Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Trump Might Be The Democrats’ Best Midterm Asset + Black Women Built The 1963 March on Washington… Then Were Written Out Of It

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Full Episode - Trump Might Be The Democrats’ Best Midterm Asset + Black Women Built The 1963 March on Washington… Then Were Written Out Of It · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
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Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
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Speaker 1: is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're
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Speaker 1: skeptical of that, as you should be. I get it.
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Speaker 1: I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole
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Speaker 1: reason I want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent
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1:31
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1:34
Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
1:38
Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
1:41
Speaker 1: What I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time
1:44
Speaker 1: with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is
1:48
Speaker 1: Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing.
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Speaker 1: The whole point of this is to make this easier
1:56
Speaker 1: and less confusing. OK, so look, take the skepticism you
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Speaker 1: already have in all of this, point it at your
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Speaker 1: own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure.
2:06
Speaker 1: And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. three nine eight
2:12
Speaker 1: five hello there i'm chuck todd i'm coming to you
2:19
Speaker 1: on the road um on the west coast uh for
2:22
Speaker 1: this episode in the extraordinarily too hot to handle los
2:29
Speaker 1: angeles uh quick trip in and out but uh it's
2:33
Speaker 1: always good to get on the road and so that's
2:35
Speaker 1: why you are seeing the wonderful generic backdrop for those
2:40
Speaker 1: of you watching on video. And I want to thank
2:42
Speaker 1: you for that. We try to come to you from
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Speaker 1: all sorts of platforms. Some of you are audio only.
2:46
Speaker 1: Some of you are video only. Some of you see
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Speaker 1: us on Instagram and all these other places. We thank you.
2:51
Speaker 1: Thank you for liking. Thank you for subscribing. Please tell
2:53
Speaker 1: a friend. But we've had tremendous support. Everything is growing.
2:57
Speaker 1: And it's all thanks to the nice word of mouth
2:59
Speaker 1: coming from everybody here. I think I've put together a
3:03
Speaker 1: fun little episode. My guest today is just a tremendous,
3:09
Speaker 1: somebody I'd never met before. And I just really enjoyed
3:13
Speaker 1: the conversation. It was one that I hope to, frankly,
3:16
Speaker 1: have a second, third, fourth, fifth hours with her. She's
3:20
Speaker 1: an historian, Marcia Chatelain, an author of a terrific book
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Speaker 1: called How Bright the Path Grows. And the book is
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Speaker 1: basically ostensibly about the women behind the March on Washington
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Speaker 1: and And frankly, how they were mostly written out of history,
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Speaker 1: if you will. Obviously, we know sexism played a role
3:39
Speaker 1: in the civil rights movement as well. And she gets
3:42
Speaker 1: into that. But our conversation meandered all over the place,
3:45
Speaker 1: including sort of what she would argue the sanitized way
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Speaker 1: that we remember Martin Luther King. You know, we choose
3:53
Speaker 1: to make the I Have a Dream speech the sort
3:57
Speaker 1: of King moment that when she notes the last speech
4:00
Speaker 1: he gave was something that was a lot more challenging
4:05
Speaker 1: to the conventional thought of the day. And that was
4:09
Speaker 1: conveniently that instead we want to remember this in a
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Speaker 1: way that is arguably as broad as you can remember
4:18
Speaker 1: so that you, I think the defense of that would
4:21
Speaker 1: be so that you get as many people comfortable with
4:24
Speaker 1: honoring a civil rights icon like Martin Luther King Jr.
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Speaker 1: But that conversation then turned into, well, how's AI going
4:34
Speaker 1: to sanitize all this? So the point is, is that
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Speaker 1: I think, I know I just was tremendously animated about
4:43
Speaker 1: how much, you know, the back and forth that I
4:46
Speaker 1: had with her. And I think you will enjoy her
4:48
Speaker 1: a lot and find yourself not only wanting to buy
4:50
Speaker 1: this book, but by all of her books. She is
4:53
Speaker 1: a tremendous mind, a tremendous thinker, and somebody, if you
4:57
Speaker 1: don't know her, you should get to know. This is
5:00
Speaker 1: a Wednesday episode, so it means I have a new
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Speaker 1: top five list. And guess what? Because the Senate battleground
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Speaker 1: is truly expanded, a top five list doesn't cut it anymore.
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Speaker 1: We are going to a top 10, and it's my
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Speaker 1: current order of most likely to flip of the 10 races.
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Speaker 1: And every race in my 10 is one that if
5:22
Speaker 1: you were to put it on your scale of lean, likely,
5:25
Speaker 1: toss up, to me, all of these are at least leaners.
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Speaker 1: Although I could argue that number one on the list
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Speaker 1: is a likely, but what's interesting is what's not on
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Speaker 1: the list anymore. And there's one state not even in
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Speaker 1: the top 10 that I think tells you exactly the
5:43
Speaker 1: trajectory of this race. I'll of course answer a few
5:48
Speaker 1: of your questions. And get back, I did the double
5:51
Speaker 1: red eye. How many of you pulled this off? I
5:54
Speaker 1: think for those of you, this is one of my
5:56
Speaker 1: great east to west and back east hacks, which is
5:59
Speaker 1: if you're going to, if you know you have to
6:00
Speaker 1: do a quick trip and you know you have to
6:02
Speaker 1: red eye back, we'll take the latest east coast flight
6:06
Speaker 1: you can get. Essentially, it's the double red eye. It's
6:09
Speaker 1: the one that lands at one o'clock in the morning
6:11
Speaker 1: west coast time. You get your five hours in. I
6:15
Speaker 1: think it's a way to at least... postpone the jet lag.
6:21
Speaker 1: It'll accumulate over time, but I have found it that
6:25
Speaker 1: in campaign season, this is it. That's one of my remedy.
6:29
Speaker 1: For those of you that are big travelers, I'm curious
6:32
Speaker 1: if you have a favorite east to west and back
6:34
Speaker 1: east hack when it comes to traveling. What is your
6:37
Speaker 1: favorite time to leave? What is your favorite way to
6:39
Speaker 1: get the rest? Or if you know you have to
6:42
Speaker 1: limit your rest, I'd love to hear some of your
6:45
Speaker 1: stories on that. But with that, let me get into
6:48
Speaker 1: sort of what's animating me over the last 24 hours.
6:51
Speaker 1: We are, of course, hey, we are now less than
6:54
Speaker 1: four weeks away, right? This is the Wednesday episode, less
6:58
Speaker 1: than four weeks from the midterms. And so I wanna
7:02
Speaker 1: spend a little time on something that's frankly the subject
7:04
Speaker 1: of my column that some of you subscribe to on Substack,
7:07
Speaker 1: some of you see it on Newsphere. And it's about
7:10
Speaker 1: a phenomenon about this campaign that I think we've become
7:14
Speaker 1: a little too numb to notice. I think this is
7:17
Speaker 1: an incredibly strange campaign season and that the way certain
7:22
Speaker 1: candidates are running are running or it's just it's just
7:27
Speaker 1: a sort of bizarre decision making, particularly by Republican candidates. Now,
7:33
Speaker 1: of course, I'm not saying it's strange because Donald Trump
7:35
Speaker 1: is saying crazy things or strange things. That isn't news anymore. Right.
7:40
Speaker 1: You know, that's sort of like another day ending. And why?
7:45
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is I think it's strange the
7:46
Speaker 1: way the two parties are reacting to this political environment.
7:50
Speaker 1: And frankly, it's unlike any reaction. How Republicans are behaving
7:55
Speaker 1: in this political environment is unlike any other party in
8:00
Speaker 1: this situation that I have seen in my professional lifetime.
8:04
Speaker 1: You have one party's candidates that are behaving pretty much
8:06
Speaker 1: the way candidates would behave when the political environment is
8:11
Speaker 1: bad for their national party. Well, the other party's candidates
8:16
Speaker 1: mostly aren't, right? Take the Democratic candidates, particularly in a
8:20
Speaker 1: lot of these longtime red states, right? They're trying to
8:24
Speaker 1: convince voters that they're not a cookie cutter Democrat, that
8:27
Speaker 1: they're a different kind of Democrat, right? And they kind
8:29
Speaker 1: of have to. Polls have shown us this. These candidates,
8:32
Speaker 1: whether you're Adam Hamilton in Kansas, Josh Turk in Iowa,
8:36
Speaker 1: Gina Inosa in Texas, they know the national Democratic brand
8:40
Speaker 1: has problems with a lot of voters. They know there
8:44
Speaker 1: are voters who hear the word Democrat and immediately think, oh,
8:47
Speaker 1: too far left, too culturally liberal, whatever that means to them.
8:52
Speaker 1: So they're trying to separate themselves from the national brand stereotype.
8:57
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the most fascinating findings in the
8:59
Speaker 1: Times-Siena poll over the weekend where we had results in
9:04
Speaker 1: five Republican-leaning states is that it appears these Democratic candidates
9:08
Speaker 1: are succeeding in convincing voters in those red states that
9:11
Speaker 1: they're not conventional Democrats, right? That voters can simultaneously believe
9:17
Speaker 1: the National Democratic Party has moved too far to the left,
9:21
Speaker 1: and they believe that the Democrat that is running in
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Speaker 1: their Senate race or their governor's race, who they're considering
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Speaker 1: voting for, they don't believe that Democrat is as far
9:32
Speaker 1: to the left as the stereotype of the party. It's
9:35
Speaker 1: a pretty important distinction. It's why Everybody has now joined
9:39
Speaker 1: the Todd cast in realizing, oh, Kansas is a swing
9:42
Speaker 1: state this election cycle, right? Now, this doesn't mean voters
9:46
Speaker 1: have suddenly decided they love the Democratic Party in Kansas.
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Speaker 1: The candidates have separated themselves from the national brand. Adam
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Speaker 1: Hamilton is a different kind of Democrat, right? He's a
9:56
Speaker 1: Methodist pastor. Tallarico is saying I'm a different type of Democrat.
10:00
Speaker 1: You know, Sherrod Brown, in some ways, he's more of
10:03
Speaker 1: the old school Democrat that Ohio populists miss, right? But
10:07
Speaker 1: either way, they're all sending a similar, I'm not what
10:11
Speaker 1: you don't like about the current Democratic Party. And you
10:14
Speaker 1: know what? That's just politics 101, folks. What's weird is,
10:20
Speaker 1: is not what's happening on the Democratic side of the aisle.
10:24
Speaker 1: What's weird is what's happening on the Republican side. Here
10:27
Speaker 1: you have an unpopular Republican president, an economy voters are
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Speaker 1: completely unhappy with, a war they don't particularly like, an
10:36
Speaker 1: affordability problem that everybody can see, and relatively few Republican
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Speaker 1: candidates are doing what you would normally expect them to
10:43
Speaker 1: do in a situation like this. Seek some distance from
10:48
Speaker 1: the unpopular, leader of their party. Now, there's a handful
10:52
Speaker 1: of examples, but I'm going to bring them up because
10:55
Speaker 1: there's so few of them that when they do it,
10:58
Speaker 1: it's news in and of itself. I'm sure you've seen
11:02
Speaker 1: this Arizona Republican congressman, Juan Siscamani. He's doing it. He's
11:07
Speaker 1: literally running a TV ad that declares his independence from Trump.
11:11
Speaker 1: Ashley Hinson, who's the Republican nominee for Senate in Iowa.
11:15
Speaker 1: She made sure she was somewhere else in the state
11:17
Speaker 1: when J.D. Vance came to campaign for the entire ticket,
11:20
Speaker 1: including her campaign. Susan Collins, of course, she's been running
11:25
Speaker 1: against Trump and running against that wing of the party
11:28
Speaker 1: and has her own identity. And she's done that for years.
11:31
Speaker 1: So she kind of has pretty good muscle memory on this.
11:34
Speaker 1: And shoot, you know, if Greg Abbott, right, who's seeking
11:37
Speaker 1: a fourth term, four-year term as governor of Texas, he's
11:42
Speaker 1: decided that when Trump comes to Texas next, he's not
11:45
Speaker 1: going to be there. You know, Abbott's explanation for not
11:48
Speaker 1: being there was fantastic, right? It was sort of, he said,
11:51
Speaker 1: he sort of said it, the quiet part out loud.
11:53
Speaker 1: He says, Trump coming to Texas is great. It gets
11:56
Speaker 1: the base excited. It helps organize the base, helps turn
11:58
Speaker 1: them out. But Greg Abbott decided he doesn't need to
12:01
Speaker 1: be there when it happens. Now I'm going to get
12:07
Speaker 1: to Abbott in a minute. Now, what's interesting about Siskamani,
12:09
Speaker 1: Hinson and Collins is that the three of them, are
12:13
Speaker 1: politicians who have all had to deal with swing voters
12:15
Speaker 1: in multiple election cycles. And if you have to always
12:18
Speaker 1: deal with swing voters, Ashley Hinson in that Eastern Iowa
12:22
Speaker 1: congressional district, that is a 50-50 district, always has been
12:25
Speaker 1: a 50-50 district. So they have some muscle memory. They
12:28
Speaker 1: know how to say to somebody, look, you may not
12:29
Speaker 1: like my party, you may not like my president, but
12:32
Speaker 1: judge me, right? A lot of Republicans on the ballot
12:36
Speaker 1: this year don't have that muscle memory anymore. For years,
12:39
Speaker 1: Take Texas, take Abbott, right? For years, because frankly, he's
12:42
Speaker 1: separating himself a bit too late, I think. But for
12:47
Speaker 1: years in some of these red states, if you were
12:49
Speaker 1: running statewide, the formula wasn't terribly complicated. Consolidate Republicans, both
12:55
Speaker 1: the moderate chamber of commerce types and the working class
12:58
Speaker 1: base and the Trump fans, and disqualify the Democrat by
13:03
Speaker 1: tying them to the national stereotype of the party. You
13:06
Speaker 1: never really needed to even appeal to swing voters. And
13:10
Speaker 1: that's been pretty true to varying degrees over the last
13:13
Speaker 1: three or four cycles in Iowa, Alabama, Kansas, even Florida
13:16
Speaker 1: and Ohio. We almost now have a, we're pretty close
13:20
Speaker 1: to a generation of Republican politicians in some of these
13:23
Speaker 1: states that have gotten very good at running against the
13:26
Speaker 1: idea of a Democrat. But now they're facing something they've
13:30
Speaker 1: not faced before. What happens when the Democrat doesn't get
13:33
Speaker 1: disqualified by the voters for simply being a Democrat, right?
13:38
Speaker 1: Because in many of these states, Voters are looking at
13:41
Speaker 1: the actual candidate and saying, well, that's not the Democrat
13:45
Speaker 1: I've been hearing about on television. So guess what? Republicans
13:49
Speaker 1: have to figure out how to persuade people again. And
13:52
Speaker 1: they don't know how to do that in some of
13:53
Speaker 1: these red states, right? And many of these Republicans look
13:56
Speaker 1: quite rusty doing this, right? Abbott. Abbott's the interesting example
14:00
Speaker 1: to me here because He's in a position where if
14:03
Speaker 1: voters are unhappy, who does he have left to blame, right?
14:07
Speaker 1: This is Texas. A Democrat hasn't won statewide in Texas
14:10
Speaker 1: since the 20th century. Let me repeat. We're in 2026.
14:14
Speaker 1: A Democrat hasn't won statewide in Texas since the last century.
14:23
Speaker 1: There's no sitting Democratic president to run against, right? Abbott
14:26
Speaker 1: had that in 10, had that in 14, right? And
14:32
Speaker 1: he had it again in 22. He doesn't have it there.
14:35
Speaker 1: So no Democratic president. There's no Democratic legislature to run again.
14:40
Speaker 2: Right.
14:41
Speaker 1: If voters don't like the direction of Texas, at some
14:43
Speaker 1: point you have to defend what you've done. And this
14:47
Speaker 1: gets to Trump's problem nationally. He's never been particularly good
14:51
Speaker 1: at defending the product he's implemented or he's sold. Trump's
14:57
Speaker 1: very good at telling you somebody else screwed things up.
15:00
Speaker 1: That's what he did quite well in 2016. And 2018
15:06
Speaker 1: came along and he had to kind of defend his record.
15:08
Speaker 1: Things didn't go so well, right? Lost 40 House seats.
15:12
Speaker 1: He lost in 2020. Again, he was the incumbent. He
15:15
Speaker 1: was defending policy decisions that were quite unpopular. But he
15:19
Speaker 1: won in 2024 when he got to run against something,
15:22
Speaker 1: run against the people in charge. Well, now he's the man, right?
15:28
Speaker 1: And he likes running against the man. Well, he's the
15:31
Speaker 1: man and he's the guy in charge again. These are
15:35
Speaker 1: his economic policies, particularly this trade policy is all him.
15:41
Speaker 1: This Iran war was all his decision. And in fact,
15:45
Speaker 1: the last few days have been quite revealing because you
15:49
Speaker 1: can see the White House realizing it has an affordability problem.
15:52
Speaker 1: They know they have a problem, but they have no
15:54
Speaker 1: idea how to get Trump to deal with it. And so-
15:59
Speaker 1: You know, they're tossing stuff against the wall. Diesel prices
16:02
Speaker 1: are killing people. All right, let's try to do something
16:03
Speaker 1: with the diesel tax. And Trump signed this order allowing
16:07
Speaker 1: broader highway use of the died diesel normally reserved for
16:11
Speaker 1: tax advantaged off-road uses. It's kind of arcane and it
16:17
Speaker 1: will like, you know, maybe save a couple of bucks
16:19
Speaker 1: here or there. And now he's talking about maybe he's
16:24
Speaker 1: looking at suspending the federal gas tax. He's floated a
16:27
Speaker 1: few other ideas. Try this, try that. because they're looking
16:30
Speaker 1: for anything, any headline saying Trump lowers prices and hope
16:34
Speaker 1: that voters notice. And maybe some of these things will
16:38
Speaker 1: provide a tiny bit of relief. So you don't want
16:41
Speaker 1: to dismiss every idea simply because Trump proposed it. But politically,
16:46
Speaker 1: I think the problem is much bigger than that right now.
16:49
Speaker 1: He's running against lived experience. And right now, lived experience
16:55
Speaker 1: is beating his rhetoric. People know what they're paying and
17:00
Speaker 1: they know why they're paying. They know how much it
17:03
Speaker 1: costs to fill their tank, how much it did cost
17:05
Speaker 1: to fill their tank, and they know why it costs
17:07
Speaker 1: more now. They're well aware of why ground beef is
17:11
Speaker 1: costing more now. They know why their electricity bill is up, right?
17:16
Speaker 1: They know all of these things. And they were promised
17:19
Speaker 1: by him that these prices would be lowered immediately. And
17:22
Speaker 1: you got JD Vance out there going, hey, they need
17:24
Speaker 1: more time. That's not what Donald Trump promised. And here's
17:27
Speaker 1: what we know about the American voter They're not going,
17:30
Speaker 1: they never have patience. Every president runs into this impatience problem.
17:36
Speaker 1: And every president tries some form of, I just need
17:38
Speaker 1: more time. You know, but I think in this one,
17:45
Speaker 1: this is where the credibility, we're now in, what are
17:49
Speaker 1: we in the, Trump sort of became relevant in 2015.
17:53
Speaker 1: We are now in what, year 11 of his relevancy.
17:58
Speaker 1: and it's sort of, you know, what was season 11
18:02
Speaker 1: of The Apprentice like, right? And so now when the
18:05
Speaker 1: president comes along four weeks before an election and says, hey,
18:07
Speaker 1: I've got this idea, we'll suspend this tax, voters are
18:11
Speaker 1: capable of asking a pretty obvious question, which is, well,
18:14
Speaker 1: why are we in this position in the first place?
18:17
Speaker 1: And that's the problem Trump has. It's not simply that
18:20
Speaker 1: people are skeptical of his ideas to fix it. They
18:23
Speaker 1: know he's the reason that we're in this problem in
18:26
Speaker 1: the first place. Diesel didn't become this political problem in
18:29
Speaker 1: a vacuum. The war with Iran has contributed to this
18:32
Speaker 1: fuel price shock. Even Republicans in farm states have been
18:35
Speaker 1: publicly complaining about the impact of the war and diesel
18:39
Speaker 1: costs on their constituents. So, yeah, try a temporary tax maneuver,
18:46
Speaker 1: alleviate costs for a few voters. But it's something they
18:50
Speaker 1: already know. You're essentially trying to give them some relief
18:54
Speaker 1: from a bad policy decision you made. It's a much
18:56
Speaker 1: harder sell. And frankly, voters are kind of gotten used
19:00
Speaker 1: to Trump promising that the next thing is going to
19:02
Speaker 1: fix the last thing. Oh, the tariff. When I implement
19:04
Speaker 1: this tariff, we're going to have this golden age. The
19:07
Speaker 1: tariff will fix this and then I'll get them to
19:09
Speaker 1: the table and we'll cut this great trade deal and
19:12
Speaker 1: then we'll get rid of that tariff and the deal
19:13
Speaker 1: will fix that. Oh, and the war. That's going to
19:16
Speaker 1: be short. It's going to be quick. And boy, when
19:17
Speaker 1: it's over, we're going to we're not going to be
19:19
Speaker 1: idiots like the previous. But we're going to keep the oil.
