.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: Red Hen.
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: Civility alert. Paging Chuck Todd. Paging Chuck Todd.
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: Chip O'Neill.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan.
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: You are needed with a bourbon in the West Wing.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: Red Hen.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: Red Hen.
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: Red Hen.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: Wait, wait. My favorite part of that is how long
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: Tommy went and just continued to offer more content in
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: the middle of the civility alert. I really appreciate that.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: It's brilliant.
• 50:20
  Speaker 5: So here's a highlight from that article. Quote, many of
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: the Capitol rioters on January 6th have basically said that
• 50:28
  Speaker 5: they lost their minds in the melee. Who's to say
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: that the next inflamed progressives who confront cinema won't be.
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: Wielding a club or something? Something worse to compel her obedience.
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: Your thoughts.
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: No.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: Let me, can I, can we, I was going to say,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: you guess first, you guess first. Is it former Bush speechwriter,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: Mark Thiessen?
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: It is not. Oh, is it former Bush speechwriter, Michael Gerson?
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: It is not.
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: I got one last guess.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: Kathleen Parker. No.
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: Over three. It's, uh, Henry Olson.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: That's not a person who exists. You made that up.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: Look, comparing the people that yelled at Kyrsten Sinema in
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: the bathroom to the people who violently attacked Congress. in
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: order to overturn a free and fair election that gets
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: fucking three politicos for me. Absolutely. Three politicos. Yeah.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: I three, three politicos as well. And also I will say, no,
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: it's how little attention we paid to the Washington posted
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: op-ed page that we all guess people who we didn't
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: guess anyone who didn't start working there after 2010, basically.
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: I don't, I didn't know. I don't really know who
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Henry Olson is. He's just like someone whose name I
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: see once in a while next to a take that
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: pisses me off and which will continue.
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: Well, Moving on, a third Kyrsten Sinema take here from
• 51:50
  Speaker 5: the Wall Street Journal. This one titled, Kyrsten Sinema, the
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: bad maverick. This highlight is short and sweet. It's just
• 51:59
  Speaker 5: a simple question that opens the article. Quote, is Kyrsten
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: Sinema the Democrat's John McCain?
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: Is she?
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: You know what? Lazy take. lazy bad take. Everyone's talking
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: about Kirsten Sinema being the next fucking John McCain, blah, blah, blah.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Someone smartly pointed out that one of the big differences
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: between the two of them are John McCain talked to
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: the press constantly. You knew what John McCain thought about everything.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: You didn't necessarily agree with it. Sometimes you rolled your eyes.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you got angry, but like he talked nonstop to
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: the press about every single thing he thought about every
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: single issue. Kirsten Sinema does not do that. She runs away.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: She hides from the press and she just likes playing
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: this game. So I don't think they're like at all.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: And I think it's a shitty take. I think it's
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: a bad, bad take. One Politico.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: One Politico. I'm going to give it two Politicos because
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: I think you're dismissing the obvious reason that they are
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: the same. They're senators from Arizona.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it.
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: You're right.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: That is how they got to that super smart, clever
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: take that no one had made ever before.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: Galaxy brain right there. All right, next take.
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: How do you guys think the segment is going so far?
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Look, I am, I am a little less angry than
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: I thought I'd be, but I'm, I'm getting there. I'm
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: thinking by take seven, I could be pretty riled up.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: I'm giving you to rate you for this three Acostas.
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: So that's good.
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: I'll take it. All right. Well, maybe, maybe this one, we'll,
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: we'll get y'all going here.
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: Um, for the, also from the wall street journal, uh,
• 53:38
  Speaker 5: Democrats destroy political norms to save themselves. So this is
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: a piece about our loss of faith in our democracy
• 53:46
  Speaker 5: and threats to the election or returning elections. Quote, this
• 53:50
  Speaker 5: narrative of continuing constitutional crisis for which only Republicans are
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: to blame is convenient political cover for Democrats. Until those
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: on the other side acknowledge their own role in undermining
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: democratic legitimacy, the crisis will only deepen.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: What political norms have we violated that are equivalent to
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: storming the fucking Capitol and overturning an election?
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: Bathrooms. Some protesters stupidly, but follow Kirsten Sim into the bathroom.
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: Did you not, did you miss take one or whatever
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: that was?
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: What is it? Yeah. Is this, do you, Elijah, can
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: you tell us what the norms they're referring to are?
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: Uh, the Russian investigation.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, um, is this a kid? Is this a Kim Strassel?
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: Gerard Baker.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, the Baker, the former editor of the paper.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: That's a really that's a pretty bad take. That's getting
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: that's getting three politicos for me.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: I'm going to give it to I just I'm hesitant
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: to give out the four yet because I don't I
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: just don't we just don't know what the ceiling of
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: this is. And I think you really got to earn it.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: But what that column is to me is how Gerard
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: Baker explains his support of Trump to his children. That's
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: what I think that is.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's tough. I haven't given it a four yet either.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: It's because we haven't heard from Chris Silliza. We haven't
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: heard from Playbook. We haven't heard from Axios. There's a
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: lot of stars out there in the bad take world
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: that haven't popped up yet.
