Latest / Pod Save America / “Cowboy up, Joe Manchin.” (with Stacey Abrams and Ben Rhodes!)

Transcript

“Cowboy up, Joe Manchin.” (with Stacey Abrams and Ben Rhodes!) · 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 3: And I'm Ben Rhodes.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Look at this. Look at this crossover. We got Ben
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Rhodes as co-host today.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: World though cross pod.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Love it. I love it. On today's show, Donald Trump's
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: telling people he'll be president again in August as his
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: former national security advisor calls for a military coup. Republicans
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: continue their coordinated assault on voting rights and Democrats win
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: big in a New Mexico special election. Then Stacey Abrams
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: is here to talk about the fight for democracy, her
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: latest book and more. Big show. First, Ben. You have
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: written a second book that makes two for you, two
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: for Dan, and a bunch of tweets for me.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: But John, if you add up the total word count
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: of your tweets, you might have a book in there.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Fuck, that's even more depressing. Your new book is called
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: After the Fall, Being American in the World We've Made.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: It is incredibly timely, compelling, beautifully written. But why don't
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: you tell us all about why you wrote it?
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: Well, it's kind of a Thursday PSA book. As I
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: was kind of pummeled after the 2016 election, like you guys,
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: trying to make sense of it, I realized I could
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: kind of figure out what was happening in America by
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: looking at it from the outside in, in the same
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: way that if you've ever had a challenge in your
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: family or something, sometimes you have to step out of it.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: And I went to Germany on one of these trips,
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: and I met with a young Hungarian activist who's opposing
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: Viktor Orban there who's like the autocratic prime minister of Hungary.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: And I was like, hey, how did you guys go
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: from being a democracy to an autocracy in about a decade?
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: And he's like, well, that's easy. Orban got elected in
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: a right-wing populist backlash to the financial crisis. He redrew
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: the parliamentary districts to entrench his party in power, changed
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: the voting laws to make it easier for his supporters
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: to vote, enriched a bunch of cronies who financed his politics,
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: bought up the media and created really a right-wing propaganda machine.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: packed the courts with right-wing judges and wrapped it all
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: up in a nationalist bow of us versus them, you know, us,
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: the true Hungarians, them as liberal elites, as immigrants, as Muslims,
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: as George Soros. And he's kind of talking and I'm
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: thinking like, well, that sounds like kind of the last
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: decade of my life. And really it started from this
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: premise of like, there's this trend globally of democracy slipping away.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: And I I talked to Hong Kong protesters. I talked
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: to Russians like Alexei Navalny, Putin's chief opponent. I talked
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: to these young activists in Hungary. And really, it's a
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: personal book. It's kind of my journey through the experience
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: of having left power and looking at power from the
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: outside in and trying to figure out how America helped
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: shape this world and what we need to do about it.
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: And look, I think it's just it's fantastic as you
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: read it. It's both alarming and comforting, like alarming because
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: what's been happening here has happened with even more devastating
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: consequences in other parts of the world, but also comforting
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: knowing that sort of different countries and societies are sort
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: of going through the same thing we are and that
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: there are people, there are activists, especially young activists who
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: are trying to fight these sort of autocratic rulers and governments.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: And I think there's a lot of inspiration in.
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: It, too.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: I'm glad you took that away. Yeah.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Dan.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: No, I'm glad.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: I was going to compliment you. Hold on. So look, it,
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: it is a, I have read it.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: It is an amazing book.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: I would say, and this is the one downside for
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: me personally is it's so beautifully written that it literally
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: gave me writer's block for four days. So thank you
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: for that.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: Well, I, you know, look at the, the point that
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: I appreciate that. And I, I, I, I like this
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: book more than my memoir because I really, I took
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: a little more time, uh, on the writing. Um, But
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: I also was getting at, I discovered, John, what you referenced,
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: which is actually not unlike, this is not just me
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: complimenting you guys, although it kind of is. You know,
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: you guys built this community after the 2016 election where
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: I think people were just happy to figure out that
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: there were other people who thought things were as fucked
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: up as they did and wanted to do something about it.
• 4:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: That was kind of the feeling I had. There's something
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: hopeful in the fact that people everywhere around the world
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: are kind of dealing with the same stuff, the same
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: nationalist playbook, the same disinformation and surveillance machinery, and they're
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: finding different ways to fight back, and we all need
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: to learn from each other. And what I really found
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: that ended up being more personal than I thought when
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: I started this is people are also just trying to
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: figure out their identity in this world that doesn't make
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: a lot of sense. And I made the subtitle Being
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: American in the World We Made because what we really
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: have to figure out is who we are as Americans.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: And where I kind of land on that is something
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: that our former boss, who's also a character in the book,
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: I think would subscribe to. Yes, we're a multiracial, multiethnic
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: democracy that doesn't always live up to the stories we
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: tell about ourselves. But being American is about doing the work,
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: doing the work of pursuing the what we are not yet.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: And if we can do that, then we can get
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: over all the goons and creeps that we're going to
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: talk about on the pod today.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: I remember that in a few Obama speeches, that theme.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to play Tommy's role since he's on vacation.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: The person currently at the top of the New York
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Times nonfiction bestseller list is Bill O'Reilly. No one wants
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: to see that. So what everyone has to do is
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: go by after the fall today, and we're going to
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: help Ben knock him off. Tommy also would have made
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: up that Don Jr. has a new book out that's
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: on the charts, which is not true. But the only
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: one I could find right now is Bill O'Reilly, the
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: most loathsome right-wing figure who has a book on the charts.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: But that should be enough for all of you to
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: go buy After the Fall.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's killing somebody else this week.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: He's always killing somebody.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: We need to take care of that.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news. So once again,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: we're living in two wildly different realities now. In one reality...
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: You know, Joe Biden met with Republican Senator Shelley Moore
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Capito on Wednesday to see if they could hash out
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: a bipartisan infrastructure deal. And, you know, both parties said
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: they were encouraged by their constructive negotiations. It's like normal
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: politics world. In the other reality, the New York Times'
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Maggie Haberman reported that Donald Trump is telling people he
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: expects to be reinstated as president by August. And this
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: news came just a few days after Trump's former national
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: security advisor, Michael Flynn, said, was asked at a QAnon
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: event in Dallas why something like the military coup in
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Myanmar couldn't happen here in the United States. Here's what
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: he said.
• 6:56
  Speaker 6: I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can't
• 7:02
  Speaker 6: happen here.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: No reason.
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: I mean, it should happen here.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: No reason. No reason. And just in case you're tempted
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: to write that off as an isolated bit of lunacy,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: CNN interviewed a number of Trump supporters who all parroted
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: the same military coup fantasies that can be found all
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: over QAnon message boards. Take a listen.
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: Biden is just, he's like a puppet president. The military
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: is in charge.
• 7:25
  Speaker 5: It's going to be like Myanmar. What's happening in Myanmar?
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: The military is doing their own investigation. And at the
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: right time, they're going to be restoring the republic with
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: Trump as president.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: What's going on in Myanmar right now? The government took
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: over and they're redoing the election, correct?
• 7:39
  Speaker 5: That could possibly happen here, possibly.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: Would you like to see it happen?
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: I would like to see it happen.
• 7:43
  Speaker 6: Really?
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: You know why?
• 7:45
  Speaker 5: Because the election was stolen from us.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Very cool. So Flynn Flynn later said he was misquoted. Sure. Right. Yeah.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: But regardless, we got Trump thinking he's heading back to
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: the White House this summer, which is apparently what the
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: my pillow CEO and his old lawyer, Sidney Powell, are
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: telling him. We have a growing number of Republican voters.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: who are at the very least coup curious. A new
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: poll out this week from the Public Religion Research Institute
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: shows that QAnon is now as popular as some major
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: religions and that 15% of Americans believe that people may
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: have to resort to violence to restore the country's rightful order. Ben,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: you've spent a lot of time in Myanmar. You've just
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: written a book about the rise of autocratic governments all
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: over the world. How worried should we be about all this?
