Latest / Pod Save America / “Pardon me?”
Transcript
- 0:20Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
- 0:22Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
- 0:23Speaker 1: On today's pod, Dan talks to Obama data guru Dan
- 0:25Speaker 1: Wagner about what really happened in this election and why
- 0:28Speaker 1: the polls were so bad. Before that, we'll talk about
- 0:31Speaker 1: whether we might finally get a COVID relief bill and
- 0:33Speaker 1: what Donald Trump plans to do next, including a bunch
- 0:36Speaker 1: of last minute pardons for his family and friends and
- 0:38Speaker 1: a potential announcement that he'll be running again in 2024
- 0:41Speaker 1: because hell is real and this is it. But first,
- 0:49Speaker 1: check out the latest episode of Pod Save the World,
- 0:50Speaker 1: where Tommy and Ben talk to Senator Chris Murphy about
- 0:53Speaker 1: the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist. and what it
- 0:56Speaker 1: could mean for the Biden administration's potential efforts to reach
- 0:58Speaker 1: a new nuclear agreement with Iran. If you're not already,
- 1:03Speaker 1: also go subscribe to our fantastic What A Day newsletter.
- 1:06Speaker 1: The hilarious Sarah Lazarus gives you a quick, smart, very
- 1:10Speaker 1: funny rundown of all the important news you may have missed.
- 1:13Speaker 1: Check it out at crooked.com slash newsletters. If you're not
- 1:17Speaker 1: already reading What A Day, you are missing out. Check
- 1:21Speaker 1: it out.
- 1:22Speaker 3: Would it be controversial to say that Sarah Lazarus is
- 1:24Speaker 3: the funniest person at Crooked Media?
- 1:26Speaker 1: It depends on which other employees and podcast co-hosts are
- 1:30Speaker 1: listening to.
- 1:32Speaker 2: This right now. Well, I bet we'll find out, won't we?
- 1:34Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, it'll be a real test.
- 1:37Speaker 1: A real test of who listens. All right. She is...
- 1:42Speaker 1: I edit the newsletter along with Brian Boitler every day,
- 1:46Speaker 1: both of us, and... Every single day, I laugh out
- 1:50Speaker 1: loud to myself in my office about something that Sarah
- 1:53Speaker 1: writes in the newsletter. So that's just my perspective. Finally,
- 1:58Speaker 1: we are only a few weeks away from the January
- 2:00Speaker 1: 5th runoff in Georgia that will decide control of the Senate.
- 2:05Speaker 1: Early voting starts on December 14th. And if you want
- 2:07Speaker 1: to help, please sign up to adopt Georgia at votesaveamerica.com
- 2:12Speaker 1: slash Georgia. We will send you all kinds of opportunities
- 2:15Speaker 1: to donate and volunteer online. What we're sending you doesn't
- 2:18Speaker 1: come from us. It comes from the organizers on the
- 2:21Speaker 1: ground in Georgia who know the state best, who know
- 2:23Speaker 1: what kind of help they need. So this has all
- 2:25Speaker 1: been coordinated with the people on the ground. Please help.
- 2:27Speaker 1: This is enormously important. Literally everything we've been talking about
- 2:31Speaker 1: since the election, like so much of whether next year is,
- 2:36Speaker 1: you know, easier for Biden's administration, easier for progressive causes.
- 2:41Speaker 1: Like whether we actually pass legislation that improves people's lives.
- 2:45Speaker 1: So much of this depends on what happens on January 5th.
- 2:49Speaker 1: As we said before, it's not going to be an
- 2:51Speaker 1: easy race, but the votes are there for Democrats to
- 2:54Speaker 1: win in this race. So I really think we need
- 2:57Speaker 1: to treat this race just like we treated the presidential
- 3:00Speaker 1: race because the entire progressive agenda is on the line
- 3:04Speaker 1: in Georgia. So help out if you can. All right.
- 3:08Speaker 1: Let's get to the news. The most important story in
- 3:11Speaker 1: the country right now is the pandemic. Record cases, record hospitalizations,
- 3:16Speaker 1: and unfortunately now record deaths. It's forcing more businesses to
- 3:19Speaker 1: shut down right as the money from the last relief
- 3:22Speaker 1: bill is running out. People are losing their jobs and
- 3:25Speaker 1: their homes. They are getting sicker and hungrier. And for
- 3:28Speaker 1: the last few months, Mitch McConnell has refused to negotiate
- 3:32Speaker 1: over another round of relief. And Donald Trump has, of course,
- 3:34Speaker 1: refused to pay attention. But on Tuesday, a bipartisan group
- 3:38Speaker 1: of senators said, Four Democrats, four Republicans proposed a $ 908
- 3:42Speaker 1: billion emergency package that includes relief for small businesses, unemployment insurance,
- 3:47Speaker 1: rental assistance, and state, local, and tribal governments, as well
- 3:50Speaker 1: as funding for COVID testing and vaccine distribution. It does
- 3:54Speaker 1: not include another round of stimulus checks, but it does
- 3:57Speaker 1: provide what the group calls, quote, short-term protection from coronavirus lawsuits.
- 4:01Speaker 2: But.
- 4:02Speaker 1: This bipartisan compromise apparently isn't stingy enough for Mitch McConnell,
- 4:06Speaker 1: who reintroduced his $ 500 billion plan that includes help for
- 4:09Speaker 1: small businesses, but no money for unemployment, no money for
- 4:12Speaker 1: rental assistance, and no money for state and local governments.
- 4:15Speaker 1: So Dan, Schumer and Pelosi are now supporting the bipartisan compromise.
- 4:20Speaker 1: Biden is supporting the bipartisan compromise. Before we get into
- 4:23Speaker 1: the politics of actually passing something like this, what do
- 4:25Speaker 1: you think about the substance of the plan?
- 4:29Speaker 3: It is obviously nowhere near enough. to deal with the
- 4:33Speaker 3: devastation from this pandemic, economic, health, societal, et cetera. But
- 4:39Speaker 3: people need help. They needed help months ago. And if
- 4:42Speaker 3: we can get them something, then we need to do it.
- 4:45Speaker 3: And I think Schumer and Pelosi are exactly right to
- 4:47Speaker 3: try to do everything they can. And Biden, Schumer, Pelosi,
- 4:50Speaker 3: and Biden are exactly right to try to do everything
- 4:52Speaker 3: we can to get some help to people before the
- 4:54Speaker 3: end of the year. Because if we do not do
- 4:55Speaker 3: it before Congress leaves, it'll be after inauguration, February, maybe March,
- 5:01Speaker 3: at the absolute earliest. And people cannot wait. We have
- 5:03Speaker 3: a bunch of revisions that expire at the end of
- 5:05Speaker 3: this year. So proceeding like this, trying to get this done,
- 5:08Speaker 3: is the absolute right thing to do, in my view.