19:22
Speaker 1: We're going to take the oil. We're going to control
19:23
Speaker 1: the oil. The straight of Trump.
19:25
Speaker 2: Right.
19:25
Speaker 1: Prices will come down. The next announcement is always going
19:29
Speaker 1: to solve it in the world of Trump's brain. Well,
19:33
Speaker 1: at some point, people stop grading the announcement and they
19:36
Speaker 1: start grading the result. Again, lived experience. Donald Trump's– when
19:43
Speaker 1: I was growing up and we had– there was a
19:47
Speaker 1: men's clothing store. Some of you on the East Coast
19:48
Speaker 1: will know what I'm referring to. It was called Sims.
19:52
Speaker 1: And the owner of Sims, Cy Sims, he had a mantra.
19:55
Speaker 1: He said, the educated consumer is our best customer. Well,
19:59
Speaker 1: lived experience is the educated consumer here, right? And they're,
20:04
Speaker 1: you know, they're very educated on Trump at this point
20:08
Speaker 1: in year 11 of this of this traveling circus. And
20:13
Speaker 1: I think that may be why none of this seems
20:15
Speaker 1: to be sticking politically. Hey, this episode of the Chuck
20:21
Speaker 1: Todd cast is brought to you by Ethos. Look, let
20:24
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Speaker 1: rating was as of August of 2026. It's not necessarily
21:56
Speaker 1: that voters have studied the mechanics of federal diesel excise
21:59
Speaker 1: tax and concluded Trump's policies insufficient. Never mind that it's
22:03
Speaker 1: like it's like a typical Trump always thinks I could
22:05
Speaker 1: just borrow money somewhere else and fill the gap here.
22:08
Speaker 1: And he never cares about the deficits he leaves behind.
22:11
Speaker 2: Right.
22:12
Speaker 1: When you suspend these gas taxes, that's just more money
22:15
Speaker 1: down the road that we won't have to repair roads
22:19
Speaker 1: and use the things that are necessary of why we
22:21
Speaker 1: collect these taxes in the first place. But that isn't
22:24
Speaker 1: what voters are hearing. They just know their lives. And
22:28
Speaker 1: if your life feels more expensive, more uncertain, and more
22:30
Speaker 1: difficult than it did before, somebody standing behind a podium
22:34
Speaker 1: telling you he just made it cheaper doesn't necessarily persuade
22:37
Speaker 1: you anymore. In fact, after a while, it might have
22:41
Speaker 1: the opposite effect because it's a reminder how things got
22:46
Speaker 1: so expensive in the first place. And I think this
22:50
Speaker 1: is where the Republican candidate's behavior, as far as I'm concerned,
22:54
Speaker 1: becomes even stranger. Because normally, in the world of politics
23:00
Speaker 1: I learned, you'd be looking at all of this and saying,
23:03
Speaker 1: I need some separation from the guy who owns all this. Instead,
23:06
Speaker 1: most of them are standing there with him. Maybe they
23:10
Speaker 1: don't want to, but they are. Now, I understand the rationale.
23:15
Speaker 1: They're afraid of him. Or they're afraid of drawing his ire.
23:20
Speaker 1: They're afraid of his erratic behavior. And they've also all
23:26
Speaker 1: convinced themselves they cannot win without the Trump voter. I
23:31
Speaker 1: get this, but I feel like the amount of people
23:35
Speaker 1: on the Republican side of the aisle that seem to
23:38
Speaker 1: misremember 2024, as effective as Trump was in winning battleground states,
23:44
Speaker 1: he couldn't even win Senate seats when he got people
23:47
Speaker 1: to come out for him. When he was at the
23:50
Speaker 1: peak of his powers, he couldn't flip Wisconsin. while he
23:55
Speaker 1: won Wisconsin. He couldn't flip Michigan while he won Michigan.
23:58
Speaker 1: He couldn't flip Nevada while he won Nevada. He couldn't
24:00
Speaker 1: flip Arizona. So if he couldn't do it when he
24:03
Speaker 1: was on the ballot, when he got his people to
24:05
Speaker 1: show up, who decided they either weren't gonna vote for
24:08
Speaker 1: the Senate candidates of his choice, or what they likely
24:11
Speaker 1: did is they were shotgun voters, they voted for Trump
24:13
Speaker 1: and that's it. Well, if he couldn't persuade him to
24:16
Speaker 1: vote for Republican Senate candidates when he was on the ballot,
24:20
Speaker 1: why did they think he's gonna help now? So this
24:24
Speaker 1: is where I think there's just a lot of just morons,
24:28
Speaker 1: moron political strategists out there who are just buying into bullshit.
24:37
Speaker 1: But there is something to the ire issue, right? You know,
24:40
Speaker 1: you poke Trump the wrong way and suddenly he could
24:43
Speaker 1: implode your candidacy, right? It's what Tom Tillis, it's interesting,
24:46
Speaker 1: you know, this, you want to, the great Rorschach test
24:49
Speaker 1: of all the never Trumpers, right, is a Tom Tillis interview.
24:53
Speaker 1: And he was interviewed on 60 Minutes by Ross Daudet,
24:56
Speaker 1: a former New York Times columnist turned 60 Minutes correspondent.
25:01
Speaker 1: And he sort of admitted that it is fear that
25:04
Speaker 1: governs Republican behavior in the Senate. And it's been doing
25:08
Speaker 1: it for quite a while. You know, in his new book,
25:10
Speaker 1: he says voting to confirm Pete Hegseth was the biggest
25:13
Speaker 1: regret of his career. But the really revealing part is
25:19
Speaker 1: his explanation of why he did it. He didn't want
25:21
Speaker 1: to be, he said, the lone voice in the wilderness.
25:25
Speaker 1: And you just sit there and say, Jesus Christ. I mean, look,
25:29
Speaker 1: you guys know I've gone deep on this Hegseth story
25:33
Speaker 1: with Tillis. Tillis had promised Pete's ex-wife that if she
25:37
Speaker 1: spoke out about his bad character and basically his personal
25:43
Speaker 1: behavior that made him unqualified to lead, that Tillis would
25:51
Speaker 1: vote to reject his nomination, and he ended up not. Now,
25:54
Speaker 1: part of it was It's my understanding Tillis' family was
25:57
Speaker 1: threatened in different ways. And yeah, I may, perhaps he
26:02
Speaker 1: thought he would get other senators to rally around him
26:04
Speaker 1: and they didn't, right? Everyone, there's so many Republican senators
26:08
Speaker 1: hoping somebody else will do it, right? And look, he
26:11
Speaker 1: said it himself. He said there are at least 30
26:13
Speaker 1: Republican senators. And that's about, I accept that number, right?
26:17
Speaker 1: There's 53, right? It's a 53-47. I think there are
26:19
Speaker 1: 30 Republican senators who in a blind vote would get
26:26
Speaker 1: rid of Trump tomorrow if they knew it was a
26:29
Speaker 1: secret ballot. So I accept Tillis' math here, right? That
26:38
Speaker 1: they've just exhausted from this, but when the cameras show up,
26:43
Speaker 1: they're afraid. They're afraid of Trump and we know, and
26:46
Speaker 1: they're still afraid of Trump. And I guess the question is,
26:50
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to go back in this ocean
26:53
Speaker 1: but they don't think it's safe yet. But think about that.
26:57
Speaker 1: It explains the Republican Party right now. I know this
27:00
Speaker 1: isn't working. I know this could end badly. I know
27:03
Speaker 1: somebody ought to do something or say something, but I'm
27:06
Speaker 1: not going to be the one who says it. That's leadership, huh? Unbelievable.
27:13
Speaker 1: But this is where I go to the metaphor I've
27:16
Speaker 1: been using. The American people, We've been led by, I
27:25
Speaker 1: think the best metaphor is a drunk driver. And frankly,
27:33
Speaker 1: it's felt this way for most of the last dozen years, right?
27:38
Speaker 1: Everybody in the car knows the driver has been drinking.
27:43
Speaker 1: We're riding along and he's swerving. Somebody ought to take
27:48
Speaker 1: away the keys. But everybody's more afraid of what the
27:53
Speaker 1: driver will do if they reach for the keys than
27:56
Speaker 1: they are of where the car is headed. So they
27:59
Speaker 1: stay in the car and Donald Trump keeps driving. And
28:03
Speaker 1: now he wants to drive all over the country, swerving
28:06
Speaker 1: all over the place. He says, yeah, I'm going to
28:08
Speaker 1: Maine and Michigan. Sure, sure you are. I'm sure, Susan,
28:14
Speaker 1: the minute he uttered the words Maine out of their mouth,
28:16
Speaker 1: Susan Collins texted Susie Wiles and says, NFW. No frickin' way.
28:25
Speaker 1: I'm sure if you're Troy Jackson, you're like, please, we'll
28:27
Speaker 1: pay for it. And that's been Trump's response, right? Trump's
28:32
Speaker 1: response to things not working is basically the response of
28:35
Speaker 1: an aging politician or an aging rock star. Let's just
28:38
Speaker 1: do what used to work. Play the hits, right? If
28:41
Speaker 1: the rallies worked before, let's do more rallies. If insults
28:45
Speaker 1: worked before, let's do more insults. If attacking the free
28:48
Speaker 1: press worked, let's do that. Own the libs, right? He's
28:52
Speaker 1: almost grasping around for any sort of own the libs strategy.
28:57
Speaker 1: He thinks if he can get the crowd going, if
28:59
Speaker 1: he can recreate that feeling, right, that's the aging rock star. Oh,
29:03
Speaker 1: if they only– and except you're like hearing a thin
29:06
Speaker 1: voice and it's just not the same. You're like, eh,
29:09
Speaker 1: I'd rather hear Steve Perry. What happened to him, right?
29:15
Speaker 1: But he's not running against Joe Biden this time. He's
29:18
Speaker 1: defending himself. And think about it. There was a 24-hour
29:21
Speaker 1: period earlier this week. He used a derogatory anti-trans nickname
29:25
Speaker 1: against Annie Andrews in South Carolina. She's the Democratic nominee,
29:31
Speaker 1: probably because he thought the alliteration worked or the rhyming
29:35
Speaker 1: worked with Annie Andrews and the derogatory word that he
29:39
Speaker 1: chose to use. Then he casually talked about potentially maybe
29:43
Speaker 1: the Iranians just bomb Los Angeles or San Diego, right?
29:47
Speaker 1: It's a small price to pay for stopping the Iranians.
29:52
Speaker 1: And sadly, the crowd seemed to cheer that when he
29:55
Speaker 1: said that somewhere in Nebraska– And, you know, it's funny
29:59
Speaker 1: how something like that 10 years ago would have been
30:01
Speaker 1: met with a huge headline. Now, it's not quite a shrug,
30:04
Speaker 1: but it's like, oh, man, is anybody going to take
30:06
Speaker 1: the keys away from this drunk driver? Because what does
30:09
Speaker 1: any of that accomplish? And this is where I'm like,
30:12
Speaker 1: where the hell is the rest of the Republican Party here?
30:14
Speaker 1: Because literally Donald Trump is just causing all sorts of damage.
30:23
Speaker 1: You know, forget being offended by what he's doing for
30:26
Speaker 1: a second. Ask yourself what the political purpose of this is.
30:30
Speaker 1: How does that insult help his preferred Republican Senate candidate,
30:35
Speaker 1: Darlene Graham, in South Carolina? And how does joking about
30:39
Speaker 1: the Iranians blowing up an American city on the West
30:42
Speaker 1: Coast help any Republican, let alone one running in Southern California?
30:50
Speaker 1: San Diego's home to quite a few Republicans. Donald Trump
30:55
Speaker 1: got more votes in Los Angeles than he got in
30:58
Speaker 1: the state of Iowa. And none of that rhetoric helps
31:04
Speaker 1: anybody running in Michigan or Iowa who desperately wants voters
31:08
Speaker 1: talking about something other than Donald Trump and Iran. None
31:11
Speaker 1: of it helps. It's terrible politics. And it creates another
31:15
Speaker 1: question that Republican candidates have to answer. Another Democratic candidate, Trump,
31:20
Speaker 1: potentially turns into a sympathetic figure. He made Annie Andrews
31:25
Speaker 1: more sympathetic. Former Republican Governor David Beasley condemned Trump's attack
31:31
Speaker 1: on her. And what does this do? It means another
31:34
Speaker 1: suburban voter who likely says, I'm tired of this. Another
31:37
Speaker 1: Republican voter says, you know what, maybe I'll just stay home.
31:41
Speaker 1: I'm just exhausted from having to defend his crazy. And
31:45
Speaker 1: we're four weeks left, which is why I think Republicans
31:48
Speaker 1: ought to be asking a question I'm not sure they're asking.
31:52
Speaker 1: What if Trump It doesn't solve their turnout problem. But
31:55
Speaker 1: what if he makes everything worse? What if he turns
31:58
Speaker 1: a blue wave into a blue tsunami or this red
32:00
Speaker 1: undertow into a red riptide of sorts? It appears the
32:07
Speaker 1: entire strategy this fall has been built around the idea
32:10
Speaker 1: that they need Trump. because they need his voters. And again,
32:14
Speaker 1: I don't understand where this mindset came from when he
32:17
Speaker 1: didn't do shit when he was on the ballot in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin,
32:23
Speaker 1: and Michigan. He won the states and lost the Senate races.
32:28
Speaker 1: Where does that math ever show up? So I don't
32:32
Speaker 1: know where this came from other than people around Trump
32:35
Speaker 1: trying to make the case that he does matter. Every
32:41
Speaker 1: time he shows up, there's another chance he's going to
32:43
Speaker 1: remind a swing voter why they're unhappy. Every time he
32:46
Speaker 1: defends the Iran war, he reminds people why fuel costs
32:49
Speaker 1: are more. That doesn't exactly excite the base. Every time
32:52
Speaker 1: he announces another quick fix for affordability, he reminds people
32:58
Speaker 1: that affordability became a problem on his watch. And every
33:02
Speaker 1: time he says something gratuitously offensive or bizarre, just gives
33:06
Speaker 1: another exhausted voter another chance. permission slip to just check out.
33:13
Speaker 1: So maybe Trump turns out some of his voters. The
33:16
Speaker 1: question is, what else does he do while he's doing that?
33:21
Speaker 1: And I increasingly think that this red undertow, and all
33:25
Speaker 1: credit to my buddy Charlie Cook on that one, because
33:27
Speaker 1: I agree, I think when you look at, especially when
33:29
Speaker 1: you look at these Times-Siena poll, I mean, just it
33:32
Speaker 1: is clear voters are rejecting Republican governance more than they're
33:36
Speaker 1: embracing Democratic ideas. So red undertow is definitely the much
33:41
Speaker 1: better description. But he is, I don't see how, I
33:49
Speaker 1: think this strategy is really risking a huge backfire here.
33:56
Speaker 1: The fascinating question now is whether his behavior over the
33:58
Speaker 1: last four weeks here is going to determine if this repudiation,
34:03
Speaker 1: this red undertow gets worse. There's one of my favorite
34:06
Speaker 1: Haley Barber lines, and I've used it before, right? Good
34:08
Speaker 1: gets better, bad gets worse. We've now been six weeks
34:12
Speaker 1: of the Republicans outspending the Democrats in most of these
34:17
Speaker 1: major battlegrounds. And not only has the Republican candidate's position
34:22
Speaker 1: not improved, in some cases it's gotten worse. The Democrat
34:27
Speaker 1: looks more solid than ever. And in some cases, the
34:32
Speaker 1: Democrats improved.
34:33
Speaker 2: Right?
34:33
Speaker 1: Tallarico is, is over 50 in one high quality poll.
34:38
Speaker 1: That's not insignificant. There's only one race that I would
34:41
Speaker 1: argue has gotten better for Republicans in the last six
34:45
Speaker 1: weeks in its main. And it's really more because Troy
34:47
Speaker 1: Jackson's just a bad candidate. I, you know, I think
34:52
Speaker 1: he had a chance, you know, I don't know what
34:54
Speaker 1: they've done. It's one of those, it's interesting. The, the
34:59
Speaker 1: leaked Ken Paxton audio implies that Paxton's upset that if
35:03
Speaker 1: allowing Washington to, he feels like he's lost control of
35:07
Speaker 1: his campaign. Well, you know, if he wanted control of
35:09
Speaker 1: his campaign, he should have done the work, right? When
35:11
Speaker 1: you don't do any work, when you sit on your ass,
35:14
Speaker 1: when you're lazy and just want everything done for you,
35:16
Speaker 1: don't be surprised that the people that are doing all
35:18
Speaker 1: the hard work decide they get to make the decision. And,
35:23
Speaker 1: you know, we've seen a similar story written about Troy
35:25
Speaker 1: Jackson's campaign that indicates he's been, you know, essentially a
35:29
Speaker 1: let the DC crowd and he's been disappointed that somehow
35:32
Speaker 1: he doesn't run his race. Look, I don't quite know
35:35
Speaker 1: what it is, but I think they've misused. It's likely
35:40
Speaker 1: Jackson still wins. I'd still rather be him than her
35:43
Speaker 1: in this, but I'm going to get to my top
35:44
Speaker 1: 10 list later in this program. But it's the only
35:49
Speaker 1: race where you can look at it and say, huh,
35:52
Speaker 1: it's the one place where over the last six weeks,
35:56
Speaker 1: the Republican looks at least as strong or a bit
36:01
Speaker 1: stronger than they were six weeks ago. You know, I
36:05
Speaker 1: still think there's she's got a pretty high mountain to climb.
36:10
Speaker 1: I think the it's interesting. I think the Jackson campaign
36:15
Speaker 1: is not using the ProPublica story the right way. They're
36:18
Speaker 1: trying to allege corruption. You're not going to be able
36:22
Speaker 1: to prove she's corrupt. You are going to be able
36:26
Speaker 1: to prove she's gone Washington. And I think they have
36:29
Speaker 1: totally sort of, you know, this is one of those
36:33
Speaker 1: where you don't have to. You're not trying to put
36:36
Speaker 1: her in jail. And if you emphasize that, a lot
36:39
Speaker 1: of voters are going to say, well, that's not credible.
36:41
Speaker 1: What they would believe is that she's more worried about
36:44
Speaker 1: Washington than anything else. And it seemed like when I
36:48
Speaker 1: that's why when the story came out, I was a well,
36:50
Speaker 1: this is a killer because you now can just say,
36:53
Speaker 1: look at her. She's gone to Washington. But for some reason,
36:57
Speaker 1: they keep– and I think– I don't know whether this
37:00
Speaker 1: is being in the wrong bubble, if they live too
37:03
Speaker 1: much on social media where you want to just accuse
37:06
Speaker 1: your opponent on the other side of the aisle of
37:08
Speaker 1: being a crook or corrupt. It may help with email fundraising,
37:15
Speaker 1: but I don't think– you're trying to win over somebody
37:20
Speaker 1: who regularly votes for Susan Collins, right? who has voted
37:23
Speaker 1: for Susan Collins and Joe Biden in the past, right?
37:26
Speaker 1: That's the swing voter here. It's the Biden-Collins voter of 2020.
37:34
Speaker 1: And you've got to figure out, it's the Jared Golden
37:37
Speaker 1: Trump voter of 2024. So you've got to realize that they've,
37:44
Speaker 1: and so this is why I think they've, how they've
37:48
Speaker 1: gone about this. You know, it's funny for all of
37:51
Speaker 1: the ways that, Hamilton in Kansas, Tallarico and, and, you know,
37:55
Speaker 1: Osa and Turek and Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton have
37:59
Speaker 1: all tried to run campaigns that fit their state. Troy
38:02
Speaker 1: Jackson hasn't. And yet he could still win.
38:07
Speaker 2: Right.
38:07
Speaker 1: Just like Abdul El-Sayed arguably hasn't been, you know, he's
38:10
Speaker 1: been running more of a national campaign and in this
38:14
Speaker 1: political environment, it may work. Um, And Abdul El-Sayed is
38:20
Speaker 1: benefiting from the fact Mike Rogers is not running the
38:22
Speaker 1: race that I think you could run and be more competitive.
38:27
Speaker 1: But he's another one. Why he hasn't figured out how
38:29
Speaker 1: to separate from Trump and why he's not made the
38:33
Speaker 1: effort to do it is, you know, there are plenty of–
38:39
Speaker 1: there was a constituency out there for Rogers who was
38:41
Speaker 1: a little unsure and uncertain of Abdul El-Sayed. But Rogers
38:46
Speaker 1: had to meet them where they were. These aren't pro-Trump people.