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: It's not great, John.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: No, no, it's not.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, first of all, Michael Flynn's someone I
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: thought a lot about because he does speak to, and
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: I write about this in my book, like this, the
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: post 9-11 mindset started out as this war on terror
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: and Flynn was at the forefront as a guy who's,
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: you know, a military officer in that war, you know,
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: obsessed with radical Islam. And what's been interesting over the
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: last 20 years is how the targets have just comfortably shifted.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: You know, it's radical Islam, then it's a black president,
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: then it's communism, and now it's American democracy itself. Um,
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: And I think that, you know, first of all, let's
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: be clear. First of all, world of correction, it's not Myanmar,
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: it's Myanmar. But this is a, they're killing people. They're
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: shooting live fire at people in the streets. I have
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: friends who I was in touch with in Signal who've
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: had to like flee to the Thai border to get
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: out of the country. So this is like some very
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: serious shit they're talking about. And here's why I'd be concerned.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: You know, it's not that I think there's going to
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: be a military coup today. In August, although we had
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: some bad August when we were in office. It's that
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: sometimes you lay down an insane marker like that so
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: that the softer coup of– voter suppression laws and kind
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: of rigging the system to favor minority rule in this
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: country is like, you know, on the spectrum, not quite
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: as totally batshit insane as the military coup. I'm not
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: saying that's why Flynn is doing this, but that's a
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: dynamic you've seen in other places where autocracy takes hold is,
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: you know, Orban has done this in Hungary, right? You
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: kind of threaten a much more aggressive takeover of things.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: And then suddenly your kind of slow motion strangling of
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: democracy looks less radical. And that's part of what I
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: think we have to be on guard about.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Dan, what do you think? I always find myself when
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: I see stories like this, I'm like, I don't want
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: to have this sort of resistance-y Twitter overreaction and also
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: scare people every time I see news like this. But
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: at the same time, we all lived through a fucking
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: attack on the U.S. Capitol after the president lost an election,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: tried to steal it, and then sicked his supporters on Congress. So, like,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I think it is something to be alarmed about, but
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know. What do you think? Yeah, it.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: We live in a world where everyone overreacts to everything
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: and it's easy to then outright dismiss that overreaction as
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: just the typical online panic porn that we hear so
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: much about. But so sometimes I find it easier just
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: to like restate the facts to see how worried about
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: something you should be. So here we have a retired general,
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: former top aide to the defeated president who incited a
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: violent insurrection on the Capitol, calling for a military coup
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: at a conference in support of a movement designated a
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: domestic terror threat by the FBI.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: That seems concerning to me. It sounds bad. It sounds
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: bad when you put it like that. And Ben is correct.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: The concern is not that the military is going to
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: overthrow the government and install that on Trump in August.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: The concern is these people who were in the CNN
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: clip you played or others are going to take the
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: signal and act out violently. Violent people looking for a
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: reason to do violent things. And this is not just
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: what happened to Capitol, which is the most recent and
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: most evocative example of how these dangerous conspiracy theories translate
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: into real life violence. You have the guy who sent
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: the pipe bombs in 2018 to– the big Trump supporter
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: who sent them to all of Trump's favorite Twitter targets.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: You have the guy who took the– I think it
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: was an assault rifle to Comet Pizza, the pizzeria in D.C.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: that was at the center of the absurd Pizzagate conspiracy.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: When you read the indictment of the Oath Keepers for
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: their activities on January 6th, they were preparing– The Oath
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Keepers is a violent right-wing militia movement, but they were
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: preparing to step in once Trump invoked the Insurrection Act
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: to act militarily to take over the government. People listen
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: to this, and they act on it, and it is dangerous.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: And we should not all of a sudden assume the
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: government's going to get taken over, but we should recognize
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: that words matter, and dangerous words from dangerous people really
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: matter a lot.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I would also say, too, Maggie Haberman reports
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: this Trump reinstatement thing. A bunch of people get mad
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: on Twitter for some ridiculous reason. I guess they're like
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: they don't think that Maggie should be reporting this. They
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: want to pretend it's not true. They think that if
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Maggie doesn't report it, then it's not true.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: The Washington Post confirmed her reporting. Charles Cook, who is
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: not not even a never Trump or a Republican, like
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: a real Republican who has at times been very favorable
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: towards Trump. just wrote this piece in the National Review
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: where he said, yeah, no, everyone's been telling me this.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: I've heard this. Trump really expects to be reinstated in August.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: And not only does he expect that, but he now
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: hopes that this belief that he should be reinstated is
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: a litmus test for all the candidates that he may
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: endorse in 2022. And this is how it also shapes
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: the entire Republican Party, right? Like it puts down a
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: marker for the crazy supporters out there that may act
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: on this, like that you guys were saying. But also
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: for Republican candidates, now this is the party line that
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: they have to tow if they hope to win a primary.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: So now you have the entire Republican infrastructure being like, yeah,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: not only was the election stolen, but we should get
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: this guy back in office. And that's how things spiral
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: out of control, you know?
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember it makes me think, John, of like
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: when we were in office in 11 and 12 and
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: you'd see these polls of Republicans that said like a
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: majority of Republicans thought Barack Obama wasn't born in the
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: United States. And it was easy to kind of laugh
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: at that. But then that dynamic of people living in
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: a totally alternative reality led to a birther becoming the
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: Republican nominee and then President of the United States, right?
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: And we haven't done enough soul searching in this country.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: The fact that it's not just these people disagree with us.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: It's that they believe things that are the opposite of
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: the truth. And I had a young person in Hong
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: Kong describe to me the essence of the Chinese totalitarianism
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: is that essentially they ask you to point at a
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: deer and call it a horse. The goal is to
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: get people to live in an alternate reality, because once
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: you've done that, you control them, you know, and unwinding that,
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: particularly as those people are getting elected to the US
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: Congress is going to make everything else we have to
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: do harder. And it's going to make each election a
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: kind of existential election for American democracy, because you don't
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: want those people to get their hands on the levers
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: of power.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you, if If you were in the
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: White House right now, if we were all back in
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: the White House and this was happening, what can the
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Biden administration do about a growing threat of extremism that
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: happens to involve a former president of the United States?
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: There's no playbook for this.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: Lock him up.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, we'd be having meetings with DHS, Department of
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Homeland Security, and DOJ. I don't even know what you do.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: Well, one thing, and Dan and I've talked about this,
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: you know, that you haven't heard much from the Biden
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: people on yet is what their approach is going to
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: be to social media. And, you know, it's all well
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: and good for Twitter to kind of ostracize Trump to
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: his blog, but the algorithm of Facebook is still turbocharging
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: disinformation into everybody's feeds on a daily basis. And the
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: regulation that is necessary to affect those algorithms and start
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: to kind of detoxify American discourse. That's one thing. It's
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: not the only thing. But that's one thing that I've
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: been surprised to hear so little about thus far.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Question for you, Dan. You know, one thing we
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: should mention here is that Trump's blog, which Ben just mentioned,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: is dead after just 29 days RIP. A Trump advisor
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: told the Washington Post that the former president didn't like
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: that it was being mocked as a loser for getting
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: fewer visitors than the Pet Adoption Service pet finder.
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: First of all, the.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Idea that he like that suddenly the blog can be
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: mocked as a loser. The blog as a loser, I
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: thought was very funny. I'm tempted to laugh about this,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: but there's a question here. What does it say that
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Trump was banned from all social media sites, launched a
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: blog that no one visited? lost most of his free
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: media coverage, and is still so popular within the Republican
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Party that he's not only leading the 2024 primary polls,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: he's got supporters who want to reinstall him in a
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: military coup.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't want to miss the opportunity to
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: take some personal, maybe it's petty joy at Donald Trump
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: failing at blocking. I find that enjoyable. I do think
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: he's underestimating the amount of traffic that something called petfinder.com
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: would get. People like pets, not that many people like Trump,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: so that seems fine.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Do you think Donald Trump will start a sub-stack now?