- 5:11Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Jeff Stein of The Washington Post has
- 5:13Speaker 1: been an outstanding reporter covering these negotiations. He was tweeting
- 5:17Speaker 1: the other day, a reminder of what the US faces
- 5:20Speaker 1: next month if Congress doesn't act. The eviction moratorium expires.
- 5:24Speaker 1: That's 30 million people at risk of being kicked out
- 5:26Speaker 1: of their homes and apartments. 12 million lose unemployment benefits.
- 5:31Speaker 1: Millions lose paid family leave. Millions face utility shutoffs, enormous
- 5:35Speaker 1: blows to restaurants, hotels, et cetera. There's a real crisis
- 5:38Speaker 1: in this country. Also, there is a big difference between
- 5:41Speaker 1: acting now and acting months from now when Joe Biden
- 5:44Speaker 1: is president. If we get into a double-dip recession, you
- 5:47Speaker 1: could have a recessionary spiral where the more that people
- 5:50Speaker 1: can't afford rent, the more people pull back spending from
- 5:53Speaker 1: the economy, the worse the recession gets, and it becomes
- 5:56Speaker 1: a vicious cycle. So you want to sort of act
- 5:58Speaker 1: as soon as possible. But, you know, like you pointed out,
- 6:03Speaker 1: this bill doesn't come close to what we need. It's
- 6:05Speaker 1: got $ 160 billion for state and local governments. The shortfall
- 6:09Speaker 1: is calculated at $ 800 to $ 900 billion. So it's a
- 6:11Speaker 1: drop in the bucket there. Unemployment is currently, unemployment insurance
- 6:16Speaker 1: is $ 600 a week on top of unemployment benefits. This
- 6:19Speaker 1: gives an extra $ 300 a week for the next four months.
- 6:22Speaker 1: You know, rental assistance, there's a $ 70 billion shortfall. This
- 6:25Speaker 1: is about $ 25 billion. So it's nowhere near enough. But
- 6:30Speaker 1: at the same time, you know, Republicans haven't wanted anything
- 6:33Speaker 1: for the last several months. Mitch McConnell has been blocking negotiations.
- 6:36Speaker 1: Donald Trump doesn't give a shit about this. So something
- 6:38Speaker 1: here is absolutely better than nothing because people's lives are
- 6:41Speaker 1: at stake.
- 6:42Speaker 3: And it's even worth noting, I think, that even when
- 6:43Speaker 3: you talk about those shortfalls and we talk about how
- 6:46Speaker 3: big the HEROES Act was and all of that, even
- 6:49Speaker 3: those policies, as bold as they may be and as
- 6:51Speaker 3: what the need is, still suffers from a poverty of ambition.
- 6:55Speaker 3: What ultimately we should be doing in a pandemic is
- 6:59Speaker 3: paying people to stay home, paying businesses to stay open.
- 7:02Speaker 3: So many of the times we've had these spikes is
- 7:04Speaker 3: because state and local officials feel the pressure of small businesses,
- 7:09Speaker 3: restaurants in particular, who go out of business.
- 7:10Speaker 2: So we open up indoor dining. We open up bars.
- 7:12Speaker 3: We open up other things. We could stop the virus
- 7:15Speaker 3: in its tracks and slow its spread if we gave
- 7:17Speaker 3: people an economic incentive to stay home. where you didn't
- 7:20Speaker 3: feel a choice between your paycheck in your life or
- 7:24Speaker 3: your livelihood in your life. And so I think it's
- 7:27Speaker 3: important to know what we should be doing in an
- 7:31Speaker 3: ideal world, what we could be doing within the context
- 7:34Speaker 3: of American politics, and then what we may, if we
- 7:36Speaker 3: are lucky, going to end up doing and the wide
- 7:38Speaker 3: gap between those things.
- 7:41Speaker 1: Well, I mean, is this Did Pelosi and Schumer and
- 7:43Speaker 1: Biden have any other options but backing this bipartisan compromise?
- 7:48Speaker 1: Because I have seen some griping that why didn't they
- 7:51Speaker 1: just go big, right? Why didn't they propose another round
- 7:57Speaker 1: of stimulus checks? Why didn't they propose something bigger? Why
- 7:59Speaker 1: didn't they make this a messaging battle and go to
- 8:02Speaker 1: voters and say, this is what the economy actually needs.
- 8:05Speaker 1: This is what people need who are struggling right now.
- 8:08Speaker 1: And this is what we're fighting for. And then put
- 8:10Speaker 1: pressure on them. on the Republicans that way.
- 8:12Speaker 3: Well, because you're playing a game with people's lives. I mean,
- 8:16Speaker 3: that's what you're doing, ultimately. And it is not, I mean,
- 8:21Speaker 3: there is a world, I guess, where you could say,
- 8:23Speaker 3: if you were Pelosi, Biden, and Schumer, and say, we're
- 8:27Speaker 3: going to bet on.
- 8:27Speaker 2: Georgia, right?
- 8:29Speaker 3: We know that if we take the Senate, we can
- 8:34Speaker 3: pass a very large bill. We can pass the HEROES Act.
- 8:36Speaker 3: We Raphael Warnock are sworn into the Senate. Biden will
- 8:41Speaker 3: sign it the second it arrives and we can get
- 8:43Speaker 3: aid to people. But if we win the Senate, we
- 8:45Speaker 3: can also do that, right? You can pass this now
- 8:50Speaker 3: and do that then. And so if you get a
- 8:52Speaker 3: chance to help people who desperately need help, then you
- 8:54Speaker 3: should do it. And trying to fabricate some version of
- 8:59Speaker 3: fantasy congressional camp or four-dimensional chess, which I see a
- 9:03Speaker 3: lot of pundits doing about a better way, is not
- 9:06Speaker 3: the right way to do it. This is the best
- 9:08Speaker 3: chance we have to get people some measure of help
- 9:10Speaker 3: before it's too late, and they should do that, and
- 9:12Speaker 3: they are right to do that.
- 9:14Speaker 1: Because, for example, if they decided to back a bill
- 9:18Speaker 1: now that has a more powerful message for voters with
- 9:21Speaker 1: the hope that this would help win Georgia, and then
- 9:25Speaker 1: we lose Georgia... Then you didn't get any relief for
- 9:28Speaker 1: people from December through to when Joe Biden is inaugurated.
- 9:32Speaker 1: And then Joe Biden is inaugurated with the Republican Senate.