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that one had norms on both sides. I figured
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: y'all would like that one. Here's one from Playbook itself
• 55:29
  Speaker 5: on the filibustering car route. Quote, one note of caution
• 55:34
  Speaker 5: for Dems. Just as eliminating the filibuster for court nominees
• 55:38
  Speaker 5: eventually led to doing so for Supreme Court nominees, an
• 55:41
  Speaker 5: exception for the debt ceiling would inevitably trigger other demands.
• 55:45
  Speaker 5: One could imagine voting rights advocates crying foul, for instance,
• 55:48
  Speaker 5: insisting that their issue is worthy of similar treatment.
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: This is a this is one Politico in my book,
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: because what a one Politico take to me is taking
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: something that is patently obvious and then packaging it as
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: smart insider conventional wisdom. And that is what this is. Like,
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: no shit, Sherlock.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I read this one because, of course, I'm a
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: self-loathing playbook reader. And I do think that it is
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: a correct take. They, of course, you know, they framed
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: it as like, Oh, whiny voting rights advocates, you know,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: just going to be complaining. It's like, yes, no, exactly.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: If that's our hope, we hope so. Yes, we all
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: hope that is correct.
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: Let's turn it up here.
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: This one is from Ben Shapiro on his own outlet,
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: The Daily Wire, which is extremely conservative and one of
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: the most popular outlets on Facebook. This piece is titled
• 56:48
  Speaker 5: Facebook Reveals How It Suppresses Articles Protecting Leftist Legacy Media.
• 56:53
  Speaker 5: Shapiro tweeted, understand that the Facebook whistleblower story is just
• 56:57
  Speaker 5: the next step in a never-ending Democrat media quest to
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: cuddle Facebook into quashing alternative media.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, you have to give Shapiro credit for the
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: shamelessness of that take, which is why it's actually true
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: to the title of the game. It's a truly appreciated
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: take to be that shameless that your entire company is
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: everything you do is fueled by the Facebook algorithm that
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: works in your favor, and yet you complain about Facebook.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: That is really ballsy from Ben Shapiro. It's actually worse.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: I don't want to step on your grade. Give your grade.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'll give it three politicos.
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: I'm giving it four politicos because it's not just that
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: Ben Shapiro happens to benefit from the Facebook algorithm because
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: he through the genius of his own self, figured out
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: how to make the most compelling content. His pyramid scheme
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: of websites violates Facebook's rules in every way, shape, or form.
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: Despite having that fact flagged to Mark Zuckerberg on multiple occasions,
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: Facebook has refused, under the advice of Joel Kaplan, their
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: Republican best friend of Brett Kavanaugh, who runs their policy department,
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: to not enforce the rules against Shapiro because that would
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: make them look biased against conservatives and that would anger Republicans.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: So Shapiro knows this. So it's not just that he
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: is living in, I imagine a large house that Mark
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: Zuckerberg bought for him. He's living, he's living in a, he's,
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: it's a, it is a very, that house is made
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: of glass is what I would say to close that tank.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: Wow. Elijah, I feel like that reaction is what you
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: were looking for when you pitched take appreciators.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: It really, really is. It kind of hits all, all
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: of my, my takes, uh, goals there.
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 58:55
  Speaker 5: Well, this is the last one, Dan, sorry to get
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: you riled up on that last one. Cause this, this
• 58:59
  Speaker 5: one is also pretty much directly for you. It's from
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: Philly sports network, a piece titled the Sixers need to
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: be patient with Ben Simmons.
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: A poll from the article is quote.
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: It's time to realize that maybe it's not the player
• 59:13
  Speaker 5: who is the problem.
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: Fans in the city are too comfortable booing.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: I don't, I feel like grading that on a scale
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: of politicos is a mistake. I think that is, uh,
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: That's three parted my takes. How's that?
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: That's funny.
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: We can call it first takes.
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a terribly stupid thing. If anyone who, or
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: three skip balances or whatever, whatever you want to do
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: with that. But that is an absurd take. And Philly
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: fans coddled, nicely supported Ben Simmons for very long until
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: he was unsupportable. And so I am for the patience,
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: but it ain't the fan's fault. There was no Philly
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: fan who was whispering in Ben Simmons' ear, do not shoot.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: That was not what happened.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: So fans too comfortable booing. That is quite a take.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: It's accurate to Philadelphia. Yeah. All right. Well, that is
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: very friendly.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: Go ahead. Yeah.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: We don't, we don't need to, we're very kind, very
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: kind in Boston. We're known for our kindness.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 5: Well, that concludes the first installment of the take appreciators.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: Elijah, fantastic game. I'm looking forward to playing again. Can't
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: wait for Lovett and Tommy to join in on a
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: Monday pod for this, because this was fun. I want
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: to do this one again. Thank you for the game.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Thank you to Sean Patrick Maloney for joining us and
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: talking about DCCC's strategy. Everyone have a great weekend, and
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: we'll talk to you next week. Bye, everyone. Pod Save
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our producer
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: is Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: Brian Semmel, Caroline Reston, Madison Holman, and Justine Howe for
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: videos at youtube.com slash crooked media.