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Probably, yes. I think there's some serious elements of this
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: that we ought to think about pretty seriously because it's
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: fun to laugh at and I'm not denying anyone fun
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: at Trump's expense ever. But it is a massive indictment
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: of Facebook and in particular, because their argument always is
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: that this is the content people want. We're just serving
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: it up to you. But here you have Trump has content.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: He's off Facebook, and no one is going to get it.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: And so what that shows is that it's not that
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Facebook is giving people what they want. Facebook is giving
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: people something pretty dangerous that they think they want. And
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: that has had a very alarming, radicalizing effect on the
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: American people. And the same could be said for Twitter,
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: to a lesser extent, based on how their algorithms work.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: I think even the more concerning thing is the entire
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: understanding of Trump's rise to political power is that he
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: is this massive celebrity with this fake business cred who
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: had an ability to dominate the political conversation that no
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: one else could have. And it's been this sort of
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: comfort for Democrats and media types that all these Trump
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: wannabes do not have that ability. Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz,
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Josh Hawley, they're just losers. They're like generic mayonnaise versions
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: of Trump.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: And Don't forget Mike Pompeo, Dan.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: A world of favorite. A world of favorite.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: He's so lame that I literally forgot Mike Pompeo. I
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: forgot he was the person that existed. And that sort
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: of a sense is like, well, if we defeat Trump
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: or Trump goes away or goes to jail, then this
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: will be fine because no one else can do what
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: he did. But what should be so scary to your point, John,
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: is that he is banned from social media. Other than
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: a handful of phone calls with Maria Bartiromo, he is
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: absent from media, yet his power in control of the
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Republican Party is stronger than it was before, which suggests
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: that he is not the leader of the movement. He's
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: just a vessel for a very powerful movement that exists
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: and will persist after he's gone. And I do think
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: that that should force everyone to recognize that what we're
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: dealing with here is not about Trump. It's a structural
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: problem within American politics that Trump benefited from. He didn't create.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Well, I also think that it's evidence that there are
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: more evidence that there is a sort of closed right
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: wing information ecosystem that Donald Trump both benefited from and
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: helped build as well. And Ben, you talk about this
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: in the book, too, that like some of these autocrats,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: it's not that they just, you know, went over and
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: took control of the of the media on their own
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: and said that everything's going to be state run media now.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Like some of what they did was similar to how
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: the conservative media infrastructure has been built here in the
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: United States. It's like a little more gradual than you
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: might think.
• 19:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, Putin really perfected this playbook and it started
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: with his cronies buying up TV stations and the like,
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: but it really didn't tip into this more dangerous and
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: virulent control that he has over society there until He
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: realized how much you could just flood social media and
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: manipulate the algorithm. I mean, this is intentional. People know
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: that they can kind of turbocharge certain narratives and conspiracy theories.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: I remember talking to Navalny before, tragically, he was poisoned
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: and then imprisoned over the course of last summer. And
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: he was explaining to me how comprehensive this was in that, yes,
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: there are, of course, trolls that were making him out
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: to be a criminal and making him out to be
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: an enemy of the Russian people. But there was also
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: a huge conspiracy theory that actually Navalny was a double
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: agent and he was working for the FSB, the Russian
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: intelligence outlet. And this enraged Navalny because one of the
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: things that they would argue in this conspiracy theory is, well,
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: if he was really an opponent of Putin's, he'd be
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: dead by now. And Navalny's like, hey, guys, I'm still alive.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: Does that mean I'm a double agent? But it speaks
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: to the fact that these are, in part, the algorithms
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: prioritizing sensationalism, but like this is by design. And I
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: don't think that's a conspiracy theory here. I think if
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: you look at QAnon, clearly there's an effort to kind
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: of turbocharge a conspiracy theory and shape the minds of
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: unwitting people consuming that information. And that's why I do
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: think this is the kind of thing that requires a
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: policy response, you know, just sitting back and And hoping
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: that Facebook solves this because they've got a PR problem
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: is clearly not sufficient.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: So some Republicans aren't quite ready to call for a
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: military coup. Fucking rhinos. They're trying to win the next
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: election the old fashioned way by making it harder for
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Democrats to vote. That's happening in Texas, where the Republicans
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: voter suppression legislation was temporarily stopped this week when Democrats
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: in the statehouse walked out of the chamber, which denied
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Republicans a quorum and prevented a vote on the bill.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Governor Greg Abbott responded by threatening to cut the entire
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: legislature's funding. And he said that he'll call a special
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: session to revive the bill. But Democrats said that they
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: hope the episode serves as a wake up call to
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: their colleagues in Washington to pass the For the People Act.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Here's what state Representative Trey Martinez Fisher had to say
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: to Joe Manchin.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: You know, down here in Texas, we'd say when times
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: get tough, it's time to cowboy up. And so with
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: all due respect, I'd ask Senator Manchin to please cowboy up.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: President Biden also had a message for both Manchin and
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Kyrsten Sinema during his remarks to commemorate the 100th anniversary
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: of the Tulsa massacre, though his dig was a bit
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: more subtle.
• 22:29
  Speaker 6: I hear all the folks on TV saying, why doesn't
• 22:31
  Speaker 6: Biden get this done? Well, because Biden only has a
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: majority of effectively four votes in the House and a
• 22:38
  Speaker 6: tie in the Senate with two members of the Senate
• 22:42
  Speaker 6: who vote more with my Republican friends.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: So the president also said that he's putting Vice President
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris in charge of voting rights and that he'll, quote,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: fight like heck to ensure the passage of the For
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: the People Act. Question, Dan, will any of this make
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: a difference to Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema or any of
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: the other filibuster loving Democratic senators who are hiding behind
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema? Say their names, John.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: It changes with every story. Gene Shaheen seems upset. Then
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: John Tester is not sure. Then the two Democratic senators
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: from Delaware that you're eventually going to run against. They're
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: out there. We're not sure about both of them. I'm
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: going to run against both of them. Dan's going to
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: run against both of them. He's going to take up
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: both seats.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Because that's just how much I love the Senate.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: And Delaware.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: And Delaware.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: I do love Delaware.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: Back off.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: We don't know, right?
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: I was very pleased to hear Biden talk about this
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: and say he's going to fight like heck for it.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: I'm glad that he has put Kamala Harris in charge.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: We know from our time there that it's always better
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: when there is one person in charge of a big project,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: because particularly as the vice president, Biden did this a
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: bunch for Obama, whether it was on gun safety after Newtown,
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: the Recovery Act, Iraq policy in the first term, because
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: they can bring to bear entire office on this project
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: and it becomes a top priority, which sometimes is hard
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: in the day-to-day crisis management that the president must deal with.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: So that's very good. I don't know whether it's going
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: to make a difference. It may just be that Joe
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and the unnamed others would prefer
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: to preserve the filibuster than save democracy and that nothing
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: will change their mind.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: But we don't know that.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: And that is why we're on the clock now. We
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: have Senator Schumer said they're going to bring up the
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: For the People Act, S-1, in June. And I think
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: it's incumbent upon all of us, particularly Joe Biden, Kamala Harris,
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Chuck Schumer, to make it as uncomfortable as fucking possible
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: for the people who may stand in the way of this.