- 9:35Speaker 1: And then we're still not getting much because now Mitch
- 9:37Speaker 1: McConnell can do whatever he wants to block Joe Biden
- 9:40Speaker 1: because Joe Biden doesn't have a Democratic Senate. So if
- 9:42Speaker 1: you gamble on Georgia and you lose, the people who
- 9:45Speaker 1: really lose are all the people who didn't get help.
- 9:47Speaker 1: And then the other, you know, talk about proposing a
- 9:51Speaker 1: much bigger, more ambitious bill. They did that, right? The $ 2. 2
- 9:54Speaker 1: trillion Pat Heroes Act that Pelosi introduced in May couldn't
- 10:00Speaker 1: find a single Republican that would go along with it,
- 10:03Speaker 1: not a single Republican. So we have to operate under
- 10:06Speaker 1: the reality that we have one House of Congress right now,
- 10:09Speaker 1: and we don't have the Senate, and we don't have
- 10:11Speaker 1: the presidency right now. So you actually need Republican votes.
- 10:14Speaker 1: And the only Republicans that have stepped forward for a
- 10:16Speaker 1: package that's bigger than Mitch McConnell's shitty package is is
- 10:21Speaker 1: these four Republican senators who joined in the bipartisan compromise,
- 10:24Speaker 1: Mitt Romney, Bill Cassidy, Murkowski, and Collins. So that's who
- 10:29Speaker 1: we have right now. And that would be a majority
- 10:32Speaker 1: in the Senate if all the Democrats went along. Of course,
- 10:35Speaker 1: we still need Donald Trump's signature on this, which brings
- 10:38Speaker 1: me to my next question. Can this compromise even pass,
- 10:42Speaker 1: even this bipartisan compromise? McConnell says that his shitty bill
- 10:47Speaker 1: is the bill that Trump will sign And he may
- 10:50Speaker 1: decide to attach it to the larger spending bill that
- 10:53Speaker 1: has to be passed by December 11th to avoid a
- 10:56Speaker 1: government shutdown. So that way, McConnell's plan here is, you know,
- 11:00Speaker 1: to jam Democrats and say Democrats have to either vote
- 11:03Speaker 1: for McConnell's shitty bill or essentially vote for a government shutdown.
- 11:08Speaker 1: So that's one thing that could happen. Now, McConnell's deputy.
- 11:11Speaker 1: Majority Web Senator John Thune did tell reporters that the
- 11:15Speaker 1: bipartisan compromise was, quote, reasonable and that maybe they could
- 11:19Speaker 1: merge that bipartisan plan with McConnell's plan, which now we're
- 11:24Speaker 1: getting to an even worse conclusion here. But like how
- 11:27Speaker 1: did how did Democrats and the Republicans who support the
- 11:30Speaker 1: compromise bill get something passed? Like what is the strategy
- 11:33Speaker 1: from announcing this bipartisan framework to actually trying to pass
- 11:37Speaker 1: it into law?
- 11:39Speaker 4: It.
- 11:40Speaker 3: Probably requires the Republican senators who support the bipartisan compromise
- 11:46Speaker 3: to say they will only vote for some version of
- 11:49Speaker 3: the bipartisan compromise. They have to deny McConnell the votes
- 11:53Speaker 3: to do what he has suggested he would do. Because
- 11:56Speaker 3: if they were to do that, he can't get it done.
- 11:59Speaker 1: So far, Collins and Murkowski said that they do not
- 12:01Speaker 1: want to vote for McConnell's plan. The question I wonder,
- 12:05Speaker 1: McConnell's strategy I'm betting is Oh, well, I'm at $ 500 billion.
- 12:09Speaker 1: They're at $ 900 billion. Maybe I come up to $ 600, $ 650,
- 12:12Speaker 1: and I peel off Collins and Murkowski and some of
- 12:15Speaker 1: the Republicans, and then that's the plan we go with.
- 12:18Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that is very possible and probably
- 12:22Speaker 3: highly likely.
- 12:22Speaker 1: What ends up happening.
- 12:23Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's some of the critique from some folks
- 12:26Speaker 3: on the outside is by coming down, you made the
- 12:29Speaker 3: gap between– like in an ideal world, people like to think, well,
- 12:32Speaker 3: Democrats were at $ 2 billion, Republicans at $ 500 million– Well, it's.
- 12:36Speaker 2: Meat in the middle, right?
- 12:37Speaker 3: And then now Democrats are at 900 and they're at 500.
- 12:40Speaker 3: So the middle looks something like 700, right? But here's
- 12:44Speaker 3: the problem. We control one half of one branch of
- 12:48Speaker 3: government right now. And so we have, like, we should
- 12:51Speaker 3: not pretend we have a ton of leverage. And if
- 12:52Speaker 3: we want to get something done, we're going to have
- 12:55Speaker 3: to do something that is not as good as we
- 12:59Speaker 3: would like, and maybe much less good than we would like.
- 13:01Speaker 3: But we have to, then we have to decide, Pelosi, Schumer,
- 13:03Speaker 3: the other Democrats to decide, Is this good enough to pass?
- 13:09Speaker 3: There are things that McConnell could add to it that
- 13:11Speaker 3: make it not. The full liability shield that McConnell wants
- 13:13Speaker 3: is probably a red line Democrats cannot.
- 13:16Speaker 2: And should not cross.
- 13:17Speaker 3: And there may be some things McConnell wants to keep
- 13:20Speaker 3: out that Democrats can't sort of sign off on keeping out.
- 13:23Speaker 3: But we are negotiating in a narrow world of not greatness.
- 13:27Speaker 3: And that is just sort of where we are. We're
- 13:29Speaker 3: going to control the White House in January and ideally
- 13:31Speaker 3: potentially control the Senate. And then we just have a
- 13:33Speaker 3: very different capacity in calculus.
- 13:35Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that the calculation here for Democrats is
- 13:39Speaker 1: when does McConnell's bill and then maybe McConnell's compromise get
- 13:43Speaker 1: so bad that it is worth saying, fuck this, we're
- 13:48Speaker 1: not voting for it. We'll threaten to shut the government
- 13:50Speaker 1: down or we're just we're not going to vote for
- 13:52Speaker 1: McConnell's horrible compromise in this in this in the spending bill.
- 13:57Speaker 1: And we'll take our case to the voters of Georgia
- 13:59Speaker 1: and see what we can do. Like, when does it
- 14:00Speaker 1: get because I think if it was just McConnell's $ 500
- 14:05Speaker 1: billion bill added onto the spending bill, and that's the
- 14:08Speaker 1: only game in town, like it's a pretty bad bill.
- 14:11Speaker 1: It helps small businesses. It has no other help for
- 14:13Speaker 1: anyone else. It doesn't seem like Democrats would vote for that.
- 14:16Speaker 1: But I don't know. I wonder what the calculus is there.