38:50
Speaker 1: And he didn't do that. So it's sort of where
38:59
Speaker 1: things are. So to sort of end where I began here,
39:05
Speaker 1: good gets better, bad gets worse. And Donald Trump may
39:07
Speaker 1: be the Democratic Party's single best asset in these last
39:11
Speaker 1: four weeks because Republicans are already dealing with bad. And
39:16
Speaker 1: the guy that they're afraid to take the keys away
39:18
Speaker 1: from keeps driving more erratically, and he's put his foot
39:23
Speaker 1: on the gas, and he's about to drive them over
39:26
Speaker 1: a cliff. And that would be bad gits.
39:30
Speaker 2: Worse.
39:31
Speaker 1: All right, I want to sneak in a break. And
39:32
Speaker 1: when we come back, my fantastic conversation with the author
39:35
Speaker 1: Marsha Chatwin about the women behind the March on Washington
39:41
Speaker 1: and how they were somewhat erased from history. And then,
39:47
Speaker 1: of course, after the interview, my new top 10. That's right.
39:50
Speaker 1: The Senate battleground has expanded. My new top 10 Senate
39:53
Speaker 1: flip list, plus some questions and we'll get you.
40:02
Speaker 2: Out of here. All right.
40:05
Speaker 1: So the author of how bright the path grows, Marsha
40:08
Speaker 1: Chatelain joins me now. And this isn't, it's a fascinating
40:11
Speaker 1: book because, and we've had some similar, which is sometimes
40:16
Speaker 1: it's about, um, people we haven't, that were a bigger
40:20
Speaker 1: part of an historical event that we haven't heard enough about.
40:24
Speaker 1: And before we get into the specifics here on sort
40:28
Speaker 1: of forgotten folks from the March on Washington, I want
40:34
Speaker 1: to word the question this way, Marsha. Is this a
40:38
Speaker 1: book about how women were written out of history, or
40:42
Speaker 1: is this a book about how we collectively manufacture history?
40:49
Speaker 2: Ooh, I love that question because I think that one
40:54
Speaker 2: leads to the other. And so when we look at
40:57
Speaker 2: the March on Washington, most people, both in the U.S.
41:01
Speaker 2: and abroad, can identify the I Have a Dream speech
41:04
Speaker 2: as the pivotal moment of the event. Most people can
41:07
Speaker 2: identify Martin Luther King Jr. And that's kind of where.
41:11
Speaker 1: By the way, I think that's kind of remarkable that
41:14
Speaker 1: there is that specificity about that memory, about what it is.
41:20
Speaker 1: So it's in some ways, right, when you think about
41:23
Speaker 1: how many other historical events could that many people tell
41:26
Speaker 1: you that much about, right?
41:29
Speaker 2: Yes, and this makes me sad as a historian, but
41:31
Speaker 2: you're absolutely right. But I think what is fascinating about
41:34
Speaker 2: it is like how we got there. Because if you
41:36
Speaker 2: look at the coverage of the March on Washington, it
41:40
Speaker 2: was clear that Martin Luther King Jr. was the standout
41:42
Speaker 2: of the day. But when you look at the cover
41:44
Speaker 2: of Time and Life magazines after the event, Bayard Rustin, A.
41:48
Speaker 2: Philip Randolph, and Roy Wilkins were on the cover of magazines.
41:52
Speaker 2: So the determination that it was just King's moment comes
41:55
Speaker 2: a little bit later. And I have a theory that
41:58
Speaker 2: because King is assassinated fewer than five years after the
42:01
Speaker 2: March on Washington, the I Have a Dream speech becomes
42:06
Speaker 2: an attempt to soften his image and impact during his
42:10
Speaker 2: lifetime and create a kind of warm idea of the
42:13
Speaker 2: civil rights movement. Because there really isn't a reason why
42:17
Speaker 2: we couldn't remember his final oration. the day before his
42:20
Speaker 2: assassination as the Great King speech. But this is the
42:23
Speaker 2: one where he's really challenging capitalism and militarism and asking
42:28
Speaker 2: very difficult questions that really shook up not just the
42:32
Speaker 2: civil rights movement, but the world. So what we do
42:34
Speaker 2: is we remember I Have a Dream. And the thing
42:37
Speaker 2: about the I Have a Dream speech is we remember
42:39
Speaker 2: the vision of interracial harmony Instead of the call for
42:43
Speaker 2: reparations or the critiques of police brutality or the failure
42:46
Speaker 2: of the Kennedy administration to move fast enough. And so
42:49
Speaker 2: I love to take these moments where everyone can get
42:54
Speaker 2: to the table together and say, yeah, I know the
42:56
Speaker 2: I have a dream speech. and say, okay, folks, like,
42:59
Speaker 2: you know, buckle in. We're going to really look at
43:01
Speaker 2: the depth of this moment. And we have to ponder,
43:05
Speaker 2: why do we understand it as singularly King's moment? And
43:09
Speaker 2: how do we so readily forget the impact that women
43:12
Speaker 2: had on creating the movement, but particularly, you know, shepherding
43:16
Speaker 2: that moment?
43:17
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny you bring up that his death. So
43:21
Speaker 1: let's play this out. If King doesn't die and King lives-
43:27
Speaker 1: Is he a more diminished figure in history?
43:30
Speaker 2: Ooh, well, Chuck, you might be talking about a book
43:32
Speaker 2: I'm writing, so I won't give too much. But I
43:35
Speaker 2: think this fantasy of like, if King were here today
43:39
Speaker 2: or if King lived, some of the political disruption that
43:43
Speaker 2: we have experienced as a nation wouldn't happen is really
43:47
Speaker 2: dangerous thinking. But I do think that if King had
43:52
Speaker 2: survived into the next decade, Through my book, what I
43:56
Speaker 2: want readers to understand is, yes, there are women that
43:59
Speaker 2: we have forgotten, but they represent the complexity and the
44:03
Speaker 2: challenge of creating and sustaining a movement. And I think
44:07
Speaker 2: that this is something we need to be reminded of today.
44:10
Speaker 1: So I have had the joy and privilege of hosting
44:16
Speaker 1: quite a few authors who have come at the March
44:19
Speaker 1: on Washington event. with different sets of eyes. You're coming
44:23
Speaker 1: at it this way. There's been a, hey, you know,
44:25
Speaker 1: this wasn't just about race. This was about workers' rights.
44:27
Speaker 1: And I've had the conversation about authors that have wrote
44:29
Speaker 1: about this. This was actually a labor movement issue that
44:32
Speaker 1: also happened across racial lines. It is interesting to me
44:36
Speaker 1: now how we can take this one event, the March
44:39
Speaker 1: on Washington in 1963. And we have, I don't know,
44:44
Speaker 1: the scholarship on this at this point. I should as
44:48
Speaker 1: I'm thinking out loud with you here, I wish I
44:50
Speaker 1: would have quickly done like how many different books have
44:53
Speaker 1: been written in different points of view, but it is,
44:57
Speaker 1: let me ask it this way. Where did you turn
45:01
Speaker 1: to get a more complete understanding of everything that that
45:05
Speaker 1: went into and happened with the March on Washington, because
45:09
Speaker 1: I'm going to judge by your age. You were not
45:11
Speaker 1: alive then. I know I wasn't. And you don't have
45:14
Speaker 1: any gray hair. I got a lot. So and we're
45:17
Speaker 1: both too young to have been there.
45:19
Speaker 2: Well, yes, I am too young to have been there. However,
45:22
Speaker 2: I emerged as a scholar at the moment where African-American
45:27
Speaker 2: history was being institutionalized in a way where serious scholarship
45:31
Speaker 2: could be done because there was support for it. I
45:34
Speaker 2: was part of that first cohort, maybe second cohort of
45:38
Speaker 2: graduate students whose professors were able to really make this
45:42
Speaker 2: field what it is today. And so I say that
45:44
Speaker 2: because the only way I get to this book is
45:47
Speaker 2: is that there has to be institutional infrastructure of archives,
45:52
Speaker 2: of access to digitized newspapers. The research was always there.
45:56
Speaker 2: It's just, how are we going to get to there?
45:58
Speaker 2: But to your point, I did a deep dive in
46:01
Speaker 2: to who's written about the March on Washington and what
46:03
Speaker 2: have they written about? Because I thought I would be
46:05
Speaker 2: a fool to say that I was the first person
46:07
Speaker 2: to write this. I kind of am because so much
46:12
Speaker 2: of our framework for the civil rights movement is has
46:15
Speaker 2: been those questions, its relationship with labor, the tensions of interracialism,
46:21
Speaker 2: the hopes and the failures of the Civil Rights Bill.
46:24
Speaker 2: We have that. But what we don't realize, I think,
46:27
Speaker 2: enough is that the March on Washington had 18 different segments.
46:32
Speaker 2: And among those segments, they represented a thread of what
46:36
Speaker 2: the movement was trying to advance. And each and every
46:39
Speaker 2: one of those threads involved the work of African-American women.
46:42
Speaker 2: You just you don't have a movement without them. And
46:45
Speaker 2: so in many ways, yes, you can write a million
46:47
Speaker 2: books about the March on Washington. And there are a
46:49
Speaker 2: lot of memoirs. There are a lot of analysis. I
46:52
Speaker 2: think the labor ones are really good. But it seems
46:55
Speaker 2: like each and every one kind of forgets the ways
46:58
Speaker 2: that Black women were so integral to local level movements
47:02
Speaker 2: that allowed a large movement to thrive.
47:05
Speaker 1: Is this as simple as just, you know, it's a
47:09
Speaker 1: question I was going to ask you later in this interview,
47:10
Speaker 1: but I'll ask you now, which is what's the originalism,
47:13
Speaker 1: sexism or racism? Is this a reminder that sometimes sexism
47:18
Speaker 1: trumps racism? And that's why we ended up with an
47:21
Speaker 1: incomplete history of the March on Washington.
47:24
Speaker 2: I think what it is is a way that sexism
47:26
Speaker 2: is often a tool, not just of oppression, but a
47:29
Speaker 2: political strategy that we have to be very careful about.
47:32
Speaker 2: I was talking to my students about this last week.
47:34
Speaker 2: A large part of the labor movement, the black labor movement,
47:39
Speaker 2: was trying to make an argument that black men should
47:41
Speaker 2: have great jobs so their wives could stay at home.
47:44
Speaker 2: And the students said, well, is that sexist? And I said,
47:46
Speaker 2: there is some sexism in that. But we have to
47:48
Speaker 2: understand that when black women were in these working class jobs,
47:52
Speaker 2: they were so vulnerable to financial and sexual exploitation and
47:56
Speaker 2: abuse that making the argument for women to stay home
48:00
Speaker 2: wasn't just about a kind of patriarchal authority. It was
48:03
Speaker 2: about safety. And that's the place where we really have
48:06
Speaker 2: to struggle with these dynamics in similar ways. You know,
48:09
Speaker 2: when this movement was a more radical movement in which
48:12
Speaker 2: you have people who are socialists and communists who are
48:15
Speaker 2: coming together in the 1940s for the first idea for
48:18
Speaker 2: the March on Washington, they are able to kind of
48:21
Speaker 2: grow in an environment that by the 1950s and 60s,
48:25
Speaker 2: there is a vision of a more kind of like
48:28
Speaker 2: middle-class patriarchal Christian household as emblematic of the March on Washington,
48:33
Speaker 2: as more grounded in the Black church. And so you
48:36
Speaker 2: see some of these women disappear from the frame. And
48:38
Speaker 2: so I think the cautionary tale is that no movement
48:42
Speaker 2: can truly, truly be transformative if they tolerate these types
48:46
Speaker 2: of exclusions in order to grow. And I'm sending that
48:48
Speaker 2: memo all to people in the Democratic Party and on
48:52
Speaker 2: the progressive left, because this is not how you win.
48:55
Speaker 2: And this is what history does. It teaches us to
48:58
Speaker 2: be careful about how we plan our futures.
49:01
Speaker 1: So if Martin Luther King is not involved in the
49:05
Speaker 1: March on Washington and that speech doesn't happen, what's the
49:08
Speaker 1: focal point? How does history remember it?
49:11
Speaker 2: I mean, it depends on who has the power to remember.
49:14
Speaker 2: I think, you know, conservatives love the I have a
49:17
Speaker 2: dream speech because they ignore all of the like powerful
49:20
Speaker 2: political stuff and they think it's about a kind of
49:23
Speaker 2: benign interracialism. I think that even in the absence of
49:27
Speaker 2: I have a dream.
49:27
Speaker 1: Because looking at it through that prism, they see it
49:29
Speaker 1: as an assimilation speech, that it reinforced the conservative idea
49:33
Speaker 1: of assimilation being what we should be striving for, right?
49:36
Speaker 1: I mean, is that why you think there was... Why
49:39
Speaker 1: conservatives wrap their arms around the speech later, by the way,
49:42
Speaker 1: not right away.
49:43
Speaker 2: Very late.
49:44
Speaker 1: It was later. Yes.
49:46
Speaker 2: And we were well unborn after they started to embrace
49:48
Speaker 2: King as an as a benign figure. I think that,
49:51
Speaker 2: you know, first of all, the oratory is powerful. King
49:54
Speaker 2: is powerful.
49:56
Speaker 1: And.
49:56
Speaker 2: Well, the setting is powerful. The setting is powerful.
50:00
Speaker 1: By the way, I just interviewed somebody who did the
50:02
Speaker 1: who profiled Marian Anderson, who 19.
50:05
Speaker 2: Right.
50:06
Speaker 1: So we just had this about before, like two of
50:09
Speaker 1: the greatest visual memories of of the reflecting pool and
50:15
Speaker 1: of marches both happened to feature two iconic African-Americans. Yes.
50:21
Speaker 2: And what's interesting is most people don't realize that Mahalia
50:23
Speaker 2: Jackson was also there, the great gospel singer, and that
50:26
Speaker 2: John Lewis was there as a young man with the
50:29
Speaker 2: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And that actually, in addition to
50:33
Speaker 2: Marian Anderson, Camila Williams, one of the great Black opera singers,
50:37
Speaker 2: filled in for her when she was late. And, you know,
50:39
Speaker 2: we have Rosa Parks is there. So we have this
50:42
Speaker 2: incredible collection of people. But, you know, to this question
50:44
Speaker 2: of like, how would we remember the March on Washington?
50:47
Speaker 2: The question is, what tool do we use? Like what
50:52
Speaker 2: utility do we see in referring to the civil rights movement?
50:55
Speaker 2: I think the way that we remember is it's about
50:57
Speaker 2: how we, you know, abuse history as a tool for
51:00
Speaker 2: our own ends, whether it's through blind patriotism or justification
51:05
Speaker 2: for failures in the present. And so I think that
51:08
Speaker 2: my job isn't to write this book so that people
51:12
Speaker 2: will find heroes and I want them to get a
51:14
Speaker 2: fuller scope of what it takes to have the integrity
51:17
Speaker 2: and the bravery to fight for freedom while also being
51:21
Speaker 2: a human in the world.
51:23
Speaker 1: So talk about, you know, in your book, you talk
51:25
Speaker 1: about Hannah Hedgeman and she is organizing the day, organizing
51:31
Speaker 1: the event and makes the observation no women were scheduled
51:36
Speaker 1: to speak.
51:37
Speaker 2: Yes.
51:38
Speaker 1: How was that moment met?
51:40
Speaker 2: So Anna Hedgeman is an incredible story, again, that really
51:44
Speaker 2: inverts all of our assumptions about civil rights. She's from
51:46
Speaker 2: rural Minnesota. She doesn't travel to the South until her
51:49
Speaker 2: late 20s. She goes to New York City, and she
51:52
Speaker 2: is part of that kind of New Deal order of
51:56
Speaker 2: Black women who are really educated, who are trying to help.
51:59
Speaker 2: the federal, you know, bridge the federal government and its
52:02
Speaker 2: obligations to African-Americans. So she is a tried and true
52:05
Speaker 2: activist and community member. She's sitting in this meeting and there.
52:09
Speaker 1: But she's an activist that also it's interesting the way
52:11
Speaker 1: you paint her. She's an activist that also believes in
52:15
Speaker 1: the sort of believes in the government structure that exists.
52:19
Speaker 1: And essentially there's always two types of activism. Do you
52:22
Speaker 1: work within the system or do you work to break
52:24
Speaker 1: up the system? And she wants to work within the system.
52:26
Speaker 2: Absolutely. She's an appointee of Mayor Wagner in New York,
52:29
Speaker 2: and she's very plugged into the Truman White House. And
52:33
Speaker 2: so she's sitting down and they're about to send off
52:35
Speaker 2: the program to the press. And she said, hey, guys,
52:38
Speaker 2: do you think it's interesting that we have 17 segments
52:41
Speaker 2: on here and not a single woman appears outside of
52:45
Speaker 2: the musical performers? And I think, you know, she is
52:48
Speaker 2: an elder stateswoman at this point. I mean, she has
52:50
Speaker 2: really been with the movement since the first idea of
52:53
Speaker 2: a march in the 1940s. And I think that they
52:57
Speaker 2: really couldn't fight her on it. But what they could
52:59
Speaker 2: do is she'd.
52:59
Speaker 1: Been 20 years younger. They would have ignored her, you think?
53:03
Speaker 2: I think it depends. I think that there are women
53:05
Speaker 2: across many generations who are so impactful that they needed.
53:09
Speaker 2: And there were women who challenged the sexism, who kind
53:13
Speaker 2: of turned their back on the idea of the march,
53:14
Speaker 2: like the legal theorist Pauli Murray. But she is an
53:17
Speaker 2: elder stateswoman. She's known Roy Wilkins, who's the head of
53:21
Speaker 2: the NAACP since they were teenagers, because he also grows
53:25
Speaker 2: up in Minnesota.
53:25
Speaker 1: Right.
53:26
Speaker 2: And so, you know, I think they defer to her,
53:28
Speaker 2: but they also don't think of this as as very significant.
53:32
Speaker 2: It's going to be a few minutes to say, you know,
53:35
Speaker 2: black women have done some stuff. OK, go sit down.
53:37
Speaker 2: I mean, the initial idea was the wives of the
53:40
Speaker 2: civil civil rights leaders were going to get up and
53:42
Speaker 2: take a bow. And she's like, come on, guys, we
53:45
Speaker 2: got to do something. So it wasn't going to be
53:48
Speaker 2: like the wives parade. And so they go about deliberating
53:52
Speaker 2: like who deserves this kind of honor. And this is
53:55
Speaker 2: where I think the magic of the story comes together,
53:58
Speaker 2: because I'm able to bring forward to readers like what
54:01
Speaker 2: these different figures in the civil rights movement were doing
54:05
Speaker 2: in 1963, where they had been and the kind of
54:08
Speaker 2: sacrifices they have made. And so there's a there are
54:11
Speaker 2: the people that you would expect, like a Rosa Parks
54:13
Speaker 2: and Daisy Bates, who's the advocate for for the Little
54:15
Speaker 2: Rock Nine who integrate Little Rock Central High School in 1957.
54:18
Speaker 2: And then there are women who are a little lesser known.
54:22
Speaker 2: And I get to really spend time with their journeys
54:25
Speaker 2: into the movement. And, you know, there's a lot of
54:30
Speaker 2: ambivalent feelings about the March on Washington. It was not
54:33
Speaker 2: everyone's perfect day. And I think that's an important thing
54:36
Speaker 2: to bring forward, that the way that we want to
54:38
Speaker 2: remember this moment is not the entire story behind it.
54:44
Speaker 1: Well, so who was who didn't remember who thought the
54:49
Speaker 1: day didn't go well?
54:51
Speaker 2: Well, one of the people honored on stage is Gloria Richardson,
54:55
Speaker 2: and she is the head of the Cambridge, Maryland Nonviolent
54:58
Speaker 2: Action Committee. And by August 1963, she has been through it.
55:03
Speaker 2: Cambridge is on the eastern shore of Maryland. You know,
55:06
Speaker 2: African-Americans in Cambridge are living in some of the same
55:09
Speaker 2: conditions they did at emancipation. There's been a lot of
55:14
Speaker 2: crab processing plants and canneries that have closed. It's a
55:18
Speaker 2: separate but equal society that isn't the Deep South, but
55:21
Speaker 2: isn't the North entirely. She's had it with Robert Kennedy.
55:24
Speaker 2: They're going back and forth about civil rights issues in Maryland.
55:29
Speaker 2: She goes to the March on Washington event. And she
55:32
Speaker 2: claims that she was invited to speak and then kind of,
55:35
Speaker 2: you know, shut up at the moment and and whisked away.
55:39
Speaker 2: And she has nothing found to say about the March
55:42
Speaker 2: on Washington. And I think this is amazing. I think
55:44
Speaker 2: this is good. This is the types of things I
55:47
Speaker 2: want our kids to see, that there can be disunity
55:50
Speaker 2: without disloyalty to the principle of freedom.
55:53
Speaker 1: So So what is it that angers her in this moment?
56:06
Speaker 2: I mean, like, she has really been struggling in this
56:12
Speaker 2: local level campaign that is questioning some of the mainstream
56:17
Speaker 2: goals of civil rights organizations. You know, she's saying to herself,
56:22
Speaker 2: we don't care about integrating restaurants if we don't have
56:24
Speaker 2: quality jobs. We don't really care about this kind of...