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Like, if your decision is that the filibuster is so important,
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: as Kyrsten Sinema so annoyingly said, standing in Texas, the
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: basically ground zero for– democracy rigging right now, said that,
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: you know, extolled the virtue of the filibuster. If they
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: think that is so important, then they should feel pain,
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: that political pain for doing that, right? It should be
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: uncomfortable when they go into their states and their districts
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: should be uncomfortable when they turn on their TV. To
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: all the other Democratic senators out there, it should be
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: uncomfortable in the lunch line at the Senate. You see
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Joe Manchin, you see Kyrsten Sinema, talk to him about this,
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: put pressure on him. Because I do think that this
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: is one of those times in history that people will
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: remember for decades. When they look back on this time,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: I wish people thought it was the American Rescue Plan.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Maybe they'll think it's the infrastructure plan, but I think
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: it'll be what we did at this moment to protect
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: our democracy. Because you know how Biden talks about how
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: he wants to be like an FDR-style president, where we
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: have this crisis and we're going to use it to
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: put in place economic change. And that sort of view
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: has informed, I think, a lot of his very progressive
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: policy choices. But I don't think it's FDR that's the
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: right model for this. It's LBJ. Because right now the
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: crisis we're dealing with is democratic and all those other
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: things that Joe Biden wants to address that are.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: Very real, right?
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Growing economic inequality, healthcare crisis, poverty, hunger, all of that.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: None of that can happen if we don't fix our democracy.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: And so this is the thing. And I hope he
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: talks about it every day between now and the moment
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: when it either happens or it's too late. I hope
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: he calls Joe Manchin every day. I hope he calls
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Kyrsten Sinema every day. I hope he goes to their
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: states and puts pressure on them, particularly Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: because it This is it. Rant over.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Apologies. No, no. What do you guys think the conversation
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: in the White House was like that led Biden to
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: include that subtle dig? Because it did sound it been
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: it sounded like a line that we would have definitely
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: given to Obama and that Obama would have liked to
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: make a little subtle dig at them. And then, you know,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: we'd hear from. from people in Washington that like, oh,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the senators hate when Obama lectures them. But like, it's very,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: it was very unbinding to do that. I was happy
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: he did.
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, yeah, you're right. I mean, it's kind
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: of language that would be incredibly parsed. Although people couldn't
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: decide whether we shouldn't lecture people or whether we should
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: be like LBJ and lean over them and point fingers
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: in their face. I think when you look at the
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: appointment of Kamala to take on this responsibility combined with
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: this new shift in language, it's a good awareness on
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: their part that, as Dan has pointed out, Nobody looks
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: back at 2009 and says, well, Obama could have done
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: a little bit more, but for Max Baucus, right? I mean,
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: people are going to remember whether or not Joe Biden
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: got this done, fair or not. And the only answer,
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: given the stakes involved, is to be relentless and comprehensive
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: in what you're doing. Because again, having looked at how
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: parties that don't have majority support entrench themselves and hold
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: on to power despite that, what's happening isn't subtle. Like
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Texas- What we're looking at on the map, and I
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: know this from being an avid listener to the Thursday Pod,
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: but the whole game of American politics are these states, Georgia,
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: North Carolina, Texas, Florida, that the question is, can the
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: Democrats start winning these states to account for the fact
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: that they're losing some of these states in the upper Midwest?
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: So it's no coincidence that the most intense voter suppression efforts,
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: including efforts that would allow for election results to literally
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: be overturned, by Republican elected officials are taking place in
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: those states. And you have to deal with that through
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: using your megaphone, as Dan said, as best you can,
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: and connecting the kind of top down campaign that only
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: a president and vice president can lead with the kind
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: of bottom up efforts that you're going to talk about
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: with Stacey Abrams. It's like an all hands on deck
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: moment here. And just because it looks hard and difficult,
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: and just because Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin look stubborn,
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: isn't a reason to kind of throw up your hands
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: and say, okay, we're going to move on to infrastructure.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: Like this is the whole ballgame here and they have
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: to throw everything they have at it. And I think
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: this was the first step and probably an escalation, hopefully,
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: of a campaign run out of the White House that
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: is top down and bottom up.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. All right, we have some good news.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: On Tuesday, Democrats won a landslide victory in a New
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Mexico special election to fill the House seat of Interior
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Secretary Deb Haaland. The win itself was expected, but the
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: margin was not. Democratic State Representative Melanie Stansberry beat Republican
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: State Senator Mark Moores by 25 points in a suburban
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Albuquerque district that Joe Biden won by 23 points and
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Deb Haaland won by 16 points. The New York Times
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: had called the race a, quote, crucial test of the
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Republican focus on crime. It Moores effectively ran a one-issue
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: campaign against Stansberry in which he linked rising crime in
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Albuquerque to her past support for a congressional proposal that
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: would cut police funding and abolish ICE. It didn't work.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: One possible reason is that Stansberry massively outspent Moores with
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: ads that featured police officers talking about how much public
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: safety funding she helped bring to Albuquerque. Dan, what, if anything,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: can this special election tell us about the political environment
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: in the Biden era?
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: It is very easy to overread these special elections and
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: parties tend to dismiss the ones they underperform and tout
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: the ones they overperform. But in a world where you
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: have to take every poll with like a trainload of salt,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: a special election is an actual piece of real data
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: to look at. And in that sense, Democrats should feel
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: very encouraged about it. It is one where, you know,
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: this was not a Mark Moore who was a Republican candidate.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: It was not some sort of like MAGA reject who
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: slipped through in a low turnout primary. It was a
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: very good candidate. I believe he represented a Biden district,
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: a district that Biden won in New Mexico. And the
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: fact that Stansbury exceeded Biden's margin is a sign that
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Democrats stay engaged. And there's some real warning signs for
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Republicans that at least in this district on this day,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: there may be a challenge for Republicans running in without
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Trump on the ballot as they saw in 2018?
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: The question I have is what we've seen over the
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: last couple of years is just polarization increase and intensify.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: And I start to wonder if some of this overperformance
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: as time goes on, like blue districts are just going
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: to get bluer, red districts are going to get redder,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: and the fight is still... What's really going to tell
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: us about the 2022 midterms or the 2024 presidential are
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: these districts where it's just a lot closer and more competitive.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: And it's really hard to draw too many conclusions from
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: a blue district like this. Or, you know, a couple
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: of weeks ago or months ago, we were talking about
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: that sort of redder district in Texas that the Republicans
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: sort of won big on. So I'm just I was wondering,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: what do you think about that?
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, I'm not sure you're familiar
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: with the dynamic of this podcast, and I recognize you
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: had a very significant birthday this week, so maybe your
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: mentality's changed, but you're half full and I'm half empty.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: And so if we're going to switch that, I'm cool
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: with it, but just give me a heads up, right?
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: I just started to be more pessimistic than possible about
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: this win. Turning 40 is hard.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: It's hard.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Like, I get it. I think that dynamic helps us
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: in a bunch of, because everyone keeps talking about like, oh,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: the suburban districts. Well, the suburban voters who turned out
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: for Joe Biden and voted against Donald Trump, who might
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: have been former Republicans, will they stay with us? My
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: glass half full answer to that is yes, they will,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: because those districts are becoming more polarized and thus more blue.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: I think on some of the other districts that are
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: like a little more rural, a little more exurban, I
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: think it's going to be harder for us. And I
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: think once again, this is like trench warfare in a
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: very closely divided country between red and blue that's going
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: to keep these elections up for grabs, both the more
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: competitive House ones, if we have competitive House elections left,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: and of course, the national popular vote for president. But
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: we shall see. So Republicans are excited to run on
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: rising crime rates regardless. You can imagine Trump and other
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: candidates yelling about Democrat run cities where immigrants are committing
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: all kinds of crimes. That's going to be their their
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: their favorite attack. Ben, isn't this another page out of
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: the authoritarian playbook that you've seen in other countries really
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: harping on crime and immigration and others? And has it
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: has it worked in those places?