- 14:19Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the hard part, like you and I
- 14:22Speaker 3: want to believe, and we said this before the election,
- 14:25Speaker 3: Republican senators are the reason people are not getting help.
- 14:28Speaker 3: And we are going to batter them over the head
- 14:31Speaker 3: with that and win the election. And we didn't in
- 14:35Speaker 3: the Senate. That did not defeat Tom Tillis. That did
- 14:37Speaker 3: not defeat Susan Collins, right? That did not defeat Joni Ernst.
- 14:41Speaker 3: And so we should not be super confident that that
- 14:44Speaker 3: is the winning political issue in Georgia, because there is
- 14:47Speaker 3: not evidence of that happening in 2020. I think that
- 14:51Speaker 3: if there was one part of it where I thought
- 14:52Speaker 3: you could potentially, if you message it correctly, that I
- 14:56Speaker 3: think is A, a policy red line, and B, a
- 14:58Speaker 3: political opportunity, it's in the liability shield, right? That you're
- 15:00Speaker 3: going to give legal immunity, unprecedented legal immunity to corporations
- 15:06Speaker 3: to prevent them from being sued for getting their workers
- 15:09Speaker 3: sick or killing them. I don't love the limited liability
- 15:12Speaker 3: shield that is temporary in the compromise bill, but it
- 15:15Speaker 3: is temporary, right? It's something that can be dealt with
- 15:18Speaker 3: on the back end. If you were to just do
- 15:19Speaker 3: full legal liability, which is what McConnell wants, then I
- 15:22Speaker 3: think that is a bridge too far for Democrats in
- 15:24Speaker 3: my view.
- 15:25Speaker 2: But it's tough. It's tough.
- 15:27Speaker 1: So thinking about Georgia and how like John Ossoff and
- 15:31Speaker 1: Raphael Warnock and Democrats in Georgia talk about these COVID negotiations,
- 15:35Speaker 1: if at all, I have to say I'm a little
- 15:38Speaker 1: more bullish on the ability to make this a big
- 15:40Speaker 1: issue in this race for a few reasons. Number one,
- 15:44Speaker 1: I don't think anyone tried to make it an issue
- 15:46Speaker 1: in the presidential race or the Senate races. Like there
- 15:49Speaker 1: just wasn't for a million reasons that we could go
- 15:53Speaker 1: into forever. But like, There wasn't a lot of space
- 15:56Speaker 1: to talk about COVID relief negotiations at the end of
- 16:00Speaker 1: that race. It's the Trump show. He's saying a fucking
- 16:03Speaker 1: million crazy things a day. It's all focused on him.
- 16:07Speaker 1: That's what the national news environment is all about. It's
- 16:10Speaker 1: sort of hard to break through with negotiations. So I
- 16:12Speaker 1: think if you're more focused, especially now when so many
- 16:15Speaker 1: people are hurting and you talk about like. Hey, you know,
- 16:19Speaker 1: if you send the two of us to the Senate,
- 16:21Speaker 1: we're going to make sure that there are unemployment benefits
- 16:24Speaker 1: for people who need it, who are stuck at home
- 16:25Speaker 1: through no fault of their own. We're going to keep
- 16:27Speaker 1: people in their homes with rental insurance. We're going to
- 16:29Speaker 1: make sure that we don't have layoffs of teachers and
- 16:31Speaker 1: health care workers and and firefighters because of state and
- 16:34Speaker 1: local government. Like we are going to protect people and
- 16:38Speaker 1: we're going to help people in this time of crisis.
- 16:41Speaker 1: And what Republicans want to do, what Mitch McConnell wants
- 16:43Speaker 1: to do, is nothing. He wants to do nothing to
- 16:47Speaker 1: help you go through this recession. I think that could
- 16:50Speaker 1: be a pretty powerful message.
- 16:52Speaker 2: I hope so. I would like to believe that.
- 16:54Speaker 3: And I agree that it was not a fully tested
- 16:59Speaker 3: proposition in November.
- 17:02Speaker 1: I don't even know if it was a partly tested proposition.
- 17:04Speaker 1: I don't remember who ever said it, who ever talked
- 17:06Speaker 1: about it.
- 17:07Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there was some paid media on it.
- 17:09Speaker 3: There was some digital media on it. It was part
- 17:11Speaker 3: of the stomping. How much of that stuff broke through
- 17:13Speaker 3: in the avalanche of noise and news that was the
- 17:16Speaker 3: election is probably relatively limited.
- 17:18Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 17:21Speaker 3: I think the Democrats should make their decisions about what
- 17:23Speaker 3: bill to pass, agree to, compromise on, separate from what
- 17:28Speaker 3: they think is most politically beneficial in Georgia. Because I
- 17:30Speaker 3: just don't think we know enough to make a decision
- 17:32Speaker 3: that affects whether people get evicted from their home based
- 17:35Speaker 3: on some idea on some potentially flawed poll about what
- 17:39Speaker 3: will move an unknown electorate in Georgia. Separate from that, though,
- 17:44Speaker 3: I think there is an argument for Ossoff and Warnock
- 17:48Speaker 3: about the benefit of what would happen if they were
- 17:52Speaker 3: elected in terms of the additional economic aid that would
- 17:55Speaker 3: come to Georgia families and Georgia small.
- 17:56Speaker 2: Businesses, right?
- 17:57Speaker 1: That's what I'm talking about.
- 17:58Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 17:59Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, I should have said I wanted to separate it.
- 18:02Speaker 1: Like the negotiations that are happening in Congress should be
- 18:05Speaker 1: separated from the Warnock-Ossoff messaging. And I think those can
- 18:09Speaker 1: sort of run on parallel tracks just fine. Yeah. Because
- 18:13Speaker 1: I think that like if they get a deal, right,
- 18:16Speaker 1: and we end up signing off on a deal, I
- 18:18Speaker 1: think the Georgia candidates can say, well, we had to
- 18:21Speaker 1: take the shitty deal because of like Mitch McConnell was
- 18:25Speaker 1: stingy and so was Donald Trump. And if you send
- 18:27Speaker 1: us there, we're actually going to give you an economic
- 18:29Speaker 1: package that lifts up Georgians and actually helps people who
- 18:33Speaker 1: are struggling in the state. And if there's no deal,
- 18:35Speaker 1: then you can say no deal. is the kind of
- 18:39Speaker 1: Senate you're going to have for the next two years
- 18:41Speaker 1: if you send Perdue and Loeffler back to the Senate.