56:30
Speaker 2: strategic vision with the Kennedy administration if we are unable
56:34
Speaker 2: to have schools that are appropriate for our kids and
56:37
Speaker 2: equal housing. And so she's kind of butting up against
56:40
Speaker 2: the big figure. She's very critical of King. She's very
56:43
Speaker 2: critical of the NAACP. And she's exhausted. And, you know,
56:47
Speaker 2: the memos that she's getting about the march is like,
56:49
Speaker 2: wear a dress. She says, I'm engaged in serious economic boycott.
56:53
Speaker 2: I'm not shopping at stores and you're telling me what
56:55
Speaker 2: to wear. And there was a lot of kind of
56:59
Speaker 2: disparaging her character. The media actually is portraying her in
57:04
Speaker 2: some interesting ways because they're talking about how popular she's becoming.
57:08
Speaker 2: And after her name is called at the March on
57:11
Speaker 2: Washington stage, she gets a roaring applause because it's.
57:14
Speaker 1: Somewhat local, too.
57:15
Speaker 2: Right.
57:15
Speaker 1: She probably there was more people in the vicinity was aware. Right.
57:20
Speaker 1: Being a Marylander.
57:21
Speaker 2: Right.
57:21
Speaker 1: Being part of what we now call the DMV. It
57:23
Speaker 1: was not called the DMV back then. But but the
57:26
Speaker 1: fact is, particularly with black press, you know, there were
57:29
Speaker 1: there was going to be a well-known that she was
57:32
Speaker 1: going to the local leaders were going to be a
57:34
Speaker 1: little more well-known.
57:35
Speaker 2: Well, but the national press is also picking up on
57:37
Speaker 2: her work because the National Guard has occupied Cambridge for
57:40
Speaker 2: almost a year at this point. And so she's pretty
57:43
Speaker 2: well known. And, you know, she's on the cover of
57:45
Speaker 2: Jet Magazine and Ebony's doing features on her. But nonetheless,
57:49
Speaker 2: like she's kind of had it. And I think that
57:51
Speaker 2: this exasperation, not only with sexism, but a kind of
57:55
Speaker 2: gradualism is is going to foreshadow a greater embrace of
57:59
Speaker 2: radicalism that we associate with the late 60s. And very early,
58:05
Speaker 2: her critiques are going to match the critiques of the
58:08
Speaker 2: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, of Malcolm X, who she develops
58:13
Speaker 2: a very strong friendship with. This is like this is
58:16
Speaker 2: the movement that I think can be really compelling for
58:20
Speaker 2: people today who want to put the civil rights movement
58:24
Speaker 2: in a box and say, well, everyone, it was easy
58:27
Speaker 2: to get through this. So.
58:29
Speaker 1: You know, this is a terrific way of challenging sort
58:33
Speaker 1: of one of my beliefs. which is in a nation
58:38
Speaker 1: this big, you have to pursue incrementalism because it's the
58:41
Speaker 1: only way to bring a majority of the people along
58:44
Speaker 1: one step at a time. If you leap too far forward,
58:47
Speaker 1: sometimes you get a backlash that can actually set you back.
58:50
Speaker 1: It is easy for me, a white male to say that.
58:54
Speaker 1: It is easy for me to look at history through
58:57
Speaker 1: this prism of, you know, I use social security as
59:00
Speaker 1: an example of incrementalism, that if you actually try to
59:03
Speaker 1: do everything social security does now, back in the 1930s,
59:07
Speaker 1: it never would have gotten off. there. And you could
59:13
Speaker 1: make an argument about civil rights, that you needed an
59:15
Speaker 1: incrementalist approach in order to get to the position that
59:18
Speaker 1: we got today. And if we didn't, Barack Obama, first,
59:22
Speaker 1: we don't get the first black president. And yet, It's
59:25
Speaker 1: easy for me to say incrementalism if you're living the
59:28
Speaker 1: experience that you just described. That that she was having
59:34
Speaker 1: an incrementalism like, you know, my rights are being denied
59:38
Speaker 1: right now. What I can't wait any longer. And that
59:42
Speaker 1: tension happens in a lot of political movements. Right. Because,
59:45
Speaker 1: you know, you're fighting something that's going to take a while.
59:47
Speaker 1: And at the same time. You're not crazy about, oh,
59:51
Speaker 1: all right, it's a tiny bit better for some people,
59:54
Speaker 1: but not me. And and I think this is where
59:57
Speaker 1: political movements sometimes do run into each other. Right. And
1:00:00
Speaker 1: do start to have tension.
1:00:02
Speaker 2: Well, this is interesting that you describe it as incremental
1:00:05
Speaker 2: because from the vantage point of someone in Little Rock
1:00:09
Speaker 2: in 1957, nine black kids integrating a school of a
1:00:13
Speaker 2: thousand is not incremental. It's radical. It's a problem. It's
1:00:18
Speaker 2: going to destroy your way of life. So you get
1:00:21
Speaker 2: in your car and you start screaming at a bunch
1:00:23
Speaker 2: of teenage girls. and you threaten to kill their families,
1:00:27
Speaker 2: and you throw a brick through their window, or you
1:00:29
Speaker 2: burn a cross on someone's front yard. I think from
1:00:32
Speaker 2: our perspective, we think, okay, a desegregation bill, that is
1:00:37
Speaker 2: small compared to the idea of reparations. But for someone
1:00:42
Speaker 2: who has been entrenched in a white supremacist nation, sitting
1:00:46
Speaker 2: next to a black person eating a burger is going
1:00:49
Speaker 2: to kill you. This is how you act, right? Like
1:00:51
Speaker 2: the dramatics of it and the histrionics of it. So
1:00:53
Speaker 2: all of that is to say, though, to your point,
1:00:56
Speaker 2: you know, what's happening in this movement is that people
1:01:00
Speaker 2: are connecting the dots between if we push our federal
1:01:06
Speaker 2: government in these kind of gradual ways, they are never
1:01:11
Speaker 2: going to imagine a more capacious society. Like if we
1:01:15
Speaker 2: let Kennedy off the hook on voting and let him do,
1:01:18
Speaker 2: you know, lunch counters, where are we and where are
1:01:22
Speaker 2: our children going to end up? And so, I mean,
1:01:25
Speaker 2: this is like every conversation I have about politics, right?
1:01:28
Speaker 2: Like how... big of an ask. I think you asked
1:01:31
Speaker 2: for the most incredible vision of the future with the
1:01:35
Speaker 2: full understanding that other people won't. But I mean, my God,
1:01:39
Speaker 2: you know, one of the people that I feature in
1:01:41
Speaker 2: the book is Diane Nash, who was, you know, breaking
1:01:45
Speaker 2: open Nashville's segregated system when she's 18, 19 years old
1:01:49
Speaker 2: at Fisk. And one of the things that she does is,
1:01:52
Speaker 2: you know, when the freedom rides start and there's incredible
1:01:55
Speaker 2: violence towards people like John Lewis and Julian Bond and
1:01:59
Speaker 2: All they're doing is trying to sit with their white
1:02:01
Speaker 2: compatriots on a bus or use a snack bar in
1:02:05
Speaker 2: the South. You know, all hell breaks loose. And, you know,
1:02:09
Speaker 2: Robert Kennedy sends one of his assistants to call her
1:02:11
Speaker 2: to say, hey, call this off, like cut this out.
1:02:14
Speaker 2: And she says, you know, we're either going to do
1:02:18
Speaker 2: a fast death or a slow death. We know that
1:02:21
Speaker 2: this system is killing us at various speeds. And we
1:02:25
Speaker 2: are going to choose a rapid death if it means
1:02:28
Speaker 2: for freedom. You know, and so all of this is
1:02:30
Speaker 2: to say that I think that when, for me, when
1:02:33
Speaker 2: I try to write these stories, I try to, to
1:02:37
Speaker 2: the extent that I can, which is impossible to do
1:02:40
Speaker 2: it fully, is like really immerse myself in like, well,
1:02:42
Speaker 2: what did you actually see over the course of your lifetime?
1:02:45
Speaker 2: And what did you imagine a big ask is? And
1:02:49
Speaker 2: so for Gloria Richardson, You know, an integrated restaurant is
1:02:54
Speaker 2: insignificant because that's not going to get people out of
1:02:57
Speaker 2: poverty and out of the desolation that they're feeling because
1:03:01
Speaker 2: they will never be a full citizen.
1:03:02
Speaker 1: I want to talk about Rosa Parks and here because
1:03:07
Speaker 1: you bring up and it also there's an instance of
1:03:11
Speaker 1: Merle Edgars, the mother of Merle Edgars. And The economic
1:03:21
Speaker 1: challenges both of them were individually facing at the time
1:03:24
Speaker 1: versus their fame and the fact that, you know, Merle
1:03:29
Speaker 1: Evers doesn't go to the March on Washington. Yes.
1:03:32
Speaker 2: Right.
1:03:32
Speaker 1: Because she attends an event where in exchange for her attendance,
1:03:37
Speaker 1: her kids were going to get some scholarship money, which,
1:03:40
Speaker 1: you know, this was about, look, I've got this is
1:03:43
Speaker 1: on the table here. I get them. And. Talk about
1:03:48
Speaker 1: a part of the story nobody writes about, that certain
1:03:51
Speaker 1: people weren't there that maybe should have been, but there
1:03:54
Speaker 1: were economic challenges for these women who, yes, they were
1:03:58
Speaker 1: important symbols to the movement, but they were also human
1:04:00
Speaker 1: beings trying to survive day to day.
1:04:04
Speaker 2: I think the challenge of writing about someone like Rosa
1:04:07
Speaker 2: Parks is most people are familiar with why we know
1:04:10
Speaker 2: who Rosa Parks is.
1:04:11
Speaker 1: Sure.
1:04:18
Speaker 2: Of women in the civil rights movement have given us
1:04:20
Speaker 2: a bigger picture of who she was politically, who she
1:04:22
Speaker 2: was socially. And so when I was tasked with, what
1:04:25
Speaker 2: is Rosa Parks doing in 1963? She is worried about
1:04:29
Speaker 2: paying the bills. The financial retribution for civil rights leaders
1:04:34
Speaker 2: across the board is unfathomable. And I think that right now,
1:04:38
Speaker 2: since we're living in an era of a great renewed
1:04:42
Speaker 2: interest in political repression. We're seeing it again. But Rosa
1:04:46
Speaker 2: Parks loses her job maybe a month into the bus boycott,
1:04:50
Speaker 2: maybe a few weeks. So her source of income is
1:04:53
Speaker 2: taken away. Her husband's source of income is taken away.
1:04:56
Speaker 2: They are living on the generosity of others. After the
1:04:59
Speaker 2: bus boycott ends, King goes on to publish books. He's
1:05:03
Speaker 2: going to win the Nobel Prize in a few years.
1:05:05
Speaker 2: These guys, now their lives were imperiled and they had struggles,
1:05:08
Speaker 2: but there is a financial pathway for them. Rosa Parks
1:05:12
Speaker 2: can't find a job in Alabama. She moves to Detroit.
1:05:15
Speaker 2: She has a hard time finding a job. She becomes
1:05:17
Speaker 2: an innkeeper on the campus of Hampton University. And just
1:05:20
Speaker 2: earlier today, I was talking to a proud Hampton graduate.
1:05:22
Speaker 2: I said, you know, Rosa Parks was at the Holly tree.
1:05:26
Speaker 2: And he said, wait, what? And, you know, people would
1:05:29
Speaker 2: show up on campus saying, wait, isn't that Rosa Parks? Like,
1:05:31
Speaker 2: what is going on here? And she writes in her letters,
1:05:35
Speaker 2: like she has an ulcer, but she can't afford the,
1:05:38
Speaker 2: you know, the, I guess used to tell you used
1:05:40
Speaker 2: to drink cream to deal. She's like, I can't, I
1:05:42
Speaker 2: can't afford the cream for my ulcer. You know, when
1:05:45
Speaker 2: she goes to Detroit, they're living in kind of these
1:05:48
Speaker 2: borrowed spaces for 20 bucks a month. You know, the
1:05:51
Speaker 2: NAACP visits her magazines, visit her. And there's a refrain,
1:05:55
Speaker 2: you know, don't forget Rosa Parks. It's such a shame
1:05:58
Speaker 2: what's happening to Rosa Parks, but no one is doing
1:06:01
Speaker 2: anything for her. Through her whole life, there was financial precarity.
1:06:04
Speaker 2: It isn't until John Conyers is elected that she gets
1:06:07
Speaker 2: to be like an LA in his office. And people
1:06:09
Speaker 2: show up and say, wait, aren't you Rosa Parks? Like,
1:06:11
Speaker 2: what are you doing here? And I think that what
1:06:14
Speaker 2: people were sacrificing... wasn't just about the moment. It was
1:06:19
Speaker 2: about generations. Because for every Rosa Parks that we do
1:06:23
Speaker 2: know and celebrate and honor, there were Black folks in
1:06:26
Speaker 2: South Carolina who are registering to vote. You go to
1:06:29
Speaker 2: register to vote, the next day, the loan on your
1:06:32
Speaker 2: truck is called up. Or your kids who are at
1:06:34
Speaker 2: a historically Black college 100 miles away are kicked out
1:06:37
Speaker 2: of school. Or you protest and your parents lose their jobs.
1:06:41
Speaker 2: You know, this is a fully immersive experience, a fully
1:06:46
Speaker 2: immersive experience of risk. And they still take it and
1:06:50
Speaker 2: they still understand it. And the thing that I will
1:06:52
Speaker 2: say about all the women in this book, they're so different.
1:06:54
Speaker 2: They all take different kind of political approaches. No one
1:06:58
Speaker 2: turns their back on the idea of black freedom or
1:07:01
Speaker 2: black struggle. And you can't say that about everyone who's
1:07:04
Speaker 2: involved in civil rights. Some people take a very bitter,
1:07:06
Speaker 2: sharp turn against it. But they do not ever turn
1:07:10
Speaker 2: their backs against it, no matter how much they've been
1:07:12
Speaker 2: harmed by the various systems that happen internally.
1:07:16
Speaker 1: So, look, you're trying to paint a fuller picture of
1:07:19
Speaker 1: the good, the bad, the complicated, right? That's clear. I mean,
1:07:24
Speaker 1: that's sort of my favorite part of history is when
1:07:26
Speaker 1: it doesn't follow the narrative, right? Like, you know, we
1:07:31
Speaker 1: have a narrative in our head and this doesn't follow
1:07:33
Speaker 1: the narrative. And I'm listening to you here and it's like,
1:07:36
Speaker 1: what you're building in this book and what you've built
1:07:41
Speaker 1: in this book is supporting evidence that makes the case
1:07:46
Speaker 1: for reparation stronger than I've ever heard.
1:07:49
Speaker 2: From Chuck Todd's mouth.
1:07:52
Speaker 1: No, it's sort of like one of those, right? We
1:07:55
Speaker 1: talk about it as a repairing something that happened in
1:07:58
Speaker 1: the 19th century. And what is less known and less understood,
1:08:06
Speaker 1: even though the minute you say it, well, of course
1:08:08
Speaker 1: that was a problem, was frankly, you could make a
1:08:15
Speaker 1: stronger case for reparations based on the treatment after emancipation, right?
1:08:22
Speaker 1: Like the lack of being able, like you could make
1:08:24
Speaker 1: a case there and you make the case on slavery, right?
1:08:29
Speaker 1: Do you think this is why reparations has had a
1:08:31
Speaker 1: harder time breaking through as a mainstream issue because we
1:08:37
Speaker 1: know so little about the price that was paid by
1:08:41
Speaker 1: Rosa Parks? We know the price that was paid. The
1:08:44
Speaker 1: price Martin Luther King paid, we all see. There's a
1:08:50
Speaker 1: federal holiday in some ways to acknowledge this. but not
1:08:53
Speaker 1: for Murley Evers, not for Rosa Parks, not for for
1:08:57
Speaker 1: so many others that and what you just described all
1:09:00
Speaker 1: these different these are the stories do you think that
1:09:04
Speaker 1: are necessary to be told and and a better understanding
1:09:07
Speaker 1: of this history perhaps white america has a different different
1:09:11
Speaker 1: understanding and conversation.
1:09:12
Speaker 2: About this You know, I didn't think we would talk
1:09:14
Speaker 2: about this, but I'm glad you brought it up.
1:09:16
Speaker 1: So I didn't know we were going to either. But
1:09:18
Speaker 1: like I'm hearing this in your list, like, you know,
1:09:21
Speaker 1: this is how I would be making the case for reparations,
1:09:25
Speaker 1: I guess, is where I was.
1:09:27
Speaker 2: You know, let me tell you. So I used to
1:09:30
Speaker 2: work at Georgetown University and I was on the faculty
1:09:33
Speaker 2: during those years. We were really going deep into this question.
1:09:37
Speaker 2: of universities and slavery and what is owed and reparations.
1:09:41
Speaker 2: And coming from a Catholic faith background personally and working
1:09:45
Speaker 2: at a Catholic institution, we used to use the language
1:09:48
Speaker 2: of reconciliation, which I think can be very powerful spiritually.
1:09:52
Speaker 2: But I say this because there is a deep desire
1:09:58
Speaker 2: in this country to name and resolve any kind of
1:10:05
Speaker 2: problem of racial conflict, even for people who I think
1:10:07
Speaker 2: are really well-intentioned. And so I hear what you're saying,
1:10:12
Speaker 2: and I think that we can make an argument for
1:10:14
Speaker 2: reparations based on a number of things that have happened
1:10:17
Speaker 2: to African-Americans. But the thing that I think is really
1:10:19
Speaker 2: interesting is the extent to which educated, kind, faith-filled people
1:10:25
Speaker 2: knew that chattel slavery involved the selling of one's child
1:10:30
Speaker 2: sexual exploitation, the disruption of family, violence for the sake
1:10:34
Speaker 2: of violence. People know that and they would still say, well,
1:10:39
Speaker 2: I don't know. That seemed like a long time ago.
1:10:41
Speaker 2: And you say, okay. Or they would say, it's a
1:10:43
Speaker 2: bureaucratic issue. Who do we know is owed what? We
1:10:46
Speaker 2: know the innovations of DNA and genealogy and more people
1:10:50
Speaker 2: are able to trace their claims. We know about the
1:10:53
Speaker 2: ledgers of people that were sold by churches, by universities,
1:10:57
Speaker 2: you know, by entire kind of industries. More knowledge has
1:11:02
Speaker 2: not advanced than this clock. And I'll tell you one
1:11:06
Speaker 2: of the things I think is hard for us to imagine.
1:11:09
Speaker 2: And this is the place that I find inspiration. Can
1:11:12
Speaker 2: we imagine a world in which we have debts that
1:11:14
Speaker 2: will never be repaid? that the struggle to reconcile this
1:11:20
Speaker 2: country's past on race and white supremacy is a challenge
1:11:25
Speaker 2: that should get us up every morning to move forward,
1:11:28
Speaker 2: not a quest to resolve or end it. And I
1:11:31
Speaker 2: think this is the hardest part, right? Because I think
1:11:34
Speaker 2: there's a deep desire to say, okay, if reparations are paid,
1:11:37
Speaker 2: will I never have to hear about this? You know,
1:11:39
Speaker 2: I'm not going to curse on your lovely podcast, this
1:11:42
Speaker 2: stuff again, right? You know, Do I have do I
1:11:46
Speaker 2: have to withstand my kids learning about this?
1:11:49
Speaker 1: Right.
1:11:49
Speaker 2: So it's not about a movement towards the.
1:11:52
Speaker 1: You just made you've just made the case for what
1:11:54
Speaker 1: a more perfect union means.
1:11:56
Speaker 2: Well, there we go. Right. Like, there we go. And
1:11:59
Speaker 2: so I think that, you know, this requires like a
1:12:03
Speaker 2: radical kind of rethinking of what does it mean to
1:12:07
Speaker 2: be part of a nation? What does it mean to
1:12:08
Speaker 2: be an American? But I think the moral leadership that
1:12:12
Speaker 2: I write about in this book has not changed. become
1:12:16
Speaker 2: the leadership of the entire nation. And when it does,
1:12:19
Speaker 2: then I think we can have different types of conversation.
1:12:23
Speaker 2: But as long as we have incredible bodies of people,
1:12:26
Speaker 2: and this isn't even my political rant about people on
1:12:30
Speaker 2: the right. This is a cultural, national, existential identity problem.
1:12:36
Speaker 2: As long as we live in a culture that believes
1:12:39
Speaker 2: that acknowledgement is means silence, means kind of finality, then
1:12:46
Speaker 2: we lose the potential, the real transformative possibility of really
1:12:50
Speaker 2: delving deep into the issue of reparations and repair and
1:12:53
Speaker 2: true reconciliation.
1:12:56
Speaker 1: Well, let's keep going on this. What would a more
1:12:58
Speaker 1: moral leadership class of America look like?
1:13:05
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we I think we see glimmers
1:13:08
Speaker 2: of it. I think, you know, I think about people like, oh, gosh,
1:13:15
Speaker 2: I'm at this age where I cannot remember things.