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I was thinking even listening to the
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: previous discussion, you know, So Viktor Orban, who's such an
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: interesting laboratory, it's like looking in miniature at this global trend,
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: including the Republican Party here. You know, he has this anti-immigrant,
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: tough on crime message. And what he does with his
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: media is, you know, he'll take one crime and just
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: blow it out on television and blow it out in
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: the kind of newspapers that reach people in rural areas
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: in Hungary. And sometimes, frankly, it's not even like a
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: true crime. They're just mainlining fear into communities where there
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: really isn't actually that much crime in rural Hungary. There
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: really aren't that many immigrants. But it was enough to
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: shape a kind of politics of fear that turned his
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: people out. And I profile in the book a young
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: woman who's in her early 30s, so much younger than
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: you now, John. Thank you. Appreciate that. And she started
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: a political party with some of her friends. And they
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: did two things that were really smart that I think
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: are instructive to us. The first is they were a
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: single issue party out of the gate, anti-corruption. Everybody kind
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: of suspects Orbán is corrupt. Everybody suspects he's on the take.
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: And he wanted to host an Olympics in Hungary, which
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: everybody knew he would have done what Putin did, which
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: is skim a few billion dollars off the top. to
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: enrich himself and his cronies. And they got a lot
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: of traction with an anti-corruption message, which by the way,
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: is popular everywhere, including with Orban supporters, right? So it's
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: a reminder that sometimes, you know, this is, as you
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: guys talk about, don't forget to make your offensive message
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: that has the most traction in these places. And here
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: it's the same thing. It's corruption, it's tax breaks for
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: corporations and the wealthy. But then the next thing they
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: did is they went very deliberately after they lost some
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: elections in their first try, They went into all these
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: rural places and they showed up and they went door
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: to door, literally. And the first reaction they got is
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: you guys are socialist, you're George Soros puppets because that
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: conspiracy theory is in Hungary too. But they ate into
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: the support that Orban has. And the reason that Orban
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: is actually politically vulnerable is because of a very concerted
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: effort to drive a very negative contrast on corruption and
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: to start showing up in all these places, even if
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: you're going to lose them, right? And I do think
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: that there's no other way to do it. I mean,
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: Obama used to say to us, I remember him saying
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: to me, Dan, all those events you organized in 2012,
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: where he'd do a big rally, and that was kind
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: of the blue state people showing up. But then he'd
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: always go to some barbecue place, and he'd shake every
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: single hand in the place. And usually it was like
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: people look a little grumpy and meet him. And he's like, look,
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: like everybody in that place thinks I'm the Antichrist. But
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: you know what, if like a few of them are
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: just going to say, Well, actually, he seems like a
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: good man, or at least he has a good marriage.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: Maybe some of those people will vote for him. Maybe
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: they won't at least spread the most nefarious conspiracy theories
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: about him. And he's like, that's the only armor I have.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: And so it's a reminder, you do have to show
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: up in all these places. That's the only way to
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: push back against the diet of misinformation and disinformation, people
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: are being fed.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's certainly, you know, about to talk to
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Stacey Abrams, but that's the Stacey Abrams playbook in Georgia, right?
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Show up everywhere, talk to everyone, and don't leave anyone out. Dan,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: do you think that the New Mexico race shows that
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Democrats have finally found a way to rebut the defund
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: the police attacks or these crime attacks? Because certainly Stansbury,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: at least I mean, we know that they didn't hurt
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: her or she had a margin that was bigger than Biden's.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: I don't want to draw all the conclusions for this,
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: but it seems pretty clear that advertising against it, both
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: responding to the attacks and insulating yourself from them, is
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: going to be one piece of a successful 2022 strategy.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: And what I thought was interesting, and I watched a
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: couple of the Stansbury ads, which is she made the
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: point credentialing herself on law enforcement, making it harder for
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: someone to believe that she would want to abolish or
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: defund the police in the most right-wing pejorative sense of
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: that term, and then pivoting immediately to attacking her opponent.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: And so you don't dwell on it. You don't play
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: by their set of the rules. It's what we often
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: talk about is you call it out, you correct the record,
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: and you move back to sort of stronger territory, and
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: that's good. This is not going away. There are several
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: elements of this. Crime is going up. in parts of
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: the country, and Democrats need to address it rhetorically and substantively. Second,
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: we always have to recognize that Republicans are not focusing
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: on crime because crime's going up. Crime is just one
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: part of a decades-long strategy to make white people more
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: scared of non-white people. It's sort of their central political thesis,
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: and that's immigration, that's welfare, that's crime, that's all of this,
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: and that's going to be there. But this is not some...
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: right-wing fever dream. I was looking at polling on crime
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: this morning in preparation for this podcast. And I saw
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: this Yahoo YouGov poll, which showed that more Americans rated
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: crime as a very big problem than the coronavirus, race relations,
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: the economy, political correctness. And so when you see that,
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: oftentimes you think it's going to be 95-5 Republicans and
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: then independence, more close to the middle, and then very
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: few Democrats. But in that poll, so it was 49%
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: of all Americans found crime to be a very big problem.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: It was 45% of Democrats. And so this is something
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: that our voters are also concerned about. And we have
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: to have responses to it that are not dismissive of
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: the issue. We have to have progressive policy response and
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: progressive messaging around it that diffuses the Republican attack, but
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: doesn't dismiss it in a way that makes our voters
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: think we're out of touch with what's happening in their districts.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: I will say also, she did two things at once
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: here in this campaign. She didn't completely disavow her vote
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: for the Breathe Act, which was this proposal pushed by
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter activists that would divert some police funding
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: to the community. And she talked a lot during the
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: campaign about racial justice. She didn't shy away from that
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: either in the need for police reform. And yet she
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: also had a bunch of ads with cops in them.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: and talked about public safety and how public safety funding
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: was important and how she brought public safety funding into
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: to Albuquerque to protect citizens. So she really tried to
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: do two things at once. And I don't imagine she
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: would have wanted to run this campaign without the ad
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: with the cop in it or talking about how she
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: supported public safety funding. But also, she didn't shy away
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: from talking about racial justice and police reform. And she
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: wasn't like some centrist Democrat that was like, oh, now
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: I can't talk about that because they're attacking me. So
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: it is an interesting balance that she struck there that
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: I wonder if other candidates will try to do the
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: same thing.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Well, voters are smarter than most politicians and certainly most
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: political consultants think they are. So you can be both, right?
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: You can have concerns about police conduct and want more
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: police accountability and you want to be very concerned about
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: the impact of structural racism in your community and particularly
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: in law enforcement and also be for– Funding that makes
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: your community safer. You can do all of those things
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: and you can talk about it in a way that
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: makes sense. It's not an either or. And sometimes we
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: default into that. And so, you know, kudos to our
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: campaign team for pulling this off because it was very
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: well done. I do think it is a model for
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: some Democrats. It's going to be harder. And this is
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: not a positive statement about American life and American politics.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: But these attacks are always more vehement and more dangerous
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: when they are levied against black and brown candidates. And
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: so you know that that is going to come against
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: a lot of these candidates. And they're going to have...
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: And I'd say one more thing about this, which is resources.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: We should not dismiss the resource advantage here, is that
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: in some cases in these House races where we lost,
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Republicans were spending money and Democrats weren't on these attacks.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: And so the fact that Sandsbury spent more than her
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: opponent is something we should just keep in the back
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: of our mind that we haven't exactly– we shouldn't assume
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: we figured out exactly how to do this, but that
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: there's maybe sort of the seeds of a strategy going forward.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: All right. When we come back, Stacey Abrams. I'm now
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: joined by the organizing legend who helped turn Georgia blue
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: after nearly two decades of Republican wins. In her spare time,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: she's written her ninth novel, the number one New York
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Times bestseller, While Justice Sleeps. Stacey Abrams, welcome back to
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: the pod.