- 18:43Speaker 1: You're going to have no deal, no progress, all obstruction,
- 18:48Speaker 1: all the time. Okay, let's talk about Donald Trump, who
- 18:59Speaker 1: is still duping his own supporters into believing that he
- 19:02Speaker 1: can overturn the results of the election. He can't. He
- 19:05Speaker 1: knows that. And the reason we know he knows that
- 19:08Speaker 1: is because Donald Trump is getting ready to hand out
- 19:10Speaker 1: some pardons and potentially announce his presidential campaign in 2024.
- 19:13Speaker 1: The one-term loser is reportedly considering preemptive pardons for his
- 19:18Speaker 1: personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his
- 19:22Speaker 1: three eldest children, Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka. Sorry, Tiffany. Sorry, Barron. Uh,
- 19:27Speaker 1: it is unclear what he would be pardoning any of
- 19:30Speaker 1: them for, uh, though I suppose there are plenty of
- 19:33Speaker 1: potential crimes to go around. Uh, Dan, before we get
- 19:36Speaker 1: into Trump's decision on these pardons, like how is the
- 19:40Speaker 1: pardon process supposed to work in a normal administration?
- 19:44Speaker 3: Well, I would say this, not this. The normal process
- 19:48Speaker 3: is a cable news host. picks up a cause and
- 19:51Speaker 3: talks about it in prime time, and then the president responds. That's, oh, wait, no,
- 19:56Speaker 3: that's not normal at all. The normal process is individuals,
- 20:00Speaker 3: through their attorney, apply for a pardon through the Department
- 20:04Speaker 3: of Justice and the Office of the Pardon Attorney, who
- 20:07Speaker 3: then goes through all of these applications, thousands upon thousands
- 20:11Speaker 3: of them, and then makes recommendations to the White House
- 20:14Speaker 3: that are provided to the White House counsel, who then
- 20:15Speaker 3: calls them down some more, and then provides them to
- 20:19Speaker 3: the president to make decisions. That is the normal process.
- 20:22Speaker 3: It has this very assiduous, careful process.
- 20:26Speaker 1: Dan, can I ask a question?
- 20:27Speaker 4: Yes.
- 20:28Speaker 1: Is part of that process that you offer bribes to
- 20:31Speaker 1: the White House? You offer to funnel money into a political.
- 20:35Speaker 3: Well, generally there's like an eBay style auction for like
- 20:39Speaker 3: what you want to do.
- 20:42Speaker 2: That's exactly why.
- 20:43Speaker 1: Because apparently that happened. The Justice Department is looking into,
- 20:47Speaker 1: we found out this week, the Justice Department is looking
- 20:51Speaker 1: into the fact that a lawyer for someone who is
- 20:54Speaker 1: in prison, we don't know, it's been redacted, was talking
- 20:57Speaker 1: to the White House about... a pardon, asking for a pardon,
- 21:01Speaker 1: and there is potentially a pardon for bribe scheme that
- 21:05Speaker 1: went on there. And we don't know much about it,
- 21:08Speaker 1: but that's also happened. The Department of Justice has since
- 21:10Speaker 1: said no government official is the subject or target of
- 21:12Speaker 1: the investigation referenced in the court opinion. So maybe not
- 21:15Speaker 1: anyone in the Trump White House that's in trouble, but
- 21:17Speaker 1: perhaps the lawyer for the person who's looking for the
- 21:21Speaker 1: pardon is in some trouble.
- 21:23Speaker 3: I mean, I don't want to speculate recklessly or irresponsibly.
- 21:26Speaker 1: But do you know of any- That's what we're here for.
- 21:29Speaker 3: Do you know any people who are attorneys of sort
- 21:35Speaker 3: who kind of hang out with the wrong group of people,
- 21:39Speaker 3: have some nebulous moral code, might have been mayor of
- 21:43Speaker 3: New York in the early part of the century?
- 21:45Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 21:47Speaker 1: I mean, well, until you said might have been mayor
- 21:49Speaker 1: of New York, I was like, I don't know any
- 21:51Speaker 1: of the lawyers that work around Donald Trump, like the five, six, seven, eight, nine,
- 21:56Speaker 1: 10 of them. They're all crazy.
- 21:57Speaker 3: Well, I mean, to me, to like step back into
- 22:00Speaker 3: seriousness and normalcy, the reason the process that I talked
- 22:03Speaker 3: about exists is because of the danger of corruption and bribery.
- 22:08Speaker 3: Because the pardon power of the president is so absolute
- 22:11Speaker 3: and so consequential to the person who benefits from it,
- 22:15Speaker 3: that there is a grand fear of corruption and bribery.
- 22:19Speaker 3: And it has happened in the past. There have been
- 22:21Speaker 3: allegations of contributions for pardons where people have tried to
- 22:26Speaker 3: corrupt the process. And it's why the process exists is
- 22:30Speaker 3: to try to insulate the president from– it's definitely unusual,
- 22:34Speaker 3: but it's not unexpected that some people would try to
- 22:36Speaker 3: profit off of this situation, right? A lot of attorneys
- 22:39Speaker 3: go to people and talk about the access they have
- 22:42Speaker 3: to the administration in previous administrations to try to get pardons.
- 22:46Speaker 3: And you have this process with the Department of Justice,
- 22:48Speaker 3: the White House counsel before it gets to the president
- 22:49Speaker 3: to insulate the president from possible perceptions of corruption or
- 22:54Speaker 3: nefarious actors on the outside trying to profit off of
- 22:57Speaker 3: the process.
- 22:58Speaker 1: And the reason that's worked in the past is because
- 23:02Speaker 1: most presidents care about the perception that they are corrupt.
- 23:06Speaker 1: This one does not. I mean, this is what we're seeing.
- 23:08Speaker 1: The problem with the pardon is what we've seen with
- 23:11Speaker 1: almost everything else for the last four years, which is,
- 23:13Speaker 1: like you said, in the Constitution, the power to pardon
- 23:17Speaker 1: is nearly absolute. And the only guardrails... around that have
- 23:23Speaker 1: been feeling shame that you issued a pardon that was corrupt.
- 23:28Speaker 1: And when you have a president that has no shame,
- 23:31Speaker 1: suddenly there are no guardrails around the pardon process anymore,
- 23:34Speaker 1: which is yet one more thing that we've seen in
- 23:36Speaker 1: the last four years that if it's not codified in law,
- 23:40Speaker 1: if it's just a tradition or a convention or a norm,
- 23:44Speaker 1: it is gone. It is gone from our government.
- 23:48Speaker 3: And the times there have been controversies and scandals in
- 23:51Speaker 3: the past have been when administrations have gone outside of
- 23:55Speaker 3: that process. Most famously, although nothing official came about, there
- 23:59Speaker 3: are a lot of allegations around a pardon that Bill
- 24:00Speaker 3: Clinton gave to one of his donors, Mark Rich, at
- 24:04Speaker 3: the very, very end of his administration. And part of
- 24:06Speaker 3: the controversy was it did not go through the normal process.