1:13:18
Speaker 1: Oh, trust me. I know what you mean.
1:13:20
Speaker 2: Producers, help me out.
1:13:21
Speaker 1: Oh, God.
1:13:23
Speaker 2: The guy who's leading Moral Mondays in North Carolina and
1:13:26
Speaker 2: the new.
1:13:27
Speaker 1: Oh, I know. Reverend Barber.
1:13:28
Speaker 2: Okay, so we look at someone like William Barber. I
1:13:33
Speaker 2: remember he gave a kind of off-the-record talk at Georgetown
1:13:37
Speaker 2: when I worked there, and I thought to myself, this
1:13:39
Speaker 2: must be what it was like for the people I
1:13:42
Speaker 2: write about, to sit in the community with other people
1:13:46
Speaker 2: and just listen to a person express, not a promise, like,
1:13:50
Speaker 2: this is going to happen, and this is how, I'm
1:13:52
Speaker 2: not going to give you 5,000 bucks if you do this,
1:13:54
Speaker 2: none of that bullshit, but And it is a person
1:13:57
Speaker 2: who is just sitting in the realness of your humanity
1:14:01
Speaker 2: and suggesting that you have something to offer. You know,
1:14:04
Speaker 2: when we look at like the moral Monday movement, the
1:14:07
Speaker 2: do poor people's campaign, I think I see it in
1:14:10
Speaker 2: folks in the working families party. And they're saying your
1:14:14
Speaker 2: struggle is real, right? And the mechanisms that this society
1:14:18
Speaker 2: has given you to deal with your struggle, whether it's
1:14:21
Speaker 2: your racism or your transphobia or your, you know, ranting
1:14:25
Speaker 2: on the Internet, that is an empty, empty thing. What
1:14:28
Speaker 2: we are going to give you. isn't an answer to
1:14:31
Speaker 2: all your problems, but it's a way to feel more human.
1:14:34
Speaker 2: I mean, I've got a five-year-old kid and the thing
1:14:38
Speaker 2: that freaks me out the most is his cartoons have
1:14:40
Speaker 2: worlds without people. It's like cars are made without people
1:14:44
Speaker 2: and then they change colors and there's fun stuff. And
1:14:47
Speaker 2: I have to say, robots are okay, but people are
1:14:49
Speaker 2: better than robots. I'm always saying that people are better
1:14:52
Speaker 2: than robots, but I don't know if he has evidence
1:14:54
Speaker 2: of that in the world we live in. Why would
1:14:56
Speaker 2: he believe that? what mom says about people being better
1:14:59
Speaker 2: than robots, because we are in a culture that our dehumanization,
1:15:05
Speaker 2: our ability to dehumanize others is considered a strength. This
1:15:08
Speaker 2: is the power. This is the future. And the more
1:15:11
Speaker 2: and more we dwell on that, the worse and worse
1:15:13
Speaker 2: it's going to get. And so I, I mean, I mean,
1:15:16
Speaker 2: who am I, right? I'm just someone who reads a
1:15:18
Speaker 2: bunch of books and I've written a few, but I
1:15:20
Speaker 2: do think that When people talk about what drew them
1:15:25
Speaker 2: into the civil rights movement from all backgrounds, it was
1:15:29
Speaker 2: the capacity for a movement to see their humanity and
1:15:33
Speaker 2: respond to it in its deepest ways. And I think
1:15:36
Speaker 2: this is, you know, maybe it's a little churchy, but
1:15:39
Speaker 2: I don't know what else we have.
1:15:49
Speaker 1: Let me shift. the conversation here slightly because the other
1:15:53
Speaker 1: part of your, you know, the first question I asked you,
1:15:55
Speaker 1: which is about this, is this about the forgotten women
1:15:58
Speaker 1: or is this about how we remember history? And I
1:16:02
Speaker 1: had a recent conversation with Ashley Judd.
1:16:05
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
1:16:06
Speaker 1: Who is, was at a conference here in DC that
1:16:10
Speaker 1: was essentially worrying about the how AI is going to
1:16:15
Speaker 1: portray humanity, right? In this sort of where, where is, and,
1:16:18
Speaker 1: you know, her concerns are on the, like we've had,
1:16:21
Speaker 1: you know, 10,000 years, right? Of all this accumulated knowledge
1:16:27
Speaker 1: through one point of view, one perspective, particularly on gender lines.
1:16:32
Speaker 1: And what is this sort of large, what are these
1:16:35
Speaker 1: large language models do to frankly sanitize history? And that's
1:16:41
Speaker 1: what you, you know, unless you're, smart enough to ask
1:16:45
Speaker 1: your prompt to get more, you know, to get more
1:16:48
Speaker 1: specific or to delve into certain things. You're going to get,
1:16:55
Speaker 1: if you think we've had sanitized history over the last,
1:16:58
Speaker 1: you know, two generations, you ain't seen nothing yet.
1:17:01
Speaker 2: Well, imagine when a student in an African-American history class
1:17:06
Speaker 2: asks ChatGPT to talk about African-Americans, the kind of garbage
1:17:10
Speaker 2: you get.
1:17:11
Speaker 1: Well, that's, and so, I think this is a challenge
1:17:16
Speaker 1: that government hasn't even fully, you know, this gets it
1:17:19
Speaker 1: to a large, you know, I guess let me ask
1:17:22
Speaker 1: from your perspective, what would you like to see these
1:17:26
Speaker 1: companies do to make sure we don't have the worldview
1:17:31
Speaker 1: that I fear we're going to have in the next
1:17:33
Speaker 1: 50 years?
1:17:34
Speaker 2: I mean, do they care? Are they asking those questions?
1:17:38
Speaker 1: Well, no, they're not. That's my concern. There's not. Do
1:17:41
Speaker 1: I think individuals are in these companies?
1:17:43
Speaker 2: There are.
1:17:44
Speaker 1: OK. And there is, you know, when I rant and
1:17:48
Speaker 1: rave about the lack of ethicists involved, I think, you know,
1:17:51
Speaker 1: I'm not you know, I've got my own complicated relationship
1:17:56
Speaker 1: with religion. But I think people of faith need to
1:17:58
Speaker 1: be involved here. You know, there's all sorts of. Entities
1:18:01
Speaker 1: need to be involved as we decide to build this
1:18:04
Speaker 1: super this this supposed baseline intelligence that we're all going
1:18:07
Speaker 1: to have access to, which in one hand means that
1:18:13
Speaker 1: there's no math problem. Anybody can't figure out the answer
1:18:16
Speaker 1: to now. OK, but that's a that's a series of
1:18:19
Speaker 1: ones and zeros. What do we forget whether they want
1:18:25
Speaker 1: to do it? This is a case where I think
1:18:28
Speaker 1: government has to step in here. It's about how are
1:18:30
Speaker 1: you building this? It's not whether you should or shouldn't.
1:18:33
Speaker 1: How is it being built? And is there going to
1:18:35
Speaker 1: be equal access to history, equal access to people's identity?
1:18:42
Speaker 1: And I think there's a growing case to be made
1:18:46
Speaker 1: that the answer is no, especially if all they're doing
1:18:48
Speaker 1: is learning on what's been written. I mean, take the
1:18:52
Speaker 1: March on Washington. What is an LLM going to tell
1:18:57
Speaker 1: me about it?
1:18:58
Speaker 2: Again, I'm not going to curse on your podcast, but
1:19:01
Speaker 2: the LLM can go do something to itself because here's
1:19:06
Speaker 2: the thing. I am not a Luddite. I have a
1:19:10
Speaker 2: computer and a cell phone.
1:19:12
Speaker 1: We're speaking on Zoom right now.
1:19:17
Speaker 2: But let me be very clear about something. Even in
1:19:19
Speaker 2: the absence of these technologies... these um mechanisms for the
1:19:25
Speaker 2: erasure and dehumanization of people have existed in different forms
1:19:29
Speaker 2: now it has a technology to make it more efficient
1:19:33
Speaker 2: and so i say that to say that i agree
1:19:36
Speaker 2: with you that we have to have regulated technologies and
1:19:40
Speaker 2: we have to have um we have to have um
1:19:44
Speaker 2: a world where there isn't so much financial interest in
1:19:47
Speaker 2: them that, you know, that disparaging them doesn't even seem
1:19:51
Speaker 2: honest because we're all implicated in this new economy. And
1:19:54
Speaker 2: I want to live in a world where we really
1:19:57
Speaker 2: question whether or not the theft of intellectual property should
1:20:02
Speaker 2: be our baseline understanding of moving forward because no one
1:20:06
Speaker 2: ever asked me if I wanted this, right? Like, so
1:20:08
Speaker 2: you're talking about like the questions that these folks need
1:20:11
Speaker 2: to ask themselves. Well, why didn't you ask me when
1:20:13
Speaker 2: you were developing it? But you were too busy stealing
1:20:15
Speaker 2: the stuff that I had already produced. And so this
1:20:18
Speaker 2: one is a really hard one for me, you know,
1:20:20
Speaker 2: as an educator and as a person in the world
1:20:23
Speaker 2: and also as someone who's very aware of the histories
1:20:26
Speaker 2: of what these technologies do to the most vulnerable.
1:20:29
Speaker 1: Right.
1:20:30
Speaker 2: I would have no problem with data centers if they
1:20:33
Speaker 2: didn't poison people's water. And I would have liked to
1:20:36
Speaker 2: be asked, maybe there's a way, like, this is how
1:20:39
Speaker 2: we have to build them. And I would have liked
1:20:41
Speaker 2: to be asked, you know, before someone collected all my
1:20:44
Speaker 2: data so they can like send me ads all day.
1:20:47
Speaker 2: And I wish someone would have asked if I want
1:20:48
Speaker 2: my kid to imagine a world where there's only robots
1:20:51
Speaker 2: and no people. And so I think that there was
1:20:53
Speaker 2: no kind of, there's no kind of like foundation of
1:20:55
Speaker 2: consent or participation. And then we start to believe then
1:20:59
Speaker 2: we don't matter. Like this is the, I mean, the real,
1:21:02
Speaker 2: you know, I think the word is hat trick or
1:21:05
Speaker 2: sleight of hand of all of this with a con
1:21:06
Speaker 2: of this, maybe we should say the con is that it,
1:21:10
Speaker 2: it makes us believe that we were ever that we
1:21:14
Speaker 2: have any kind of role in allowing for this. It happens.
1:21:19
Speaker 2: And then we have to react rather than we live
1:21:22
Speaker 2: in a society that actually consults people about the things
1:21:25
Speaker 2: that will impact them. And so, I mean, listen, I don't,
1:21:29
Speaker 2: I don't know what this thing is going to be,
1:21:31
Speaker 2: but I do know this. On August 28th, 1963 at
1:21:35
Speaker 2: the March on Washington, A. Philip Randolph in his opening
1:21:38
Speaker 2: speech says, we have to be concerned about the problem
1:21:41
Speaker 2: of automation, right? Like as a labor person, he's saying,
1:21:45
Speaker 2: we've got to be careful about what does it mean
1:21:47
Speaker 2: when we no longer have jobs because we've conceded everything
1:21:52
Speaker 2: to technology. Little did he know. And I also know
1:21:55
Speaker 2: that every single person who's on that stage understood the
1:21:59
Speaker 2: long history of the dehumanization of African-Americans and and said
1:22:02
Speaker 2: the future can be bright, but we have to be
1:22:05
Speaker 2: very aware of what is also a continuous process of
1:22:09
Speaker 2: stripping and denying people. And the various people who do
1:22:13
Speaker 2: that in the media representations, in the federal government, in industry,
1:22:17
Speaker 2: in labor, like we have to protect that. And I
1:22:20
Speaker 2: see technology as no different.
1:22:22
Speaker 1: Well, it's just interesting. I mean, it's like with anything,
1:22:25
Speaker 1: the more I learn, the more I question what I've
1:22:27
Speaker 1: been taught. Well, that's the goal. Right, you sit here.
1:22:32
Speaker 1: But the problem is what happens if suddenly we automate
1:22:36
Speaker 1: everything and I can't find original sources or the original
1:22:40
Speaker 1: sources are so hard to, I mean, this is sort
1:22:43
Speaker 1: of like, it is not only are we gonna sanitize,
1:22:46
Speaker 1: but we're doing so and we're gonna do so in
1:22:49
Speaker 1: such an efficient way that finding these original sources actually
1:22:54
Speaker 1: become more complicated, harder than ever, And then what have
1:22:58
Speaker 1: we done and what have we created?
1:23:00
Speaker 2: And then what if we destroy the sources or silence
1:23:03
Speaker 2: the writers or deport the creators? I mean, at this point,
1:23:08
Speaker 2: I have graduate students who can't read cursive because that
1:23:11
Speaker 2: is not part of standard curriculum anymore. OK, it sounds
1:23:14
Speaker 2: like a silly problem. Well, then they can't read an
1:23:16
Speaker 2: original document.
1:23:17
Speaker 1: Well, have you ever been taught to use a slide rule?
1:23:21
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, we used to do cyber. Right.
1:23:23
Speaker 1: But the point is we don't do it anymore. Right. Like,
1:23:26
Speaker 1: and that's the thing. Look, and I, and I, my
1:23:27
Speaker 1: point being on that is like, look, you said you
1:23:31
Speaker 1: have a five-year-old. I have two kids, one out of college,
1:23:33
Speaker 1: one still in college. And one of the petrified moments
1:23:38
Speaker 1: that I know I would have if my kids were
1:23:40
Speaker 1: younger today is I don't know. what tools they need
1:23:45
Speaker 1: to survive in the world that's going, you know, put
1:23:48
Speaker 1: it this way. When my kids were starting school, parents
1:23:52
Speaker 1: were being told, well, you better have them learn to code.
1:23:56
Speaker 1: And now we just learned, oh, well, that's meaningless. We're
1:23:58
Speaker 1: now automating that. So then what do we do, right? Like,
1:24:02
Speaker 1: you know, and then there's so many young people today
1:24:05
Speaker 1: that don't know how to do certain basic things. things
1:24:10
Speaker 1: in an apartment because so much of that stuff, you know,
1:24:13
Speaker 1: we don't bother to teach people how to use tools
1:24:16
Speaker 1: because tools are not a part of our more and
1:24:18
Speaker 1: more people's everyday life. And yet, you know, I'm finding
1:24:23
Speaker 1: that with my own kids. I'm like, oh, I realize
1:24:25
Speaker 1: I didn't teach you how to use these things because
1:24:28
Speaker 1: we never really needed them. But when I was a kid,
1:24:30
Speaker 1: we did. So I did learn how to do these things.
1:24:33
Speaker 1: You know, this is.
1:24:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I don't make predictions because I'm a historian.
1:24:38
Speaker 2: I should stay out of the business, but this is
1:24:40
Speaker 2: what I will predict. By the time my kid is
1:24:43
Speaker 2: going into college and or maybe heading out, elites will
1:24:47
Speaker 2: have such a stronghold on the type of education we're
1:24:53
Speaker 2: talking about. Because elite tech people, they don't want their
1:24:57
Speaker 2: kids in front of a freaking iPad. They don't want
1:24:59
Speaker 2: their kids on social media. What does that tell you?
1:25:02
Speaker 2: They don't want their kids watching TV. They don't want
1:25:04
Speaker 2: their kids interacting with the very thing that made them billionaires.
1:25:07
Speaker 2: So let's be very clear. Like what I see right
1:25:10
Speaker 2: now is happening, you know, and I teach at Penn.
1:25:13
Speaker 2: So I am teaching a segment of the elite is
1:25:16
Speaker 2: that there is a class of people who have benefited
1:25:18
Speaker 2: from the disruption, right, of norms and the selling of
1:25:22
Speaker 2: a frictionless life who do not want their kids near
1:25:25
Speaker 2: it because they understand the existential and intellectual emptiness of it.
1:25:30
Speaker 2: So my greatest hope is that my kid and his
1:25:32
Speaker 2: friends read books about the civil rights movement and they
1:25:35
Speaker 2: are at the vanguard of a Luddite movement where kids
1:25:38
Speaker 2: are saying, mom, it was smartphone. Why don't you talk
1:25:40
Speaker 2: to a person? And like, oh, we hate computers. Like,
1:25:43
Speaker 2: let's use a typewriter. But my fear is that will
1:25:46
Speaker 2: be the next vanguard of an elite that will be
1:25:49
Speaker 2: disconnected or not concerned about. about how these methods of
1:25:55
Speaker 2: automation and AI are affecting real everyday people. But I
1:25:59
Speaker 2: think the disgusting irony of all of this are the
1:26:03
Speaker 2: people who are ruling the world do not want their
1:26:05
Speaker 2: children near any of this. While they disrupt education, while
1:26:09
Speaker 2: they ruin colleges and universities, while they create a culture
1:26:13
Speaker 2: of fear and a lack of intellectual depth, they don't
1:26:17
Speaker 2: want it for their kids. They just want it for
1:26:19
Speaker 2: the rest of us.
1:26:20
Speaker 1: This is why I think the tech companies, so they
1:26:21
Speaker 1: don't really like why we're so angry at data centers.
1:26:23
Speaker 1: I'm convinced it's not about data centers. It's like you
1:26:26
Speaker 1: shoved social media on us and we never had a
1:26:28
Speaker 1: we never got a say in this. You shoved all
1:26:31
Speaker 1: of a sudden classrooms had iPads in them because we
1:26:33
Speaker 1: were all told this was going to be the way
1:26:34
Speaker 1: to learn. And now, like in my community, there's a
1:26:38
Speaker 1: there's a revolt like, you know, tell the schools not
1:26:41
Speaker 1: to hand your kids devices. That's don't you know, literally
1:26:44
Speaker 1: the county gives everybody one.
1:26:47
Speaker 2: Because that's the future, right?
1:26:49
Speaker 1: You know?
1:26:49
Speaker 2: I mean, and here's the deal. Like, I also, I
1:26:51
Speaker 2: want to get to know people. I mean, the strength
1:26:54
Speaker 2: of the civil rights movement is that people had to
1:26:56
Speaker 2: spend time in proximity. There's this documentary on the 1964
1:27:00
Speaker 2: Freedom Summer. And I think it was Junita Blackwell talks
1:27:04
Speaker 2: about when the summer volunteers came to Mississippi. And she
1:27:08
Speaker 2: said it was a bunch of white people. And at
1:27:11
Speaker 2: the end of the day, they would sit next to
1:27:12
Speaker 2: you and you were eating a bowl of beans and
1:27:14
Speaker 2: they became people to me because their whole lives had
1:27:17
Speaker 2: been in servitude to these like disgusting racist white people
1:27:21
Speaker 2: that they don't become people. Right. And she said, this
1:27:24
Speaker 2: is what launched civil rights for me. And so if
1:27:26
Speaker 2: we want to present our children, a world where people
1:27:29
Speaker 2: are insignificant or you can't tell them apart because who cares?
1:27:33
Speaker 2: A robot is going to love you and care for you.
1:27:35
Speaker 2: This is what happens. Right.
1:27:37
Speaker 1: Well, I always talk about a two-dimensional versus three-dimensional. I mean,
1:27:41
Speaker 1: I just recently had a friend visit to come see
1:27:44
Speaker 1: a concert for somebody that was touring and they're from
1:27:47
Speaker 1: a smaller community. And he goes, my God, D.C. is awesome.
1:27:51
Speaker 1: This was great. This was so clean. This was safe.
1:27:53
Speaker 1: Everything I read online was this or that. And you're
1:27:56
Speaker 1: just like, you know, it's true of any go to
1:27:58
Speaker 1: any foreign country for the first time. And every person's
1:28:02
Speaker 1: experience is, oh, this is not what I expected. And
1:28:04
Speaker 1: you want to say to them, well, in this, think
1:28:07
Speaker 1: about how many other things that you stereotype before you've
1:28:11
Speaker 1: experienced that you end up changing, right? It's, you know,
1:28:15
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, this is human nature, right?
1:28:18
Speaker 1: I don't know what, you tell me, I don't know,
1:28:21
Speaker 1: but it certainly feels like it is. We don't, we
1:28:24
Speaker 1: may not know for sure, but it feels as if,
1:28:27
Speaker 1: is this the human, it's just human behavior that does this,
1:28:31
Speaker 1: that at the end of the day, our own minds
1:28:34
Speaker 1: work like large language models and we're going to, whatever
1:28:37
Speaker 1: is in there, we're going to synthesize into a stereotype,
1:28:40
Speaker 1: whether it's a stereotype of an inanimate object or a
1:28:43
Speaker 1: real person.