• 41:40
  Speaker 5: Thank you for having me.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: So we were just talking about the coordinated Republican attack
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: on voting rights. I'll be honest, I'm sort of at
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: a loss right now about what to do. Joe Manchin
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: and Kyrsten Sinema have ruled out getting rid of the filibuster.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Manchin has said no on a filibuster carve out for
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: voting rights, which is what you've suggested. And even if
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: there were no filibuster, he said he doesn't actually support
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: the For the People Act as written, which we can't
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: pass without him. So how do we protect the right
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: to vote?
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: I begin with the posture that people take positions based
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: on the current environment and that the more we see
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: evidence of perfidy and malfeasance, the more likely we are
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: to see change. I believe that as a former Secretary
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: of State that Joe Manchin understands how fragile our democracy
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: actually is without the rule of law to protect the
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: most vulnerable voters. And his ethos, which is to say
• 42:42
  Speaker 5: that he wants to protect the voice of minorities in
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: the Senate, should extend to protecting the voice of minorities
• 42:48
  Speaker 5: as American citizens. Part of what we are seeing play
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: out here is shifting the narrative from one of this
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: is Democrats versus Republicans to one of this being Republicans
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: versus Americans. This is not partisanship. This is about citizenship.
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: And the more we can amplify and populate with evidence
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: the proof of their intention, I think the more likely
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: we are to actually see a shift in behavior. I
• 43:16
  Speaker 5: can't say that's for certain, but I know that given
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: my time in the state legislature, there were moments where
• 43:22
  Speaker 5: I was absolutely certain, or at least certainly I should
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: have been convinced that no movement was possible, but I
• 43:28
  Speaker 5: saw it happen. Now, that notwithstanding, we still have to fight.
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: We need to get to the place where we can
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: get people on board. And that means really articulating the
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: critical provisions of the For the People Act, which are essential.
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: That may mean that we can't have everything we want
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: in the For the People Act, But we must have
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: enough to preserve access to the ballot. And I think
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: what we saw happen in Texas, what happened in Georgia,
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: what happened in Florida, what happened in Arizona, what's about
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: to happen in Ohio, what happened in Oklahoma and in
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: Kansas and in Iowa signal that this is not a
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: limited issue. This is not a Southern issue. This is
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: not a Black issue. This is a citizenship democracy issue.
• 44:12
  Speaker 5: And it is a continuation of the insurrection. And I
• 44:15
  Speaker 5: know that Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema have both signaled
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: that they believe that the insurrection was wrong, and thus
• 44:22
  Speaker 5: we should be holding them accountable and providing the evidence
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: necessary to demonstrate that if you disagreed with the attempt
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: to dismantle our democracy on January 6th, you should disagree
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: with this coordinated attack on our democracy at the state level.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: Have you had any conversations with Manchin or Sinema about
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: this topic?
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: I have not.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: Do you think you might?
• 44:44
  Speaker 5: I would hope so, but part of my responsibility is
• 44:47
  Speaker 5: to Make certain that we as a nation are speaking
• 44:50
  Speaker 5: with one voice about this issue, that we move this
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: beyond a conversation of what happened in November of 2020
• 44:59
  Speaker 5: to a conversation of what is going to happen to
• 45:02
  Speaker 5: us in 2030 or 2022 or 2024 if we do
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: not address this triple assault on our democracy.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: You mentioned making sure that a final bill had the
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: most critical provisions of H.R. 1 of the For the
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: People Act. What do you think are like the we
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: can't live without provisions in that bill?
• 45:22
  Speaker 5: So I would start with what's happening at the state
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: level to signal. So there are three pieces. One is
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: the anti-voter provisions that are sweeping our country. And that
• 45:31
  Speaker 5: means that we have to protect voters in their right
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: to access, the right to register, the right to stay
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: on the rolls, their right to cast a ballot and
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: their right to have those ballots counted. So Can you
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: register and stay? Can you cast? Can you count? That
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: means we have to have automatic voter registration, same day registration.
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: We have to have in-person early voting no matter where
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: you live because we no longer live in an agrarian
• 45:52
  Speaker 5: economy where everyone can take off Tuesday in November to
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: go and vote. And we have to have no excuses
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: absentee balloting because the Republican intent is to limit voting
• 46:02
  Speaker 5: to a single day unless you are infirm, disabled, elderly,
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: or in the military. Those should not be the only
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: exceptions we make to a system that was put in
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: place long before our economy evolved, before our nation evolved.
• 46:16
  Speaker 5: So we have to push back against the anti-voter provisions.
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: The second wave of attack is against election workers themselves.
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: And we are seeing this play out in response to
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: the horrific lies told about election workers in Michigan and
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: in Georgia and in Arizona. And a number of these
• 46:32
  Speaker 5: laws are weakening their protections, increasing their liability and and
• 46:36
  Speaker 5: putting them in harm's way by allowing more poll watchers,
• 46:40
  Speaker 5: meaning poll intimidators, to come in and question their work
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: without evidence or without knowledge. And then the third attack
• 46:49
  Speaker 5: that's happening is that we are watching a subversion of
• 46:53
  Speaker 5: American democracy by allowing legislators, you know, people in power
• 46:58
  Speaker 5: to overturn the outcome of elections. I mean, in Texas,
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: the bill that was stopped briefly, unfortunately it will come
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: back in special session, said that you could try to
• 47:06
  Speaker 5: overturn an election without proof of fraud, which means that
• 47:10
  Speaker 5: you just don't have, if you just don't like the
• 47:12
  Speaker 5: outcome and they're going to be those who push back
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: and say, that's not what it says exactly, but I'm
• 47:16
  Speaker 5: a good enough lawyer. And it's similar to what they've
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: done in Georgia. When laws are this porous and when
• 47:22
  Speaker 5: they're this poorly written and this hidden from the from investigation,
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: you know that the intention is to allow the unspoken
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: to become the rule. And when we can have our
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: elections overturned by the bad actions of others, that is
• 47:38
  Speaker 5: deeply problematic. Right now, the For the People Act addresses
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: the anti-voting provisions. There are conversations about adding more protections
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: in for election workers and the subversion of democracy. But
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: those are the three pieces that we're going to absolutely
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: have to move if we want to see sound elections
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: heading forward.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: I'm really interested in that last part, because I know
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of people have pointed out that the current
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: version of the For the People Act doesn't include enough
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: protections around election subversion. Have you heard of legislative proposals
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: anywhere that would address that, whether it's, you know, a
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: state legislature overturning the election, whether it's the House of Representatives,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: whether it's a county board, a secretary of state's office? Obviously,
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Republicans are trying to plant Trumpy people in all of
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: these offices. But how do we prevent against that? What
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: can we do to prevent election subversion?
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: So they're not only trying to plant people in, they're
• 48:26
  Speaker 5: actually trying to strip people of power, what they did
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: to Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. And we've seen vestiges
• 48:31
  Speaker 5: of this when Republicans won recent elections, they go in
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: and strip the constitutional officers of power that people have
• 48:40
  Speaker 5: enjoyed for, or that these offices have held for decades,
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: if not centuries. So what we know is that this
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: is a new This is a new phenomenon. And so
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: I don't think legislation has been introduced, but I have
• 48:53
  Speaker 5: great faith that legislation will soon follow because we're just
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: now seeing this play out. Now, we've been warning about
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: it for a while, but now that we actually see
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: it happening, when the Heritage Action Fund for America acknowledges
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: their intention, I think that finally signals that we need
• 49:10
  Speaker 5: legislative action. So my hope is that as this bill
• 49:12
  Speaker 5: moves forward, if amendments are allowed, that we will see
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: the kind of amendments necessary to protect against what is
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: happening at the state level.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: You and I have talked before about how one of
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: the more pernicious aspects of voter suppression is that it
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: makes people think this just isn't worth it. I might
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: as well stay home. If this round of voter restrictions
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: becomes law, or at least if some of them become law,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: how do we get people to believe that their vote
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: in 2022 matters and will be counted?