- 24:10Speaker 3: And therefore, the checks and balances that would normally be
- 24:12Speaker 3: in place to prevent such.
- 24:14Speaker 2: A thing from happening did not happen.
- 24:15Speaker 3: And so that's why in our administration, we were so
- 24:19Speaker 3: careful about that because the goal is to protect the
- 24:22Speaker 3: president from the stuff on the outside.
- 24:24Speaker 2: Here, that is not necessarily.
- 24:26Speaker 3: The approach of this set of government attorneys.
- 24:30Speaker 2: Not the concern. Yes, no.
- 24:32Speaker 1: Not the concern. So we've been saying that the pardon
- 24:35Speaker 1: power is absolute. Can you really pardon someone for a
- 24:37Speaker 1: crime they may commit in the future, which seems to
- 24:40Speaker 1: be the trouble that Trump is running into because in
- 24:45Speaker 1: terms of his children, right? Like, you know, Some of
- 24:48Speaker 1: them have been deposed. They've been investigated. But how do
- 24:53Speaker 1: you actually write the pardon so that it's not, you know,
- 24:57Speaker 1: I pardon Ivanka Trump for whatever federal crime she may
- 25:01Speaker 1: commit for the rest of her life? Like, is that
- 25:03Speaker 1: is that legal?
- 25:04Speaker 3: You can't do that. You do not get to give
- 25:07Speaker 3: away a. a lifetime get out of jail free card, right?
- 25:12Speaker 3: You know, it's like, well, forever else, like she just
- 25:14Speaker 3: parks on the wrong side of the street, takes something
- 25:16Speaker 3: from a store and is like, hey, just pulls her
- 25:18Speaker 3: pardon out of her pocket and shows the people and
- 25:20Speaker 3: just walks away.
- 25:20Speaker 2: It doesn't work that way.
- 25:22Speaker 1: But like, if that's the case, like what the fuck Obama,
- 25:24Speaker 1: where was ours?
- 25:25Speaker 3: You know?
- 25:26Speaker 2: Yes.
- 25:27Speaker 3: Do you have a bunch of crimes you're planning on
- 25:29Speaker 3: committing that I wasn't aware of?
- 25:31Speaker 4: Yes.
- 25:32Speaker 1: You know what? It was parking on my street for
- 25:34Speaker 1: more than two hours.
- 25:35Speaker 3: Hanging out with 10 of your friends in your own backyard.
- 25:37Speaker 2: Was that one of them?
- 25:38Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
- 25:42Speaker 3: But what Trump's really talking about is not pardoning Ivanka, Jared,
- 25:47Speaker 3: Don Jr., et cetera, and Rudy for crimes they may commit.
- 25:51Speaker 3: It's for crimes they did commit that have yet to
- 25:54Speaker 3: be discovered, right? And for that, there is precedent for that, right?
- 26:00Speaker 3: Ford pardoned Nixon for any and all crimes he may
- 26:05Speaker 3: have committed as president. George Washington pardoned the members of
- 26:09Speaker 3: the Whiskey Rebellion, which is something that I read on
- 26:11Speaker 3: the internet but don't exactly know what it is.
- 26:13Speaker 2: But he pardoned them.
- 26:15Speaker 1: You missed that day in civics class?
- 26:18Speaker 2: Fucking American educational system.
- 26:20Speaker 3: And Carter pardoned the people who dodged the draft in
- 26:27Speaker 3: the Vietnam War. They had not been charged with any crime.
- 26:30Speaker 3: They had not been convicted of a crime. But if
- 26:31Speaker 3: you were someone who dodged the draft, you now had
- 26:33Speaker 3: immunity for that fact. Now, none of those things, I think,
- 26:37Speaker 3: ever got tested in court, right? No one tried to
- 26:39Speaker 3: bring a case against Nixon that then was thrown out
- 26:44Speaker 3: because of that pardon. So there is precedent, but my
- 26:47Speaker 3: understanding is it has not been fully legally tested, right?
- 26:51Speaker 2: And even in the Flynn.
- 26:53Speaker 1: Pardon that- I was going to say, yeah.
- 26:56Speaker 2: Yeah, the pardon that Trump.
- 26:57Speaker 3: Gave Michael Flynn is basically for all crimes committed under
- 27:00Speaker 3: a set of scenarios for which he may not have
- 27:02Speaker 3: been charged yet. Like there's been some discussion- that he
- 27:05Speaker 3: could be charged with perjury for telling the court under
- 27:08Speaker 3: oath that he was guilty and then changing his plea
- 27:10Speaker 3: and saying he wasn't and then a whole bunch of
- 27:12Speaker 3: other crimes. And so he is theoretically has a pardon
- 27:15Speaker 3: for like in the pardon, it says anything and everything
- 27:18Speaker 3: investigated by Bob Mueller, right?
- 27:20Speaker 1: So if we were to discover- Which is very broad.
- 27:22Speaker 2: Yes, right.
- 27:23Speaker 3: If we were to discover a bunch of crimes that
- 27:25Speaker 3: Flynn committed that had not been charged, like through some
- 27:27Speaker 3: sort of retroactive investigation process done by a future Department
- 27:30Speaker 3: of Justice, he theoretically is pardoned for those crimes.
- 27:35Speaker 1: The big question here, can Trump pardon himself?
- 27:39Speaker 2: Well, we believe no.
- 27:42Speaker 3: The Department of Justice in the 70s put together a
- 27:46Speaker 3: memo with Nixon in mind saying that a president cannot
- 27:49Speaker 3: pardon themselves under the legal principle that you cannot serve
- 27:53Speaker 3: as the judge in your own trial. And I say
- 27:56Speaker 3: this with full knowledge that I'm neither a lawyer nor
- 27:59Speaker 3: went to law school, but that's my understanding of it.
- 28:00Speaker 2: Now, that is just one opinion.
- 28:02Speaker 3: A piece of legal guidance from a Department of Justice
- 28:06Speaker 3: 40-some years ago. There are some people who believe that
- 28:10Speaker 3: a president could pardon themselves. The pardon power of the
- 28:13Speaker 3: president is so absolute that you could do it. One
- 28:16Speaker 3: of those legal scholars who is known for his objectivity
- 28:19Speaker 3: and general moral– center, Alan Dershowitz, believes that Trump could
- 28:26Speaker 3: pardon himself. But ultimately, if Trump were to pardon himself,
- 28:28Speaker 3: the way this would play out, as I understand it is, he.
- 28:31Speaker 2: Would pardon himself.