1:28:44
Speaker 2: And then we read a book about women in the
1:28:45
Speaker 2: civil rights movement and we say, oh, wait, there's a
1:28:48
Speaker 2: different way to operate in the world. And there's a
1:28:50
Speaker 2: different way to think. And, you know, I mean, if
1:28:53
Speaker 2: you could imagine Rosa Parks taking up yoga later in
1:28:56
Speaker 2: life and changing into someone who was pro nonviolence after
1:29:00
Speaker 2: really believing in armed self-defense and spending time, you know,
1:29:04
Speaker 2: going to these radical training centers for activism in the 1950s,
1:29:09
Speaker 2: because she was curious about ways that she can make
1:29:11
Speaker 2: a difference. Like if a person who in many ways
1:29:15
Speaker 2: was supposed to be disconnected from a larger world, immerses
1:29:19
Speaker 2: herself in that world, intellectually and spiritually, and comes out
1:29:23
Speaker 2: with a kind of hold, despite all her harms, we
1:29:27
Speaker 2: actually have a fighting chance. You talked about, did you
1:29:31
Speaker 2: raise your kids in the DC area?
1:29:32
Speaker 1: Yes.
1:29:35
Speaker 2: I'm raising a kid in DC. I love living in DC.
1:29:38
Speaker 2: You can take your kid to the zoo. It doesn't
1:29:39
Speaker 2: cost you any money. They freak out. You go back home.
1:29:42
Speaker 2: It's wonderful. It is painful for me to take my
1:29:46
Speaker 2: child who actually wants to go to the Smithsonian, to
1:29:49
Speaker 2: the Smithsonian, because when I walk into this building, I'm
1:29:52
Speaker 2: so excited to show him history. And I know the
1:29:55
Speaker 2: threat that everyone who works in that building is under.
1:29:57
Speaker 1: And I have.
1:29:58
Speaker 2: To explain to him why I was sad about, you know,
1:30:01
Speaker 2: Lonnie Bunch retiring. And I have to take him to
1:30:04
Speaker 2: the African-American Museum and hope it's there next year. Like,
1:30:07
Speaker 2: This is where we are, folks. And good luck to.
1:30:10
Speaker 1: All of us. No, I can't believe I would be
1:30:13
Speaker 1: questioning what the Smithsonian was going to put out. I
1:30:16
Speaker 1: never thought Never thought I had to worry about that
1:30:19
Speaker 1: over the last 20 years.
1:30:20
Speaker 2: And I think to myself, I hope my book is
1:30:22
Speaker 2: still in circulation, that some robot hasn't eaten it up
1:30:27
Speaker 2: so that my kid can read it.
1:30:29
Speaker 1: Well, let me lay in this plane and go back
1:30:32
Speaker 1: to the book, which is you've spent years reconstructing the
1:30:37
Speaker 1: March on Washington, basically, like what really happened versus what
1:30:41
Speaker 1: we remember in the narrative. So what's one thing that
1:30:44
Speaker 1: you think people still get wrong about that day that
1:30:46
Speaker 1: frustrates you the most?
1:30:49
Speaker 2: They get the. So because we have the program still
1:30:54
Speaker 2: with us and so much of the reporting comes from
1:30:56
Speaker 2: the program, they say that women were there who are
1:31:00
Speaker 2: not there. They say Marlee Evers were there. She wasn't there.
1:31:03
Speaker 2: They say Prince Nelson Lee was there. She was not there.
1:31:05
Speaker 2: They say Diane Nash was there. She was not there.
1:31:07
Speaker 2: A lot of the women didn't show up. You know why?
1:31:09
Speaker 2: Because they didn't think it was a thing. It was
1:31:11
Speaker 2: such a last minute effort. And not a small detail,
1:31:16
Speaker 2: but an important detail to understand that there were people
1:31:20
Speaker 2: who were not there. And to know why and to
1:31:23
Speaker 2: know the dimensions of their lives is also important because
1:31:26
Speaker 2: the civil rights movement wasn't just the March on Washington.
1:31:29
Speaker 2: But boy, did it illustrate so much about it.
1:31:33
Speaker 1: Marsha, I am so glad to have met you. I
1:31:36
Speaker 1: am so glad to have read this book. And I'm
1:31:38
Speaker 1: just trying to figure out more ways I could continue
1:31:41
Speaker 1: this conversation with you throughout many, many years or months
1:31:44
Speaker 1: on a variety of topics. This has been among the
1:31:48
Speaker 1: more fascinating conversations.
1:31:50
Speaker 2: Thank you.
1:31:51
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. And I just love how your mind works.
1:31:54
Speaker 1: Thank you.
1:31:54
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
1:31:55
Speaker 1: So what else? Let me let me obviously people can
1:31:59
Speaker 1: find this this particular book, but tell folks about the
1:32:02
Speaker 1: other other scholarship you've done.
1:32:04
Speaker 2: So my books are How Bright the Path Grows, The
1:32:07
Speaker 2: Untold Story of the Women Who Made the March on Washington.
1:32:09
Speaker 2: My book before that was Franchise, The Golden Arches in
1:32:12
Speaker 2: Black America. And my first book is called Southside Girls
1:32:15
Speaker 2: Growing Up in the Great Migration.
1:32:18
Speaker 1: Marsha, I am going to gobble up all three myself
1:32:22
Speaker 1: because of how interesting. because of this conversation, to be frank. Anyway,
1:32:27
Speaker 1: it's great to meet you. All right, let's go to
1:32:40
Speaker 1: the top 10 list. It's my Senate flips. Look, we're
1:32:42
Speaker 1: getting that close. I don't want to mess around and
1:32:46
Speaker 1: get too creative, too complicated here. But I did want
1:32:50
Speaker 1: to go to a top 10 list. So again, this
1:32:53
Speaker 1: is most likely to flip parties. That's what the number
1:32:58
Speaker 1: one race is. So that's why number one, this is
1:33:00
Speaker 1: not a, it's not a, it's not a secret. It's
1:33:03
Speaker 1: North Carolina. This isn't a big reveal. This isn't trying
1:33:06
Speaker 1: to figure out, you know, I think what will be
1:33:08
Speaker 1: more interesting is what I put in my 10 slot
1:33:11
Speaker 1: and who when we go over the races that didn't
1:33:14
Speaker 1: make the top 10 list, which I think is as
1:33:17
Speaker 1: revealing as any. So look, number one, North Carolina. Guess
1:33:22
Speaker 1: who else thinks this race is pretty much over? The
1:33:24
Speaker 1: National Republican Party. We've seen, as was projected and predicted
1:33:29
Speaker 1: here a couple months ago, this would likely be the
1:33:32
Speaker 1: first or second race they'd pull money out of between
1:33:36
Speaker 1: North Carolina and Georgia. And we've seen already a retreat
1:33:40
Speaker 1: of investment in both states. But now North Carolina, for sure,
1:33:44
Speaker 1: that money literally was moved from North Carolina to Kansas.
1:33:48
Speaker 1: So number one and probably still with some space, Roy Cooper.
1:33:55
Speaker 1: You know, nothing's a lock in our politics. I don't
1:33:58
Speaker 1: think anybody should. But this is he's as big of
1:34:02
Speaker 1: a favorite as there is out there right now for
1:34:05
Speaker 1: somebody trying to flip a seat. Number two I put
1:34:10
Speaker 1: on there is Alaska. When you I go back to
1:34:14
Speaker 1: Mary Patello's standing before she got awfully close to 50 percent.
1:34:19
Speaker 1: The Alaska governor's race is going in her direction. She
1:34:23
Speaker 1: is you know, she is able to run. You know,
1:34:25
Speaker 1: Alaska very much is an is independent first.
1:34:29
Speaker 2: Right.
1:34:29
Speaker 1: She's another one of these Democrats who's done a good
1:34:32
Speaker 1: job of rejecting the national party label. Right. She made
1:34:36
Speaker 1: it clear that she was. a hard no on any
1:34:41
Speaker 1: even fundraising help from Kamala Harris. She didn't want, you know,
1:34:44
Speaker 1: and it was, you know, I think some people in
1:34:46
Speaker 1: Harris world took it personally, but this was her trying
1:34:51
Speaker 1: to make sure she sent a message to Alaskans that
1:34:54
Speaker 1: she was going to be an independent before she was
1:34:55
Speaker 1: going to be a Democrat. And Dan Sullivan is stuck
1:34:59
Speaker 1: with a Trump rally. Trump's going to Alaska and he's
1:35:02
Speaker 1: going to try to announce a big, investment by the
1:35:05
Speaker 1: Koreans in Alaska. I mean, it's if you had a
1:35:10
Speaker 1: slightly more popular president, maybe that would work. But I
1:35:19
Speaker 1: can't imagine Dan Sullivan wants to be standing next to
1:35:21
Speaker 1: Donald Trump with less than a month ago before Election Day.
1:35:24
Speaker 1: And yet he couldn't say no. Well, he could have.
1:35:27
Speaker 2: Right.
1:35:27
Speaker 1: But he didn't want to risk. This goes to this risk.
1:35:31
Speaker 1: It today to my, um, to my podcast, this, this
1:35:38
Speaker 1: fear that I think in hindsight is going to look,
1:35:42
Speaker 1: it's just going to look weak. Um, so yeah, uh,
1:35:46
Speaker 1: number two on the list for me is Alaska. Number three, Ohio, uh,
1:35:49
Speaker 1: Sherrod Brown. I'm trying to remember the last time I
1:35:52
Speaker 1: saw a poll that Sherrod Brown wasn't leading and it's
1:35:55
Speaker 1: gotta be since June or July. Uh, and he's, you know, it's,
1:36:01
Speaker 1: and he's awfully close to 50. I, as you guys know,
1:36:07
Speaker 1: for a long time, I was a skeptic that Brown
1:36:10
Speaker 1: could win this race. I knew he would make it
1:36:12
Speaker 1: very competitive and very close. I was a skeptic that
1:36:14
Speaker 1: he could win it because of just how easily, in theory,
1:36:19
Speaker 1: the Republicans could turn Brown into the incumbent. Well, Brown's
1:36:22
Speaker 1: the one. He keeps running. He's been here forever, right?
1:36:25
Speaker 1: He's in some ways been in the Senate longer than
1:36:28
Speaker 1: John Husted. But Husted is sort of, he gets all
1:36:33
Speaker 1: the negatives of incumbency He's not getting any benefits of incumbency.
1:36:40
Speaker 1: And yet he's getting no upside of being a challenger
1:36:43
Speaker 1: of sort either. He's another one that's caught in that
1:36:47
Speaker 1: trap of having can't say no to Trump. And it's
1:36:53
Speaker 1: an awkward position for him to be in. But Trump's
1:36:58
Speaker 1: economy has been really hard in Ohio. He has tried
1:37:02
Speaker 1: to do little things to separate himself, but You know,
1:37:06
Speaker 1: it's Houston's been one of those that's done it, you know,
1:37:09
Speaker 1: but he's also got a double whammy. The gubernatorial nominee,
1:37:14
Speaker 1: Vivek Ramaswamy, is also a drag on the Republican ticket.
1:37:17
Speaker 1: So Houston's getting just, you know, he's dragging two 10
1:37:24
Speaker 1: pound weights behind him, not just one. You know, one
1:37:27
Speaker 1: is Trump and run as Ramaswamy. I think that that
1:37:31
Speaker 1: really does harm the entire Republican ticket. And it's why
1:37:35
Speaker 1: I have Ohio number three. Number four, I have Texas.
1:37:39
Speaker 1: I think I think there was a time I had
1:37:41
Speaker 1: Texas slightly ahead of Ohio at one point. But either way,
1:37:44
Speaker 1: I mean, I if frankly, the first four on my list,
1:37:48
Speaker 1: it means I expect Democrats to win those races. Now,
1:37:51
Speaker 1: I would I I have them as the favorite. It
1:37:53
Speaker 1: would be I you know, I'm not going to be
1:37:56
Speaker 1: shocked if Tallarico loses. I'm not going to be shocked
1:37:58
Speaker 1: if Brown loses, but I'll be surprised. Ditto with Paltola.
1:38:02
Speaker 1: The only one that I would be completely shocked if
1:38:04
Speaker 1: he lost is Roy Cooper at this point. But the
1:38:07
Speaker 1: next three here, Texas, excuse me, Alaska, Ohio, Texas. In
1:38:12
Speaker 1: all three cases, as far as my list is concerned,
1:38:15
Speaker 1: I view the Democrats as the favorite. And if you
1:38:18
Speaker 1: wanted to put little point spreads on it, about two
1:38:21
Speaker 1: point favorites. I wouldn't put up any higher than that.
1:38:23
Speaker 1: You know, I think if Tallarico, you know, I think,
1:38:26
Speaker 1: I think 52, 52% is his ceiling. And I, I
1:38:30
Speaker 1: think that's a, that's probably high. I think in Ohio, again,
1:38:34
Speaker 1: 52 is probably the ceiling and with the rank choice voting,
1:38:38
Speaker 1: probably 51. So these are very low ceilings. But in
1:38:45
Speaker 1: this case, you, you really see, right. Houston's got all
1:38:49
Speaker 1: sorts of drags on him. Ken Paxton is the drag
1:38:54
Speaker 1: right in Texas. And Dan Sullivan is dragging around. He's
1:38:59
Speaker 1: in a weird way, dragging around two pieces of baggage.
1:39:01
Speaker 1: One is he's not Lisa Murkowski. Right. And so and
1:39:04
Speaker 1: so you have swing voters who know that you could
1:39:08
Speaker 1: be tougher on Trump if you chose to and still
1:39:11
Speaker 1: survive politically. And he's chosen not to. I think the
1:39:14
Speaker 1: comparison with Murkowski really hurt Sullivan in this case, too.
1:39:18
Speaker 1: And he's having to drag Trump around. Number five on
1:39:21
Speaker 1: the list, and you heard a longer explanation about how
1:39:23
Speaker 1: I feel about Maine, is Maine. I still think the
1:39:26
Speaker 1: national environment favors Jackson over Collins. But let's be realistic.
1:39:34
Speaker 1: The Jackson campaign has not been a great campaign. Is
1:39:36
Speaker 1: it the candidate issue? Is it a campaign issue? We
1:39:40
Speaker 1: can have a lot of debates about that. But he
1:39:43
Speaker 1: didn't win a primary for governor for a reason, right?
1:39:46
Speaker 1: So you already knew he was, you know, he's the
1:39:50
Speaker 1: backup quarterback. You know, he wasn't what now maybe he's
1:39:55
Speaker 1: Sam Darnold and you can get to the Superbowl with him,
1:39:59
Speaker 1: but he is the backup quarterback. And you know, there
1:40:02
Speaker 1: are limitations with your backup quarterback because if he weren't
1:40:05
Speaker 1: a backup, he'd already be a starter somewhere. So you
1:40:09
Speaker 1: have to put main and five, but again, you know, it,
1:40:12
Speaker 1: for me, it's, it's a dead even. And in fact,
1:40:15
Speaker 1: these next three are dead even races to me, if
1:40:19
Speaker 1: you're looking. So number one is sort of North Carolina,
1:40:23
Speaker 1: and it's in the likely category. Alaska, Ohio, Texas, I
1:40:28
Speaker 1: have as sort of in my own version of lean D.
1:40:31
Speaker 1: These next three, pure toss-ups as far as I'm concerned.
1:40:34
Speaker 1: So Maine, pure toss-up. Next one, Kansas. As you know,
1:40:38
Speaker 1: I've been on Kansas for a while. I was just
1:40:41
Speaker 1: out in Kansas City, Kansas in particular. That's in many
1:40:45
Speaker 1: ways the Hamilton base, but that is where, you know,
1:40:48
Speaker 1: Democrats have really built up a constituency in the Kansas City,
1:40:53
Speaker 1: Missouri suburbs and the Kansas side of the Kansas City suburbs.
1:40:57
Speaker 1: And it's it's only growing in population. And again, this
1:41:03
Speaker 1: is a case where I think I do think Kansas
1:41:06
Speaker 1: is moving, but I don't think Hamilton would be in
1:41:09
Speaker 1: this position if Marshall were a better candidate. Marshall's just
1:41:12
Speaker 1: not a very good candidate.
1:41:13
Speaker 2: Right.
1:41:14
Speaker 1: Kind of roger marshall is kind of on the incumbent
1:41:16
Speaker 1: side is kind of the troy jackson um it's kind
1:41:19
Speaker 1: of i put him in that category of troy jackson
1:41:21
Speaker 1: just not very good at this um and first time
1:41:24
Speaker 1: he's ever really been in a tough race and you
1:41:27
Speaker 1: know i've used my boxing metaphor of a glass jaw
1:41:30
Speaker 1: right the first punch he took knocked him knocked him
1:41:33
Speaker 1: to the ground right his uh his his uh his
1:41:38
Speaker 1: his that billing the issue that he had with his
1:41:40
Speaker 1: patients and He's been sort of on the defensive ever since,
1:41:44
Speaker 1: and he's not been quite sure what to do. Does
1:41:47
Speaker 1: he run a base campaign and just hope he can
1:41:49
Speaker 1: just win a numbers game in Kansas? Well, that doesn't
1:41:51
Speaker 1: seem to work. I think he's the one that would
1:41:57
Speaker 1: make the mistake of bringing Trump. And I'll be very
1:42:01
Speaker 1: curious to see if they bring Trump to Western Kansas.
1:42:03
Speaker 1: You'd bring him to Western Kansas if you brought him anywhere.
1:42:06
Speaker 1: I'll be curious to see if we see him. And
1:42:09
Speaker 1: the third of my list of this top 10 that
1:42:11
Speaker 1: I put in the pure toss-up category is Iowa. I've
1:42:15
Speaker 1: made mention of Ashley Hinson. I think her experience running
1:42:18
Speaker 1: in a swing congressional district has made her a better candidate.
1:42:22
Speaker 1: Her instincts have been slightly better. Now, the question is,
1:42:26
Speaker 1: has she created enough distance between her and Trump? I'm
1:42:29
Speaker 1: not sure. She's created a little bit. But is there
1:42:35
Speaker 1: more to create that she's going to wish she had?
1:42:37
Speaker 1: It's possible. But she has– I think Josh Turek is
1:42:41
Speaker 1: a good candidate. I just– I don't know. The question
1:42:45
Speaker 1: I have in Kansas is the party registration split is huge,
1:42:49
Speaker 1: and it really got out of hand over the last
1:42:51
Speaker 1: eight years. Can Rob Sand win by a big enough
1:42:55
Speaker 1: number to bring Turek over the finish line? He could.
1:42:59
Speaker 1: I think– you got to hope Sand gets to 55,
1:43:03
Speaker 1: and boy, that's not something that's happened since the 1960s
1:43:07
Speaker 1: in Iowa.
1:43:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:43:09
Speaker 1: Um, but you know, again, you know, Hinson can't pull away.
1:43:17
Speaker 1: This race has been basically a dead heat now for
1:43:19
Speaker 1: two months. Uh, and it's still there. I, I, I
1:43:23
Speaker 1: put the reason I have Kansas more likely to flip
1:43:25
Speaker 1: than Iowa is simply, uh, I think Hinson is a
1:43:30
Speaker 1: better Republican candidate than Marshall is at this point. All right.
1:43:34
Speaker 1: And the eight, nine and 10 slots, these are all
1:43:36
Speaker 1: lean candidates. Basically, lean incumbent, if you will, because one
1:43:44
Speaker 1: of them is a D-held seat and two of them
1:43:46
Speaker 1: are R-held seats. In number eight, I have Michigan. I'm
1:43:52
Speaker 1: pretty convinced Abdul El-Sayed is going to win. I don't
1:43:57
Speaker 1: think he's out of the woods yet. I think he's
1:44:01
Speaker 1: benefiting from the fact that Rogers just goes back. I
1:44:04
Speaker 1: have no idea why Rogers hasn't found more distance from Trump.
1:44:08
Speaker 1: whether it's on the trade war with Canada, which has
1:44:12
Speaker 1: really been economically harmful to Michigan, to the issue of
1:44:18
Speaker 1: fuel costs. He's just to the war. I don't, you know,
1:44:24
Speaker 1: Rogers has just had a, he's just been flat footed
1:44:30
Speaker 1: with all this. And I think he missed a window
1:44:34
Speaker 1: right after Abdul El-Sayed won that primary where there was a,
1:44:37
Speaker 1: there were, there was some, There were some Democrats that
1:44:41
Speaker 1: felt homeless. And Rogers didn't really make the appeal. Instead,
1:44:46
Speaker 1: he ended up going to the Trump's midterm convention. That's
1:44:50
Speaker 1: no way to win. Look, did I expect Dana Nussel,
1:44:54
Speaker 1: the Democratic AG, to endorse Mike Rogers? I did not.