• 49:41
  Speaker 5: By talking about what's happening now. As long as this
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: is framed as Democrats versus Republicans, as progressives versus conservatives,
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: it's a pox on all your houses. But when we
• 49:52
  Speaker 5: frame this for voters as a conversation about your right
• 49:55
  Speaker 5: to be heard in the future, If you were unhappy
• 49:59
  Speaker 5: with the response in your community to COVID-19 and you
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: want to have a say the next election, this is
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: going to be a problem. If your children didn't have
• 50:08
  Speaker 5: access to the technology they needed to participate in remote learning,
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: the school board elections matter. And these laws are not
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: just about the presidential election. These laws, once they become
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: inculcated into our fabric, They affect every election and every
• 50:24
  Speaker 5: facet of life. And so we've got to talk about
• 50:26
  Speaker 5: this as one, an attack on democracy, and two, an
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: attack on community. When you are being told as a
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: community that you will not have the right to make
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: decisions without someone coming in and possibly overturning your choice,
• 50:39
  Speaker 5: regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, as
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: a citizen, that is a subversion of democracy. And so
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: I think the way we get people on board is
• 50:48
  Speaker 5: that we do what we're trying to do through StopGemPro2. com,
• 50:51
  Speaker 5: which is that we're talking about voter suppression every day.
• 50:54
  Speaker 5: The more we talk about it, the more people realize
• 50:57
  Speaker 5: this is a systematic attack on their right to vote
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: and for communities of color in particular, it's been a
• 51:02
  Speaker 5: systemic issue. But that we have to frame this as
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: a systematic attack that can only be thwarted the same
• 51:09
  Speaker 5: way we took action in 2020 and 2021. And that's
• 51:13
  Speaker 5: by showing up and declaring what we want.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Speaking of 2022, what, if anything, would prevent you from
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: being a candidate for governor of Georgia? I figured I'd
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: try it that way.
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: And that's a novel approach, nicely done. My focus right
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: now is on making sure we have elections, but I'm
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: also really focused on making sure that the work that
• 51:33
  Speaker 5: I need to do doesn't get clouded by conversations about
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: what I may want personally. This is an all call.
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: And my responsibility as someone who is speaking about this
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: issue is to be solely and singularly focused on how
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: we make our democracy stronger. And so I'm not making
• 51:51
  Speaker 5: any decisions about my personal investment anytime soon.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Do you have a timeline in mind? Because I know
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: that for the 18 race, it was June of this year,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: the year before the race that you made the formal
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: announcement that you were running.
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: I don't have a timeline. I will say this. It's
• 52:08
  Speaker 5: very different where I was in 17 versus where I
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: am now.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: That is true.
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: It's different. And- Part of what I hope for is
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: that we are building an infrastructure for Georgia and for
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: the country that doesn't require that kind of advanced behavior. Luckily,
• 52:28
  Speaker 5: the infrastructure we built in 2017 morphed into the infrastructure
• 52:32
  Speaker 5: that became Fair Fight. I do not intend to leverage
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: it for any other purposes. than to fight for democracy.
• 52:39
  Speaker 5: But what I mean is that infrastructure that made it
• 52:43
  Speaker 5: possible for more voters to be heard, which is what
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: my campaign was grounded in. It was grounded in turning
• 52:48
  Speaker 5: out voters who had not been heard before. As long
• 52:51
  Speaker 5: as that work continues, as long as we continue to
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: amplify the voices of citizens, lift up the needs of
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: residents and community members, then that work is good and
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: that work is being done. And I've got some time
• 53:03
  Speaker 5: to think about the rest.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: Can we nerd out about writing for a few questions?
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: So I got in, got into bed the other night
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: and my wife, Emily was reading your latest novel while
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: justice sleeps. And she had this like pained expression on
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: her face. And I was like, do you not like it?
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: And she said, no, I love it, but I can
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: barely respond to emails. Like how on earth does Stacey
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Abrams find time to write a novel while she's flipping Georgia?
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Which I thought would be a good question to ask you.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: Like what made you want to write this in the
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: middle of everything else you're doing? And how do you
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: find the time? When do you write? Okay.
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: So in defense of everyone, I wrote this book actually
• 53:38
  Speaker 5: a decade ago and not get anyone to buy it
• 53:41
  Speaker 5: because they thought that there's no, it was absurd that
• 53:44
  Speaker 5: there would be a corrupt president involved in international intrigue
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: or that the Supreme court would matter.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: So, well, that's fun.
• 53:52
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 53:53
  Speaker 5: So once those became pressed to you, I went from
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: being absurd to being prescient. Then people were willing to
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: buy the book. And I did spend a lot of
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: 2019 and early 2020, uh, tweaking it and bringing it
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: up to speed. There was a, there come up, there
• 54:07
  Speaker 5: were a few anachronistic moments in the book. Like Avery
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: Keene had a flip phone when I wrote it. There
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: were no smart smartphones to be heard of. So I
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: had to fix some of those pieces. There were some
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: DC folks who pointed out that when I lived in
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: DC and what Adams Morgan was like before gentrification is
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: not where.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: It is today. That is true.
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: In the last 10 years. But yeah, I write because
• 54:31
  Speaker 5: I love telling stories and I try to make sure
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: I carve out time for myself when I've got a
• 54:36
  Speaker 5: story to tell or when I have a book contract
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: to get the book done. And as you know, John,
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: the impetus of a contract that either want the book
• 54:43
  Speaker 5: or their money back gets you to write really fast.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is true. Do you find it easier to
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: write your novels or your political speeches and which do
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: you enjoy more?
• 54:55
  Speaker 5: So I actually don't write most of my speeches down.
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: I tend to speak extemporaneously. So I usually have a,
• 55:00
  Speaker 5: you know, you sort of figure out your general themes
• 55:03
  Speaker 5: and I react to the crowd when I do speeches.
• 55:06
  Speaker 5: My nonfiction writing is just a different type of writing.
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: But for me, I've always written fiction and nonfiction at
• 55:12
  Speaker 5: the same time. I wrote my romance novels when I
• 55:14
  Speaker 5: was writing, you know, my treatises on tax exemptions and
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: the unrelated business income tax policies. So for me, it's
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: just two different sides of my brain. but it's the
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: same response.
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: I'd say. That's some real compartmentalization right there, writing a
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: treatise on task laws while you're writing romance novels. Not
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: too many people do that, I imagine.
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: I'm in a small club, yes.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: How has being a novelist affected how you think about
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: political communication? Because, you know, I certainly, I had the
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: experience of writing with Barack Obama and he wasn't a novelist,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: but he was a writer and watching his transition from
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: being a writer into being sort of a political speaker
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: was interesting to watch, but someone who's written fiction, I'd
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: be even more interested to know how you see that.
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: Whether it's politics or advocacy or business or writing, it's
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: all about telling a good story. And when I say
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: good story, it's about one, making sure your audience can
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: situate themselves in your narrative. Two, that they share your
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: vision for what is to be. And three, that you
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: are so compelling in your imaginings that it feels possible
• 56:25
  Speaker 5: and real. Those are things that you have to do
• 56:28
  Speaker 5: no matter where you are in the universe of behaviors.