- 28:32Speaker 3: Some federal law enforcement official would seek to bring him
- 28:36Speaker 3: up on charges and then it would go to a
- 28:38Speaker 3: court and then ultimately would be in the hands of
- 28:41Speaker 3: a number of justices sitting in Supreme Court seats that
- 28:44Speaker 3: he stole.
- 28:44Speaker 4: So.
- 28:45Speaker 1: Which means that we should all expect him to pardon
- 28:47Speaker 1: himself because you can totally see on the way out
- 28:50Speaker 1: the door, he tweets, I hereby pardon myself of all
- 28:52Speaker 1: offenses forever. Everyone flips out because he knows the only
- 28:56Speaker 1: way it's tested is if DOJ actually decides to indict
- 28:59Speaker 1: him and then he goes to court. So it's, it's
- 29:01Speaker 1: basically just a free tweet until then, which means nothing
- 29:04Speaker 1: stopping him. But the one thing, and you know, people
- 29:09Speaker 1: probably read about this, but the pardon power doesn't extend
- 29:14Speaker 1: to state crimes. And so the Manhattan district attorney, the
- 29:20Speaker 1: New York attorney general are looking into Trump and his
- 29:23Speaker 1: family and the organizations for all kinds of potential crimes.
- 29:27Speaker 1: And Trump would not be able to pardon himself or
- 29:29Speaker 1: his children to avoid being indicted on any kind of
- 29:33Speaker 1: state crime in any state. So that is one thing
- 29:36Speaker 1: to keep in mind for all of you who are
- 29:38Speaker 1: just chanting law. him up at home. That's a big crowd.
- 29:44Speaker 1: So one reason Trump wants to hand out these pardons
- 29:47Speaker 1: is that he needs all these criminals free to work
- 29:50Speaker 1: on his 2024 presidential campaign. Here's what the two-time popular
- 29:55Speaker 1: vote loser reportedly told guests at a White House holiday
- 29:58Speaker 1: super spreader event on Tuesday. Quote, it's been an amazing
- 30:01Speaker 1: four years. We're trying to do another four years. Otherwise,
- 30:05Speaker 1: I'll see you in four years. There's also a report
- 30:09Speaker 1: that Trump might announce his 2024 campaign during the week
- 30:12Speaker 1: of Joe Biden's inauguration, which he will not be attending, reportedly.
- 30:18Speaker 1: Will he actually run? Will he pretend he's running and
- 30:20Speaker 1: then drop out? Will he ultimately be unable to run
- 30:22Speaker 1: because he's in jail? We have no idea. Let's take
- 30:26Speaker 1: a shot at some of the easier questions. How should
- 30:28Speaker 1: Joe Biden, the media, and the rest of us handle
- 30:32Speaker 1: this fucking loser's desperate plea for attention once he's out
- 30:37Speaker 1: of office?
- 30:38Speaker 3: Well, I know how we, I think we should handle it,
- 30:41Speaker 3: and I think Joe Biden should handle it, and maybe
- 30:43Speaker 3: how the media should handle it, but it's kind of
- 30:45Speaker 3: up to them, but is.
- 30:46Speaker 2: We don't have to pay attention to him.
- 30:48Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 30:49Speaker 2: There's absolutely no need that we have to do that.
- 30:51Speaker 2: And I think.
- 30:53Speaker 3: It is important to remember the history of Donald Trump
- 30:55Speaker 3: and running for president, which is in basically every election
- 31:00Speaker 3: from like 1984 on, Donald Trump pretended to run for
- 31:03Speaker 3: president for a long time before he decided ultimately not
- 31:06Speaker 3: to do so, which is why people were so surprised
- 31:07Speaker 3: he actually.
- 31:08Speaker 2: Did it in 2016.
- 31:10Speaker 3: Because he was in New Hampshire doing birther shit in 2011.
- 31:15Speaker 3: He– several times in the 80s, he talked about running.
- 31:17Speaker 3: He talked about running as a third-party candidate in 2000
- 31:20Speaker 3: or 96.
- 31:21Speaker 2: I can't remember.
- 31:21Speaker 3: Like there's a long history of this because he knows
- 31:24Speaker 3: one of the best ways to get attention is to
- 31:27Speaker 3: declare yourself a potential presidential candidate. And he craves attention
- 31:30Speaker 3: like normal people crave oxygen. So like I think there's
- 31:33Speaker 3: a reason to be– just because he ran in 2016
- 31:35Speaker 3: doesn't mean we should assume because he says he's going
- 31:38Speaker 3: to run, he's going to run in 2024.
- 31:38Speaker 1: Yeah, I think denying him, much like a wildfire– Denying
- 31:45Speaker 1: him oxygen is the best way to snuff him out, right? Like,
- 31:49Speaker 1: there's a difference between... Because I could already hear some
- 31:52Speaker 1: people say, well, a lot of people didn't take Donald
- 31:54Speaker 1: Trump seriously as a candidate in 2016. And look what happened.
- 31:58Speaker 1: We should have taken him seriously. You know, we should
- 32:01Speaker 1: have been alarmed by his rise. There's a difference between
- 32:04Speaker 1: taking him seriously as a candidate in 2024 and showering
- 32:07Speaker 1: him with attention. And I think it's less... Like you said,
- 32:11Speaker 1: I think it's less likely that he'll be a candidate if...
- 32:14Speaker 1: we can all stop paying attention to him because what
- 32:16Speaker 1: he needs, what he needs is the attention. That's his fuel.
- 32:21Speaker 1: That's the way that he runs and wins. And if
- 32:23Speaker 1: he is denied that, now look, he won't be denied
- 32:27Speaker 1: that by Fox, Newsmax, OAN, Trump TV, whatever he decides.
- 32:34Speaker 1: He'll get interviews anywhere he, or mainstream media, right? Like
- 32:37Speaker 1: Trump wants to do an interview on ABC and look
- 32:40Speaker 1: like a fucking idiot. He'll do it. Wants to do
- 32:42Speaker 1: one on NBC? He'll do it. Wants to go on
- 32:45Speaker 1: CNN and call them fake news while they ask him
- 32:47Speaker 1: questions and he doesn't answer the questions? They'll give him
- 32:50Speaker 1: the interview. So, like, it's probably easier said than done.
- 32:54Speaker 1: And if, like, look, if Trump goes on CNN, sits
- 32:57Speaker 1: down with Jake Tapper, Tapper completely eviscerates him, Trump sounds
- 33:02Speaker 1: like a fucking moron, are we going to be talking
- 33:04Speaker 1: about it on Pod Save America? Probably. So it like– right?
- 33:09Speaker 1: This is– I'm just trying to game out the next
- 33:11Speaker 1: four years here. Yeah.
- 33:13Speaker 2: I mean it is really hard.