1:45:00
Speaker 1: But if Rogers had been more effective and had quickly
1:45:03
Speaker 1: been ready with Democrats for Rogers that were on TV,
1:45:07
Speaker 1: that were credible Democrats- Maybe you would have had Dana
1:45:10
Speaker 1: Nussel decide not to sit this one out. Maybe others
1:45:14
Speaker 1: would have sat it out. But in some ways, the
1:45:17
Speaker 1: worse the Roger campaign has been, the longer Abdul El-Sayed
1:45:21
Speaker 1: has gone staying ahead, the more you've had Democrats coming
1:45:25
Speaker 1: around to him. Because I think they've decided, well, he's
1:45:29
Speaker 1: going to win, so I'm better off having a relationship
1:45:32
Speaker 1: with him if he's going to win than to risk
1:45:35
Speaker 1: alienating him now if he wins and I'm on the
1:45:38
Speaker 1: wrong side of So you've seen the skeptical members of
1:45:42
Speaker 1: the party start to show up. It's notable to me
1:45:45
Speaker 1: that Obama's agreed to do this, but only as joint
1:45:47
Speaker 1: events with Benson. And make no mistake, Abdul El-Sayed needs
1:45:54
Speaker 1: some reinforcement in the African-American community, and Obama should provide
1:45:59
Speaker 1: that reinforcement. But I think this is a case where Rogers,
1:46:08
Speaker 1: this has been a– Abdul El-Sayed is a great communicator
1:46:14
Speaker 1: and he's, he's, he's, he is basically over-performing his positions. Right. Um, right. What,
1:46:25
Speaker 1: what he is, the words he's saying would not be
1:46:28
Speaker 1: nearly as popular if somebody else were saying it, but
1:46:31
Speaker 1: he is better at communicating this than, than the average bear. Um,
1:46:38
Speaker 1: But he's as much in this position because of the
1:46:41
Speaker 1: ineptness of the Rogers campaign as it is by the
1:46:47
Speaker 1: effectiveness of his. Number nine on my list is Nebraska.
1:46:51
Speaker 1: You know, this is sort of the race we keep–
1:46:55
Speaker 1: a lot of us– I don't want to say we
1:46:56
Speaker 1: forget about it, but we kind of overlook. And I
1:46:59
Speaker 1: will confess that I've– Assume that Dan Osborne is going
1:47:04
Speaker 1: to run a very close race and assume that Pete
1:47:06
Speaker 1: Ricketts is going to win by three or four points,
1:47:08
Speaker 1: that there is a hard ceiling for Osborne, that it's
1:47:10
Speaker 1: tough to do this twice, and that the now four
1:47:14
Speaker 1: years of making the case that he's really a Democrat
1:47:17
Speaker 1: in independent cheap clothing is effective enough. Except Donald Trump
1:47:28
Speaker 1: went to Nebraska and made a fool of himself, right?
1:47:31
Speaker 1: Except Donald Trump's policies are becoming more unpopular, except Donald
1:47:36
Speaker 1: Trump's policies have really hurt the Nebraska economy more so
1:47:41
Speaker 1: than many other states in the union. And Osborne keeps
1:47:46
Speaker 1: doubling down that he's not going to caucus with either party.
1:47:53
Speaker 1: By the way, speaking of that, it was notable to
1:47:56
Speaker 1: me that Cory Booker, during a Sunday show appearance, did
1:48:00
Speaker 1: not emphatically– get behind Chuck Schumer as Senate Democratic leader
1:48:06
Speaker 1: after the election. Booker's been an ally with his for
1:48:09
Speaker 1: quite some time. That is a, that to me, I've
1:48:19
Speaker 1: i've assumed that if democrats win the senate that that
1:48:22
Speaker 1: schumer would get the would stay in i'm not so
1:48:27
Speaker 1: sure anymore after that booker comment for what it's worth
1:48:31
Speaker 1: um and that will be i wonder what that means
1:48:34
Speaker 1: for an osborne if he does win right um But
1:48:40
Speaker 1: right now, of all the independent candidates, Brian Banks, South Dakota,
1:48:43
Speaker 1: Todd Achilles, Idaho, Seth Bodnar, Montana, and Osborne, Nebraska, Osborne's
1:48:48
Speaker 1: the only one in my top 10 list. And again, right?
1:48:52
Speaker 1: I mean, it is– I feel like every poll out
1:48:56
Speaker 1: of Nebraska is always a one-point race. Either one point
1:48:58
Speaker 1: Ricketts is ahead or one point Osborne's ahead. So we'll see.
1:49:03
Speaker 1: And number 10, making a debut on my– On my
1:49:09
Speaker 1: competitive list, it's South Carolina. I think Trump's attack on
1:49:16
Speaker 1: Annie Andrews was a huge mistake. I think it has
1:49:19
Speaker 1: a boomerang effect. I think the longer Darlene Graham is
1:49:24
Speaker 1: out on the trail, the weaker she comes across. She's
1:49:28
Speaker 1: not good at this. This is a tough year not
1:49:31
Speaker 1: to be good at this. She's running. She's hugging Trump.
1:49:37
Speaker 1: I get it. It worked in the primary. You can't
1:49:39
Speaker 1: really do anything else. This may be the wrong year
1:49:43
Speaker 1: to hug him. And I know it's South Carolina. This
1:49:46
Speaker 1: isn't Virginia or North Carolina, but this might not be
1:49:49
Speaker 1: the best year to hug him. And his casual, it's
1:49:52
Speaker 1: just sort of the, it's the casual cruelty of Trump
1:49:57
Speaker 1: that wears voters down. And that hit on Andy Andrews
1:50:02
Speaker 1: was just sort of like, really, you know, we're all,
1:50:05
Speaker 1: you know, And this is sort of a part of
1:50:11
Speaker 1: my opening monologue today that I cut. I decided not
1:50:14
Speaker 1: to include. And that's the whole– because I know we
1:50:17
Speaker 1: all roll our eyes on role models. But whether the–
1:50:22
Speaker 1: we have this debate. Is the president– do we have
1:50:25
Speaker 1: role models anymore? And my feeling is, hey, you never
1:50:28
Speaker 1: know who you're a role model for. I fear Donald
1:50:31
Speaker 1: Trump's a role model for the wrong type of politics. And–
1:50:37
Speaker 1: The more successful his style of politics is, the worse
1:50:40
Speaker 1: off we're going to be as a country and as
1:50:43
Speaker 1: a democracy. I think there are a lot of good
1:50:47
Speaker 1: people in America who look at this and say, I just,
1:50:50
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, this is where I go, where
1:50:54
Speaker 1: I think the Angela Paxton ads have the possibility of
1:50:59
Speaker 1: doing the exact opposite of their intent. You know, her
1:51:03
Speaker 1: message basically is you can't afford to let the other
1:51:06
Speaker 1: team win. but they don't really give a reason why
1:51:11
Speaker 1: her team should still govern. She made no case for it.
1:51:17
Speaker 1: She just simply said, you can't let the other team win.
1:51:23
Speaker 1: And I kind of think it's like, is that, is
1:51:28
Speaker 1: the price, you know, do we really want to pay
1:51:31
Speaker 1: that price? Do we like how awful and how unstable
1:51:37
Speaker 1: it He makes us all feel, right? You know, when
1:51:41
Speaker 1: you're riding with a drunk driver, you fear for your
1:51:44
Speaker 1: life and you get sick to your stomach. And the
1:51:49
Speaker 1: problem with the Trump, with Trump driving, or, you know,
1:51:52
Speaker 1: another metaphor I like to use is the rollercoaster, is
1:51:56
Speaker 1: the other problem with the Trump rollercoaster, if you want
1:51:58
Speaker 1: to use that metaphor, is just like a rollercoaster, you
1:52:01
Speaker 1: get off and get on at the same place, but
1:52:03
Speaker 1: the ride makes you sick. And you get off and
1:52:07
Speaker 1: you just feel like you got to throw up. And
1:52:10
Speaker 1: then you look around and go, Jesus, we didn't even
1:52:11
Speaker 1: make any progress. That's really the Trump presidency in a nutshell.
1:52:17
Speaker 1: And I think you're seeing a growing number of just
1:52:20
Speaker 1: exhausted Americans, which, again, I don't get. I don't get
1:52:26
Speaker 1: why more Republicans who are on the ballot aren't trying
1:52:31
Speaker 1: to meet voters where they are in this one. So
1:52:33
Speaker 1: there it is. There's my top 10 this week. Like
1:52:35
Speaker 1: I said, the battlefield has expanded. Look, what didn't make
1:52:38
Speaker 1: the list but came close, Mississippi Senate. I think that's
1:52:44
Speaker 1: the race. You will see some last-minute national dollars blow in,
1:52:47
Speaker 1: and we'll see what happens. Georgia not on it because
1:52:52
Speaker 1: Georgia ain't that competitive anymore. New Hampshire not on it
1:52:56
Speaker 1: simply because I just think the political environment is a
1:52:59
Speaker 1: little too much, but it's close. New Hampshire and Mississippi
1:53:02
Speaker 1: are 11 and 12. Minnesota is not on it because, again,
1:53:07
Speaker 1: it's just the wrong year for Michelle Tafoya. But I
1:53:10
Speaker 1: am keeping an eye on it. I think she's going
1:53:12
Speaker 1: to be the Republican nominee for the replacement to finish
1:53:18
Speaker 1: Klobuchar's term after she appoints a replacement there. Keep an
1:53:22
Speaker 1: eye on Angie Craig on that one, as I've said.
1:53:24
Speaker 1: So it's an expanded field. It's a big– Here's a
1:53:31
Speaker 1: possibility that I don't think is going to happen, but
1:53:34
Speaker 1: it's not the craziest scenario. Given all of the redistricting,
1:53:40
Speaker 1: there isn't a 0% chance that the Democrats pick up
1:53:43
Speaker 1: more Senate seats than House seats. It's unlikely, but we
1:53:48
Speaker 1: should remind ourselves that the House map can feel that narrow.
1:53:58
Speaker 2: At times.
1:54:01
Speaker 1: All right, first question comes from David, New York's 25th District. Yes,
1:54:04
Speaker 1: he's a returner. He says, greetings. He believes he's a
1:54:06
Speaker 1: possible five-timer. By the way, going to have some merchandising
1:54:11
Speaker 1: news for everybody soon. The merchandising, we've been working this.
1:54:15
Speaker 1: We want to find the most affordable option. So, you know,
1:54:21
Speaker 1: possibilities of T-shirts, mugs. It's all happening, folks. We're close.
1:54:26
Speaker 1: We're working on it. Anyway, David's question is, we've heard
1:54:29
Speaker 1: a lot about career officials across the DOJ and other
1:54:32
Speaker 1: agencies being replaced during the Trump administration. How could a
1:54:35
Speaker 1: future administration go about removing political loyalists or unqualified appointees?
1:54:39
Speaker 1: And should a 2028 candidate be upfront about their plans
1:54:41
Speaker 1: to do so? Also, as a college football fan, I
1:54:44
Speaker 1: was surprised the program didn't make a movie list, though
1:54:46
Speaker 1: I may be biased since it came out the year
1:54:49
Speaker 1: I started playing college football. I remember the program. I
1:54:54
Speaker 1: didn't include it. I remember at the time not loving it.
1:54:58
Speaker 1: It ages. Okay. I think my initial bias on the
1:55:05
Speaker 1: program is I thought it was trying too hard to,
1:55:08
Speaker 1: to be Florida state. It felt like it was a
1:55:12
Speaker 1: unofficially a Florida state movie. And I don't know why
1:55:17
Speaker 1: I always, maybe because that if I remember the colors
1:55:19
Speaker 1: were kind of garnet and gold on the program, but
1:55:23
Speaker 1: you're right. It was, it, I'm not as big of
1:55:28
Speaker 1: a pro. I think North Dallas 40 is a better
1:55:31
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, movie about the, the dark side
1:55:36
Speaker 1: of football more so than, than the program did, uh, that, but, uh,
1:55:42
Speaker 1: it's a fair, it, I watched it recently and it was, I, I,
1:55:48
Speaker 1: I probably judged it too harshly at the time, but
1:55:51
Speaker 1: I did have a, I think my, my initial bias
1:55:54
Speaker 1: against being that excited about it is I, I kind
1:55:57
Speaker 1: of thought, Oh, is Hollywood trying to make college football
1:56:00
Speaker 1: look worse than it is? So I may have had
1:56:03
Speaker 1: that attitude at the time. But let's get to your
1:56:06
Speaker 1: other question about the– I think the question is, look,
1:56:12
Speaker 1: all political appointees, right, they walk– their term expires when
1:56:17
Speaker 1: Trump's term expires, January 20th, 2029. So you'll have that. Now,
1:56:24
Speaker 1: there is some civil service– folks that they sort of
1:56:27
Speaker 1: gutted and they want to try to replace. You know,
1:56:31
Speaker 1: that's going to probably be an agency by agency case. Yes,
1:56:40
Speaker 1: I think they need to be up front. There is
1:56:43
Speaker 1: a effort by the Center for American Progress to do
1:56:46
Speaker 1: what they refer to as Project 2029. I assume that
1:56:51
Speaker 1: whoever the Dem nominee is will try to lean into that.
1:56:57
Speaker 1: because I think they're going to want... I actually think
1:57:01
Speaker 1: Project 2025, even though Trump both claimed he rejected it
1:57:06
Speaker 1: but had it, I think it gave swing voters the
1:57:11
Speaker 1: illusion that he had a plan. So I think it
1:57:13
Speaker 1: was a net positive overall, right? I think the substance
1:57:17
Speaker 1: of it may have been unpopular, but the fact that
1:57:20
Speaker 1: it existed actually gives comfort to some voters. So I
1:57:23
Speaker 1: think that You will see– I think it's smart to
1:57:27
Speaker 1: look like you have a plan and that you're ready
1:57:31
Speaker 1: to hit the ground running, that you're not going to
1:57:34
Speaker 1: be caught flat-footed. So I expect that we will see that.
1:57:39
Speaker 1: But what does that look like? How transparent are they
1:57:41
Speaker 1: about it? I think you should be uber-transparent. And if
1:57:46
Speaker 1: you're going to– this is where we– I'm in the
1:57:54
Speaker 1: midst of working on a longer project of sort of–
1:58:01
Speaker 1: I call it a citizen's guide to reform post-Trump because
1:58:06
Speaker 1: you know, Trump revealed a lot of weaknesses in our system.
1:58:10
Speaker 1: He's tried to weaken the civil service. That's something that
1:58:14
Speaker 1: can get strengthened, but it probably needs to be some
1:58:16
Speaker 1: congressional action on that rather than using executive orders to
1:58:20
Speaker 1: do it. So I think you need some improvements there
1:58:25
Speaker 1: to try to, you know, keep this the the non-political
1:58:32
Speaker 1: side of these agencies from being infiltrated by political partisans
1:58:36
Speaker 1: uh i think it's something in theory both left and
1:58:38
Speaker 1: right would like uh the question is how do you
1:58:42
Speaker 1: how do you secure that how do you guarantee that
1:58:43
Speaker 1: but i definitely think that that's but to go to
1:58:47
Speaker 1: your larger point uh about having a plan i i
1:58:52
Speaker 1: suspect that the democratic nominee will and will probably lean
1:58:56
Speaker 1: into something like project 2029. Next question comes from Sarah,
1:59:00
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Second District. She goes, hey, I've been a fan
1:59:03
Speaker 1: of the podcast since I called it 1947. I love it.
1:59:06
Speaker 1: Appreciate your recent Todd talk about the Kennedy Center. For
1:59:08
Speaker 1: 25 years, the Kennedy Center has also hosted the LEAD Conference,
1:59:12
Speaker 1: focused on making museums, theaters, and other cultural institutions more
1:59:16
Speaker 1: accessible to people with disabilities. And the current turmoil makes
1:59:19
Speaker 1: me wonder whether programs like this will continue to What
1:59:22
Speaker 1: other important work at the Kennedy Center could be overlooked
1:59:24
Speaker 1: or lost amid everything happening there? Thanks, Sarah in Massachusetts.
1:59:27
Speaker 1: So too. Look, I just, I lament the National Symphony
1:59:32
Speaker 1: because that's just my familiarity. When I was a, some
1:59:36
Speaker 1: of you know, I went to college on a French
1:59:39
Speaker 1: horn scholarship, really a music scholarship, but my talent that
1:59:44
Speaker 1: I had was playing the French horn. And my private, uh,
1:59:51
Speaker 1: GW professor for that was a French horn player with
1:59:54
Speaker 1: the National Symphony. And if you guys know the geographic
1:59:59
Speaker 1: location of GW, it's literally walking distance from the Kennedy Center.
2:00:09
Speaker 1: our music department, everybody, it wasn't just me. If you
2:00:11
Speaker 1: had any instrumental, if you were an instrumentalist and you
2:00:13
Speaker 1: took and you had a, and you were basically taking lessons,
2:00:18
Speaker 1: you know, getting credit for, for, for doing music performance,
2:00:23
Speaker 1: you were working with a member of the national symphony.
2:00:27
Speaker 1: We had a, GW didn't have enough music students to
2:00:31
Speaker 1: have its own symphony. So it was a community. It
2:00:35
Speaker 1: was the GW community orchestra. So it was GW students
2:00:39
Speaker 1: plus basically adults in the community who were, you know,
2:00:45
Speaker 1: who frankly are like me today, still like their instrument.
2:00:49
Speaker 1: Maybe they keep up with it, probably keep up with
2:00:51
Speaker 1: it more than I do, you know, but would like
2:00:56
Speaker 1: to keep playing and just enjoy it, right? And it's,
2:00:58
Speaker 1: you know, no different than being a member of a
2:00:59
Speaker 1: book club. And it was really kind of cool. You know,
2:01:03
Speaker 1: you had this different, for me at GW, it gave
2:01:06
Speaker 1: me an opportunity to, You know, I got to do
2:01:08
Speaker 1: a solo with a, instead of a piano accompaniness, I
2:01:13
Speaker 1: got to orchestrate a company and that, you know, those
2:01:16
Speaker 1: are the little things. Anyway, look, I'm making this a
2:01:20
Speaker 1: little self-centered, but the point was, is that the Kennedy
2:01:24
Speaker 1: Center was like a classroom for me at GW. And
2:01:30
Speaker 1: I wasn't alone. Anybody who was minoring in music at
2:01:33
Speaker 1: GW or frankly at AU or whatever, The Kennedy Center
2:01:37
Speaker 1: is a resource. It's how you it was a lot
2:01:42
Speaker 1: of free tickets for us, you know, poor college students
2:01:45
Speaker 1: to see the arts, to see a musical, to see
2:01:47
Speaker 1: a play. So that's it's it's just. It's you know,
2:01:57
Speaker 1: so look, it's obviously for many of us, this is
2:02:00
Speaker 1: super personal. We all have our own personal memory of
2:02:04
Speaker 1: the Kennedy Center. I worked right next door to that
2:02:05
Speaker 1: place for a long time when I worked out of
2:02:07
Speaker 1: the Watergate. I went to school four blocks from it.
2:02:09
Speaker 1: I mean, the Kennedy Center has been like just physically
2:02:13
Speaker 1: in my life for 30 years. So, yeah, that's what
2:02:17
Speaker 1: he'll tell us where I want to say, man, F you, man.
2:02:20
Speaker 1: Get your damn dirty hands off of our Kennedy Center.
2:02:24
Speaker 1: Stop ruining it. And it's a bummer because there's, you know.
2:02:29
Speaker 1: I like that Trump likes the opera. I'm not a
2:02:31
Speaker 1: huge opera guy, but I like that he likes some
2:02:33
Speaker 1: of these things because, you know, maybe it brings more
2:02:38
Speaker 1: attention and interest in it. And yet he takes something
2:02:40
Speaker 1: where he could be a net positive and he turns
2:02:45
Speaker 1: it all into a negative and ruins the very thing
2:02:49
Speaker 1: he claims to be helping. For me, the Kennedy Center
2:02:53
Speaker 1: is a metaphor on everything he's touched. He is the
2:02:56
Speaker 1: anti-Midas touch. I mean, if you think about it, whatever
2:03:00
Speaker 1: he touches gets worse. Whoever gets close to him regrets it.
2:03:06
Speaker 1: Every one of them. Because he doesn't get in trouble.
2:03:10
Speaker 1: You will. He makes you do the dirty work when
2:03:14
Speaker 1: you get close to him. He could talk his way
2:03:18
Speaker 1: out of it, and you can't. And he's done it
2:03:20
Speaker 1: with the Kennedy Center, too. Anyway, thanks for the question, sir.
2:03:24
Speaker 1: David P., Arizona's 1st Congressional District, North Scottsdale. If you
2:03:29
Speaker 1: listen to the TK show, we all think North Scottsdale
2:03:32
Speaker 1: is the rich part of Scots, wherever Wilbon lives, right? Anyway,
2:03:37
Speaker 1: David writes, I continue to worry that Trump could pull
2:03:40
Speaker 1: out all the stops to challenge the certification of newly
2:03:42
Speaker 1: elected candidates. And I imagine any post-election turmoil would dominate
2:03:46
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving conversations just a few weeks later. How much can
2:03:49
Speaker 1: that kind of dinner table discussion actually shape public opinion
2:03:51
Speaker 1: or galvanize people into action? And can you think of
2:03:53
Speaker 1: another moment in history? When an urgent national issue spread
2:03:56
Speaker 1: that way, for example, the conversations and conspiracy theories surrounding
2:03:59
Speaker 1: JFK's assassination gained momentum in the weeks that followed. David P. Actually,
2:04:03
Speaker 1: I remember quite vividly Thanksgiving in Florida in 2000. We
2:04:11
Speaker 1: were in the middle of the recount, if you recall,
2:04:13
Speaker 1: in the 2000s. So I wasn't alive for the JFK thing.