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: And for me, it's self-reinforcing. If I'm a good fiction writer,
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: it's because I have to bring enough pathos and humanity
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: to what I say. If I'm writing well in nonfiction,
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: it's because I can take what seems like a stultifying,
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: if not absolutely paralyzingly boring topic and make you care
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: about it for a while. And when I'm talking, you know,
• 56:53
  Speaker 5: when giving political speeches, whether I'm talking about, you know,
• 56:58
  Speaker 5: free port exemptions or criminal justice reform, you've got to
• 57:02
  Speaker 5: believe not only that it's possible, but that you have
• 57:05
  Speaker 5: a role to play in making it so. And so
• 57:07
  Speaker 5: I see it all as a through line.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: So you talked about story. When it comes to the
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: broader story that Democrats tell about what we're for and
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: who we're fighting for, there's been this long-running debate, I
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: know you're very familiar with it, over how much the
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: party should emphasize issues of class and economics versus issues
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: of race and identity. I don't know if you saw
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: this study that came out of Yale last month, but
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: these two political scientists, Micah English and Joshua Kala, asked 5,000
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: people about six policies using different messaging frames. Central finding
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: of their study was that linking public policies to race
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: is detrimental for support of those policies. Now, you've weighed
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: in on this larger debate before in a brilliant foreign
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: affairs essay about identity politics, which everyone should go read
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: if you haven't. But what do you think about those
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: findings and what they say about how Democrats should frame
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: messages and support for policies?
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: I begin by critiquing the comparison to Republicans. Republicans are
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: largely a very homogenous party with a fairly unitary notion
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: of what their mission is. Democrats are everyone else. And
• 58:15
  Speaker 5: so even with a study with 5,000 people, 5,000 people
• 58:20
  Speaker 5: are not gonna vote the same way. And you've got
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: to piece together a coalition that of that 5,000 will
• 58:28
  Speaker 5: include the 300, I'm making that number up because I
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: didn't read the study, the 300 people for whom race
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: was resonant, in fact, was the most important part of it.
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: If you leave them out, that is the margin by
• 58:38
  Speaker 5: which you lose an election because they don't show up.
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: And this notion that we can be so reductive in
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: our politics on the Democratic side, as we have seen
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: be so successful for Republicans, ignores the complexity of our
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: party and the range of needs of our constituents. My
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: point is not that we have to have this overly
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: simplistic messaging, but we've got to be clear about why
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: we're talking about what we're talking about and who we're
• 59:04
  Speaker 5: talking to. I mean, just going to your earlier question
• 59:07
  Speaker 5: about the timing when I started running in 2017, I
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: had to talk to people who had never heard from
• 59:12
  Speaker 5: a politician. And that took a lot of time. And
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: I had to be very specific in my conversations. I
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: told the same story everywhere, but I made certain that
• 59:21
  Speaker 5: I made the story relevant to each person. And so
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: sometimes the relevance of a policy changes. is about the
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: race experience. Some it's about the class experience. For others,
• 59:30
  Speaker 5: it's a geography issue. For some, it's tangential to their identity,
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: but central to their future. And the role of a
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: good politician and the effectiveness of a party is the
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: ability to walk chew gum at the same time and
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: to understand that they're going to be those who join
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: us part of the way and who peel off. And
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: our mission is to make sure they're not peeling off
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: to go to the other side. They're just peeling off
• 59:52
  Speaker 5: because they got distracted and we've got to go and
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: get them again. That's the most effective way for us
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: to message. But this notion that we have to ignore
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 5: factions of our community in order to satisfy and mollify
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: those for whom this is discomforting is exactly how we
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 5: lose elections. And I'm hopeful that because of the proof
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 5: points of so many communities of color showing up in
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 5: 2020 and 2021 in Georgia, that we have seen that
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: it is worthwhile to have multiple conversations about as long
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 5: as we have the same core message, which is that
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: we are here with you, for you, and we are
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 5: about you.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: So one more language question for you about sort of
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: the most effective way for Democrats to talk about particularly
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: issues of race and identity. Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: stirred up a debate last month He gave this interview
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: to Vox where he said, you know, wokeness is a
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: problem and everyone knows it. We have to talk about race.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: We should talk about racial injustice. What I'm saying is
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: we need to do it without using jargony language that's
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: unrecognizable to most people, including most black people, because it
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: signals that you're trying to talk around them. The example
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: he uses are words like Latinx and phrases like communities
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: of color, which he calls faculty lounge language that most
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: people don't use now. Since you just helped flipped a
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: red Southern state for the first time, since James won
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: his last election in 1992, I figured I would ask
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: you for your reaction to that. As someone who thinks
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: a lot about language and communication, and like you just said,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: has gone to communities where people have never heard from
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: a politician, let alone have heard progressive language.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 5: Again, it depends on who you're talking to. The language
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: that's sometimes dismissed as jargony sounds jargony to older people,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 5: but if you're in a room with 18 to 22
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 5: year olds having a conversation about race and you don't
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 5: understand their lexicon, you are going to lose them. So
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 5: you've got to be, we have to be fluent in
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 5: multiple languages, including what can be termed derogatively as wokeness.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 5: It's not that, it's about being able to meet people
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 5: where they are And that language is very pervasive for
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 5: a segment of the population that we need to have
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 5: turnout to vote. There are other communities where I would
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 5: never use language like that, but I need to have
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 5: every set of conversations in my back pocket so that
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 5: when I'm talking to a community, they believe that I
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: understand them, or at least that we are starting with
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 5: the same baseline. And so I don't think he's wrong,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 5: but I do think there's something that is slightly off
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 5: key when you presume that that your experience is normative
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 5: for everyone. There are communities for whom they need to
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 5: hear you use their language in reflection of their experiences
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: because that's how they describe it to themselves. And we've
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: got a lot of communities for whom what's dismissed as
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 5: wokeness is more, this is the first time we've had
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 5: language to describe our experiences of these issues in our
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 5: moment in this political space. And it's an important thing
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: for us to be able to differentiate. Yes, use the
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: language that makes the most sense where you are, but
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 5: don't ignore or dismiss the language that works in other places.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Last question, because we always like to give our listeners
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: something to do and you do great calls to action.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: If people are worried about voting rights right now and
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: the attack on voting rights and they are calling their
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: representatives and they're talking to a Joe Manchin or a
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: Kyrsten Sinema, what should their message be? What would your
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: message be?
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: One, that our democracy is in peril and that January
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: 6th wasn't an anomaly. It was a call to action
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 5: for so many. And our response has to be defending
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: our democracy by leveraging it as best we can. That means, one,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: we've got to talk about voter suppression and we've got
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 5: to use real stories and real examples. And we've got
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 5: to talk about it everywhere. This isn't a Southern problem.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 5: This isn't a Republican problem. This is an American problem.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 5: And we've got to keep talking about it, especially on
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 5: social media, particularly outside of Twitter, because the disinformation campaign
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: that is happening is so aggressive that we've got to
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: be everywhere telling the counter narrative, talking up the For
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 5: the People Act, talking up the John Lewis Voting Rights
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 5: Advancement Act and talking about the fact that voter suppression
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 5: is real. Number two. Support all of the voting rights
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 5: organizations where you live, because even if it's not happening
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 5: to your community on the macro level, strengthening voting rights
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 5: everywhere strengthens it for everyone. And then number three, call
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 5: your congressman, congresswomen, call your senators and demand that they
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 5: pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: Voting Rights Advancement Act. And to get all this in
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 5: a much more succinct form, go to stopjimcrowto.com.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: Outstanding. Stacey Abrams, thank you so much for joining us
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: as always. Come back anytime. We really appreciate the time.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 5: Thank you, John. And please tell Emily, thank you for
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 5: reading my book.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: I will for sure.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 5: Take care.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Stacey Abrams for joining us today. Rhodes, thank
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: you for being our co-host. This was a lot of fun. Everyone,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: please go buy After the Fall. It's an outstanding book.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: Go sign up right now if you haven't already.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks, guys. It was a great ride along. And
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: as I've said on Pods of the World, this is
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: the audience I wrote the book for. So it's really
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: good to speak to the Thursday pod audience as well.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: It was great. Awesome.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: Well, good to have you here. Bye, everyone.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: Bye, everyone.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: See ya.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: Our associate producers are Jazzy Marine and Olivia Martinez. It's
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: every week.