2:04:19
Speaker 1: That was all a week later. And I think it
2:04:22
Speaker 1: was almost so close. It didn't have– it was more
2:04:25
Speaker 1: of a– almost like a living– the country was just
2:04:29
Speaker 1: collectively mourning then. And I don't think there was– the
2:04:33
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories didn't really take hold until later, right, on
2:04:36
Speaker 1: that front. But I vividly remember– for me, I was
2:04:45
Speaker 1: covering that election from Washington, went down. I decided to
2:04:53
Speaker 1: go spend Thanksgiving with my mother in Florida and her
2:05:01
Speaker 1: husband and their family. And it was because I figured
2:05:06
Speaker 1: I'd do a little side hustle reporting on the side.
2:05:09
Speaker 1: They lived in North Miami at the time, so I
2:05:11
Speaker 1: wasn't very far from the epicenter of all this. Miami-Dade,
2:05:14
Speaker 1: Palm Beach County, Broward were among the centers of attention
2:05:19
Speaker 1: down during all of that. I don't know whether you
2:05:22
Speaker 1: could say, though, that Thanksgiving shaped that, but it wasn't,
2:05:27
Speaker 1: you know, I think the certification deadlines sort of created
2:05:31
Speaker 1: the urgency there. We had December 15th and all of that.
2:05:36
Speaker 1: But I the question you're asking is what kind of,
2:05:40
Speaker 1: you know, if Trump tries to deny the election, I
2:05:46
Speaker 1: will go back to say what I've said before. I
2:05:47
Speaker 1: think we're vulnerable in very close elections. If this isn't
2:05:52
Speaker 1: very close, then his rhetoric is going to land quite differently.
2:05:58
Speaker 1: If it's close, who knows? It could land one way.
2:06:02
Speaker 1: But if it's not very close, this lands completely different.
2:06:07
Speaker 1: Even 2020, had the presidency been called and had, frankly,
2:06:13
Speaker 1: Biden won in a landslide, had he carried Ohio and
2:06:16
Speaker 1: Iowa in addition to the state, to the to the
2:06:21
Speaker 1: battleground states, and that thing is called an election night,
2:06:26
Speaker 1: I don't think his challenges land. But because it took
2:06:29
Speaker 1: a week to call it, right? We didn't call Pennsylvania,
2:06:33
Speaker 1: which put Biden over the top, I think, till the
2:06:35
Speaker 1: Saturday after the election. Well, so certainly everybody got the
2:06:41
Speaker 1: impression it was a close election. So challenging the result
2:06:46
Speaker 1: of it to a big chunk of the country didn't
2:06:48
Speaker 1: seem crazy. Which is why it all depends on the
2:06:53
Speaker 1: size of the result. And again, in a close situation,
2:07:03
Speaker 1: a lot of shenanigans can take place. Too big to
2:07:08
Speaker 1: rig is a whole different ballgame. Next question. Sherry checks in.
2:07:16
Speaker 2: I have....
2:07:20
Speaker 1: I love this description. I think if this were my cousin,
2:07:25
Speaker 1: I have a cousin, Sherry. I have a mother with
2:07:27
Speaker 1: a similar name. But I have a cousin from Wisconsin
2:07:32
Speaker 1: that I haven't seen in an ice age, but I
2:07:34
Speaker 1: think she would have self-ID'd if this were the case. Anyway,
2:07:38
Speaker 1: Sherry from Wisconsin says she's an independent and a Packers fan.
2:07:43
Speaker 1: And having to sit through the Ken Paxton commercials and
2:07:46
Speaker 1: the taxpayer-funded Trump macho video during the Tampa game was
2:07:49
Speaker 1: incredibly irritating. Do Republicans really think this is a winning
2:07:52
Speaker 1: strategy and why target a Packers game rather than something
2:07:54
Speaker 1: like Cowboys versus Texans where the audience seems more relevant? Seriously,
2:07:58
Speaker 1: what were they thinking and why did I have to
2:07:59
Speaker 1: suffer through this? these ads? So let me explain the
2:08:02
Speaker 1: weird nature of the TV ad market. So the reason
2:08:08
Speaker 1: why all of– every football fan in America got those
2:08:11
Speaker 1: Angela Paxton ads, which, yes, I think the messaging of
2:08:15
Speaker 1: it just landed super flat. I don't think it worked
2:08:18
Speaker 1: and it probably did– A lot of harm in other states.
2:08:23
Speaker 1: But there's a reason. So this was clearly a super PAC.
2:08:27
Speaker 1: Super PACs do not get the lowest rate available when
2:08:31
Speaker 1: you buy by market. If you're a candidate, you have
2:08:34
Speaker 1: to get the lowest market rate. It's basically you get
2:08:38
Speaker 1: a discount if you're the actual candidate. If you're a
2:08:42
Speaker 1: big old PAC, a super PAC, an independent expenditure, you
2:08:45
Speaker 1: don't get that lowest rate available. You get charged. essentially
2:08:50
Speaker 1: commercial rate. Well, Texas is saturated by market with all
2:08:57
Speaker 1: sorts of TV ads, right? Because if you're running for
2:08:59
Speaker 1: the state Senate, if you're running for Congress, you don't,
2:09:03
Speaker 1: you know, you, you only need to buy in one market,
2:09:06
Speaker 1: maybe two markets if your district's big enough, but you
2:09:10
Speaker 1: only need to buy in one market. And so, so anyway, the,
2:09:14
Speaker 1: The demand for the buy market ad time in Texas
2:09:19
Speaker 1: is through the roof. So it actually becomes more cost
2:09:23
Speaker 1: effective for the super PAC behind that Angela Paxton ad
2:09:29
Speaker 1: to get to everybody in Texas. It's cheaper to buy
2:09:34
Speaker 1: the national spot across all the Fox TV ads than
2:09:39
Speaker 1: it was to just target the Cowboys-Texans game. because of
2:09:45
Speaker 1: just how saturated the individual markets are in the state
2:09:49
Speaker 1: of Texas. It's why you're seeing, so if you watch,
2:09:53
Speaker 1: because you're a Packers fan, you saw this, if you
2:09:57
Speaker 1: watch any Ohio State game, Texas game involving Texas in
2:10:02
Speaker 1: college football, if you watch a Miami game, if you
2:10:05
Speaker 1: watch whatever, you're going to see a whole bunch of
2:10:10
Speaker 1: ads from one of the two leading statewide candidates saying,
2:10:13
Speaker 1: because it's cheaper to buy the national spots than it
2:10:18
Speaker 1: is to buy market spots in those individual states. Because remember,
2:10:22
Speaker 1: in those individual markets, you're competing with a whole bunch
2:10:24
Speaker 1: of other local campaigns who also only want to target
2:10:28
Speaker 1: that market. So it's just driven up, right? This is
2:10:32
Speaker 1: good old-fashioned economics, right? The demand for those time slots
2:10:35
Speaker 1: are through the roof, but the national time slots aren't
2:10:38
Speaker 1: taken up, right? And so that's why you see this.
2:10:42
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think the Angela Paxton ad, let me
2:10:47
Speaker 1: give you a little insight on how an ad like
2:10:49
Speaker 1: that came into existence. So it's no doubt who they're targeting.
2:10:52
Speaker 1: They're targeting Republican women who don't like Ken Paxton, right?
2:10:56
Speaker 1: So these are Trump voting women who don't like Ken Paxton.
2:11:01
Speaker 1: So they figured, so I'm sure they had a focus group.
2:11:04
Speaker 1: I'm sure they did a focus group of Republican women
2:11:07
Speaker 1: who are undecided in the Senate race. And they probably
2:11:10
Speaker 1: have a negative view of Ken Paxton. And they probably
2:11:13
Speaker 1: played a few different commercials to try to see what
2:11:15
Speaker 1: moved those voters in that room. And I'm sure to
2:11:20
Speaker 1: somebody who already is inclined to vote straight ticket Republican,
2:11:24
Speaker 1: hearing from Ken Paxton's ex-wife, her giving the permission slip,
2:11:30
Speaker 1: I don't like the guy either, but I'm voting for
2:11:32
Speaker 1: the entire Republican ticket. It probably, in a controlled setting,
2:11:38
Speaker 1: in front of a moderator... front of other people in
2:11:42
Speaker 1: there they said okay yeah it makes me does this
2:11:44
Speaker 1: make you more likely or less likely to support i
2:11:46
Speaker 1: guess it makes me more likely it didn't make me
2:11:48
Speaker 1: less likely she comes across quite likable in the ad
2:11:51
Speaker 1: right she's very charming in the ad i i i
2:11:54
Speaker 1: didn't know what to expect from her and haven't really
2:11:57
Speaker 1: seen her as uh out in the uh out in
2:12:00
Speaker 1: the wild as a candidate um But she doesn't really
2:12:04
Speaker 1: say anything and doesn't really tell you why you should
2:12:06
Speaker 1: support the Republican ticket beyond essentially Oba Libs. And I
2:12:09
Speaker 1: think that's the flaw in that messaging. But this is
2:12:12
Speaker 1: one of those where just because it worked in the
2:12:15
Speaker 1: focus group doesn't mean it's an effective ad. But it
2:12:19
Speaker 1: tells you everything about what's wrong, what they know they're losing.
2:12:24
Speaker 1: And at this point, they're panicked that just a whole
2:12:27
Speaker 1: bunch of people are either not going to show up
2:12:29
Speaker 1: or are going to sit this one out. But I
2:12:34
Speaker 1: hope I explained pretty well why we were all subject
2:12:38
Speaker 1: to that Angela Paxton hat on NFL Sunday. All right,
2:12:42
Speaker 1: last question for this episode. It's Cameron from Washington's 3rd District, Vancouver. Vancouver, Washington,
2:12:48
Speaker 1: which is actually on the southern part of the state.
2:12:52
Speaker 1: And he notes that he's originally from Phoenix. Long-time listener,
2:12:54
Speaker 1: first-time questioner. Latest time Sienna polling shows Gina Inosa ahead
2:12:59
Speaker 1: of Greg Abbott. It caught my attention. But as someone
2:13:01
Speaker 1: rooting for her, I'm also skeptical. How do you separate
2:13:03
Speaker 1: a meaningful shift from an outlier, especially when other Senate
2:13:05
Speaker 1: races in traditional Republican state also appear increasingly competitive? Closer
2:13:09
Speaker 1: to home, what's your read on Marie Glussenkamp-Perez in Washington 3?
2:13:13
Speaker 1: Is her moderate independent positioning still an electoral asset or
2:13:15
Speaker 1: could frustration from the Democratic base eventually outweigh its appeal
2:13:19
Speaker 1: to swing voters? Thanks for all the work you do.
2:13:21
Speaker 1: It's exciting to finally get a question in. It's like
2:13:25
Speaker 1: you anticipated that we would. All right. Look, I think
2:13:31
Speaker 1: with If this were the– if every poll we had
2:13:34
Speaker 1: seen with Abbott and Ohosa had always shown Abbott with
2:13:37
Speaker 1: a five- to ten-point lead, then yeah, I'd be skeptical
2:13:40
Speaker 1: of this. And I certainly am like– but the fact
2:13:44
Speaker 1: is this is not an outlier. There have been quite
2:13:49
Speaker 1: a few polls, and there's a few things going on.
2:13:51
Speaker 1: One is the Latino flight from Republicans is real, right?
2:13:57
Speaker 1: What should be more alarming to Greg Abbott is that
2:13:59
Speaker 1: Tallarico is still doing better with Latino voters than Hino Oseas.
2:14:03
Speaker 1: Tallarico is not Latino. Hino Oseas. Now, I think there
2:14:07
Speaker 1: is a disbelief in the Latino community that a Latino
2:14:11
Speaker 1: can win the governorship. But the stronger candidates he gets,
2:14:17
Speaker 1: the more traction she's getting. So, you know, I certainly
2:14:22
Speaker 1: am bullish. I'm not quite as bullish as some of
2:14:25
Speaker 1: the markets are. Abbott has a ton of money, but
2:14:33
Speaker 1: he is behaving like a candidate on the run. I
2:14:38
Speaker 1: always say, how do you know a poll is true? Well,
2:14:40
Speaker 1: sometimes just watch the behavior of a campaign. Greg Abbott
2:14:43
Speaker 1: is afraid to stand next to Donald Trump when Trump
2:14:45
Speaker 1: comes to Texas. Maybe she's not ahead by three. Maybe
2:14:52
Speaker 1: it's tied. But I promise you, He's running for a
2:14:55
Speaker 1: fourth term. Here's something else that gets under looked on
2:14:59
Speaker 1: this gubernatorial race in particular. Go look at the track
2:15:03
Speaker 1: record of candidates that have tried to get a fourth term, right?
2:15:08
Speaker 1: We've seen it in New York. Mario Cuomo lost a
2:15:11
Speaker 1: bid for a fourth term to a guy named, to
2:15:14
Speaker 1: a state senator who people wrote off at the start
2:15:16
Speaker 1: of that cycle named George Pataki. Gene Anos strikes me.
2:15:21
Speaker 1: It's a very similar trajectory. A lot of people, myself included,
2:15:25
Speaker 1: didn't buy it. I thought it was better if Tallarico
2:15:29
Speaker 1: ran for governor. I thought he'd be a strong... I
2:15:31
Speaker 1: really did think Abbott was vulnerable. I was skeptical an
2:15:35
Speaker 1: Austin progressive could do it, but she's not run as
2:15:39
Speaker 1: an Austin progressive. She's run a candidate. She's met voters
2:15:43
Speaker 1: where they are. She's run a really good race, really
2:15:46
Speaker 1: smart race. I thought Tallarico... All red with Tallarico governor,
2:15:56
Speaker 1: all red Senate.
2:15:57
Speaker 2: Right.
2:15:57
Speaker 1: I thought that was, you know, you know, you could
2:15:59
Speaker 1: have switched it either way. But I thought Tallarico being
2:16:03
Speaker 1: a state legislator would have been a stronger gubernatorial candidate. But, hey,
2:16:10
Speaker 1: you know, it's who am I to say now at
2:16:13
Speaker 1: this point, because it all I think we you see
2:16:16
Speaker 1: how weak this Republican ticket is. And frankly, I underestimated Gina,
2:16:21
Speaker 1: you know, so. She is a terrific candidate. She's had
2:16:25
Speaker 1: her finger on the pulse on the issue that I
2:16:26
Speaker 1: think matters most in that race, which is education. And
2:16:29
Speaker 1: she has done what a good candidate does, which is
2:16:32
Speaker 1: she went looking, where is the 50% fulcrum in the state?
2:16:37
Speaker 1: She didn't try to convince people to agree with her.
2:16:40
Speaker 1: She went and found out where the voters were. It's
2:16:46
Speaker 1: smart democracy. It's the way I want our democracy to work,
2:16:49
Speaker 1: where our candidates try to meet the voters where they're
2:16:52
Speaker 1: at and not make voters have to pick between a,
2:16:57
Speaker 1: as our friends at South Park once put it, a
2:16:59
Speaker 1: shit sandwich and a douchebag. If that's how you feel
2:17:03
Speaker 1: like the choices are, that's no good. And when those
2:17:07
Speaker 1: feel like the choices, it's because you have two candidates
2:17:10
Speaker 1: who refuse to meet voters where they're at. That's not
2:17:13
Speaker 1: what Jeannie Hoss was doing. She's actually trying to meet
2:17:16
Speaker 1: candidates where they're at. So I think it's real. And
2:17:22
Speaker 1: I think it's the it's the double whammy.
2:17:24
Speaker 2: Right.
2:17:25
Speaker 1: It's there's no more Democrats to blame in Texas if
2:17:28
Speaker 1: you're unhappy.
2:17:29
Speaker 2: Right.
2:17:30
Speaker 1: So that that's that message. And this voucher thing's unpopular
2:17:34
Speaker 1: and it's unpopular. So it's a double whammy for rural Texans.
2:17:38
Speaker 1: Rural Texans already have a crappy economy thanks to Trump's policies.
2:17:41
Speaker 1: And now they don't like this education policy that the
2:17:46
Speaker 1: Republican governor's been championing. So it's a it's double whammy
2:17:51
Speaker 1: in the part of the electorate that Republicans normally were
2:17:58
Speaker 1: counting on as guaranteed votes. As for MGP, I think
2:18:06
Speaker 1: she's certainly– look, I think she's fine this cycle, but
2:18:08
Speaker 1: you're right to be wondering, and I wonder if this
2:18:11
Speaker 1: is her last cycle. I don't think she's going to
2:18:14
Speaker 1: enjoy being in the majority. But we'll see, right? Is
2:18:19
Speaker 1: she an outlier or is there a real sort of
2:18:24
Speaker 1: center-left caucus that she's the champion of? Is she the
2:18:28
Speaker 1: new blue dog leader or does she continue to be
2:18:31
Speaker 1: a bit more independent– I have to tell you, I
2:18:34
Speaker 1: find her very compelling. I'd like to see her run statewide.
2:18:39
Speaker 1: It may be she's not liberal enough for Washington. I
2:18:45
Speaker 1: don't know. I think she's a really compelling potential running
2:18:53
Speaker 1: mate for somebody. I think she's a really compelling independent
2:18:57
Speaker 1: candidate if she ever chose to run nationally as an independent.
2:19:02
Speaker 1: I think she could be a really compelling independent Senate
2:19:04
Speaker 1: candidate in Washington. And Washington is just the type of
2:19:06
Speaker 1: state that might do that. Right. It's a basically, you know,
2:19:12
Speaker 1: Washington to me is the mirror image of what Texas was,
2:19:16
Speaker 1: but may not be anymore, which is there's sort of
2:19:19
Speaker 1: Washington's a three party state.
2:19:21
Speaker 2: Right.
2:19:21
Speaker 1: Progressive, mainstream Democrat, Republican. Republicans aren't a big enough chunk
2:19:29
Speaker 1: to win statewide. You know, Democrats win big if they
2:19:35
Speaker 1: get somebody that sort of bridges the two wing, the
2:19:39
Speaker 1: two Democratic parties. Right. Just like in Texas, there used
2:19:41
Speaker 1: to be there's basically been two Republican parties and a
2:19:43
Speaker 1: Democratic party. I do wonder if if you see a
2:19:52
Speaker 1: setup for her, if the House leadership and sort of
2:19:56
Speaker 1: House Democrats end up pushing the party to the left.
2:20:01
Speaker 1: She may feel like a fish out of water. But
2:20:04
Speaker 1: I am curious to see whether or will there be
2:20:07
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of right. This all depends on how
2:20:09
Speaker 1: many seats do Democrats win. The more seats they win,
2:20:13
Speaker 1: the bigger the MGP led caucus might look like.
2:20:17
Speaker 2: Right.
2:20:18
Speaker 1: You get our plus eight, nine, 10 districts flipping to
2:20:24
Speaker 1: the Democrats. Well, those Democrats might look to MGP as
2:20:29
Speaker 1: their sort of North Star. on how to navigate districts
2:20:35
Speaker 1: like that. But then again, I kind of look at
2:20:37
Speaker 1: those districts. Boy, you're in R9, 10, 11. If you
2:20:42
Speaker 1: win in a midterm, you're probably renting. You're not owning
2:20:46
Speaker 1: a seat there for a while. And the presidential year
2:20:49
Speaker 1: could snap back in quite the hurry. But I do
2:20:54
Speaker 1: think socialists, progressives, excuse my, somebody's going to use that
2:21:00
Speaker 1: as some sort of Freudian slip. I was not trying
2:21:02
Speaker 1: to do that. I do think the progressive wing of,
2:21:08
Speaker 1: of the, of the, in, even in that district, which is,
2:21:13
Speaker 1: you know, a right-leaning district collectively, you can see that
2:21:18
Speaker 1: the objections keep piling up and, and she's not afraid
2:21:21
Speaker 1: to poke democratic leadership in the eye. But it's been
2:21:25
Speaker 1: good politics for her so far. And I'm, like I said, I'm,
2:21:29
Speaker 1: I'm very intrigued if she's going to catch a bug
2:21:32
Speaker 1: that takes her into political campaigns beyond Washington's third congressional district. Cameron,
2:21:42
Speaker 1: appreciated the question. And thank you all. Hope you enjoy
2:21:46
Speaker 1: your hump day, by the way. I'm so glad. that
2:21:49
Speaker 1: hump day came back even for a day. I think they,
2:21:52
Speaker 1: I think our friends at Geico brought the ad back
2:21:54
Speaker 1: simply so NBC could promote the fact that their opening
2:21:58
Speaker 1: NFL game was on a Wednesday, but that dumb camel
2:22:03
Speaker 1: ad might be one of my favorite. There's a lot
2:22:05
Speaker 1: of fun Geico ads that might be at the top
2:22:09
Speaker 1: of my list. So anyway, enjoy your hump day and
2:22:12
Speaker 1: I'll see you.