- 33:14Speaker 3: Like there have been all these sort of movements over
- 33:18Speaker 3: time about how– about ignoring Trump. Like unfollow him on Twitter.
- 33:23Speaker 3: That will show him, right? Let's get his followers.
- 33:25Speaker 1: That will do it.
- 33:25Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
- 33:26Speaker 3: And I am sympathetic to the motivations behind those ideas
- 33:30Speaker 3: because they are similar to what you and I just said,
- 33:32Speaker 3: which is that we can deny the man– attention, then
- 33:35Speaker 3: you sort of neuter some of his political power. Because
- 33:38Speaker 3: what ultimately he is, is a great person at getting attention.
- 33:43Speaker 3: He is not great at utilizing that attention to make
- 33:45Speaker 3: himself more popular or to enact some sort of agenda
- 33:48Speaker 3: or win more votes than the person he's running against.
- 33:51Speaker 3: But he has been very good his entire life at
- 33:53Speaker 3: getting attention, right? Like he is famous for being famous, right?
- 33:58Speaker 3: Before that was a thing and the reality TV world,
- 34:02Speaker 3: that's been Donald Trump, right? He was just a rich
- 34:04Speaker 3: guy who was famous for being famous. And he will
- 34:06Speaker 3: continue to try to get attention later. I think there
- 34:10Speaker 3: is going to be a big debate within the Democratic
- 34:12Speaker 3: Party about, like, Donald Trump is probably going to be less.
- 34:15Speaker 2: Popular over time.
- 34:17Speaker 3: Like, here you have this absurd, ridiculous person probably doing
- 34:20Speaker 3: more and absurd, ridiculous things to get more attention. Because
- 34:23Speaker 3: when you have the White House, you just can walk
- 34:26Speaker 3: out and say things that people pay attention to. when
- 34:29Speaker 3: you're just some guy who is hiding out in Florida,
- 34:33Speaker 3: hoping that Ron DeSantis doesn't extradite you to New York
- 34:36Speaker 3: for prosecution, it's hard. Like you have to be more absurd.
- 34:39Speaker 3: Like birtherism came from the fact that in order to
- 34:41Speaker 3: get a ton of attention, Donald Trump had to say
- 34:43Speaker 3: something incredibly outrageous.
- 34:45Speaker 4: Right.
- 34:46Speaker 3: And so like as Democrats, do you take this absurd, ridiculous,
- 34:51Speaker 3: unpopular person and try to make him the face of
- 34:54Speaker 3: the party and that you are running against to hold
- 34:57Speaker 3: the House and take the Senate in 2022? Or do
- 35:01Speaker 3: you focus on other people? I think that's going to
- 35:02Speaker 3: be a big debate within the party.
- 35:05Speaker 1: Well, and this goes back to the election we just had, right?
- 35:08Speaker 1: I think Joe Biden didn't really have a choice but
- 35:12Speaker 1: to run against Donald Trump and make it a referendum
- 35:14Speaker 1: on Donald Trump, partly because Trump commands a lot of attention.
- 35:20Speaker 1: Trump is the news all the time. You often make
- 35:23Speaker 1: a campaign against an incumbent president, a referendum on that
- 35:27Speaker 1: president's time in office, right? But, and that was probably
- 35:30Speaker 1: the easiest path for Joe Biden to win, which he did.
- 35:33Speaker 1: So it was the right move, right? It was the
- 35:35Speaker 1: only path. It was the only path. But as we saw,
- 35:38Speaker 1: like that didn't translate down ballot. And in 18, for example,
- 35:43Speaker 1: in the midterms, the message was much more about the
- 35:46Speaker 1: unpopularity of the Republican tax cuts and their attempt to
- 35:49Speaker 1: dismantle the Affordable Care Act. So- Thinking ahead, if it
- 35:54Speaker 1: is Joe Biden versus Mitch McConnell for the next two years,
- 35:57Speaker 1: because they're the actual two people running both parties in government,
- 36:01Speaker 1: not Donald Trump, do you try to have a message
- 36:04Speaker 1: about Republican obstruction? Republican economic philosophy, which is cut taxes
- 36:10Speaker 1: for the rich, cut taxes, cut regulations for corporations, cut
- 36:14Speaker 1: health care and education for millions of struggling people. It's
- 36:17Speaker 1: that party versus our party who's fighting for the middle class. Like,
- 36:20Speaker 1: do you make that the message? And then that could
- 36:23Speaker 1: be more effective at not only sort of doing better
- 36:26Speaker 1: in the midterms in 2022, but setting up for whoever
- 36:29Speaker 1: the Republicans nominate in 2024, whether it's Trump or someone else? Yeah.
- 36:32Speaker 2: I think that's ultimately the question.
- 36:33Speaker 3: You're going to need more data to know the answer.
- 36:36Speaker 3: That question also depends on what you're trying to do.
- 36:38Speaker 3: Are you trying to win in 2022? Are you trying
- 36:41Speaker 3: to damage Trump in 2024? Where are you running? We're
- 36:46Speaker 3: going to be defending people in 2022 in districts where
- 36:50Speaker 3: Trump did quite well and probably remains quite popular. We're
- 36:52Speaker 3: going to have to You have three very vulnerable Senate
- 36:57Speaker 3: Republicans in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida. Pennsylvania, a state we
- 37:04Speaker 3: won by a small amount. Wisconsin, a state we won
- 37:06Speaker 3: by a tiny amount. And Florida, a state that does
- 37:11Speaker 3: not seem to be trending in a direction in which
- 37:12Speaker 3: we would like. And in part, because Trump has demonstrated
- 37:16Speaker 3: real strength in those states. And So what is the
- 37:20Speaker 3: approach there? And so I think this is a very–
- 37:23Speaker 3: I'm kind of still sort of formulating my view on this.
- 37:26Speaker 2: And I think it gets to a larger.
- 37:28Speaker 3: Question about Democratic branding, Republican branding, who we're appealing to,
- 37:37Speaker 3: how we think about it, and the fact that we
- 37:39Speaker 3: have probably been appropriately maybe but definitely distracted by Trump's antics.
- 37:47Speaker 2: Over the last four years?
- 37:48Speaker 3: How do you not pay attention to someone who is
- 37:51Speaker 3: engaging in massive corruption? He tried to extort an ally
- 37:54Speaker 3: into election interference who.
- 37:58Speaker 1: And that was his opening act for the 2020 campaign.
- 38:02Speaker 1: That was the opening act.
- 38:03Speaker 3: How do you not pay attention to someone who is
- 38:05Speaker 3: engaging in this horribly cruel racist immigration policy? Like, He
- 38:10Speaker 3: is an existential threat in the moment to the lives
- 38:14Speaker 3: of millions of Americans and people around the world.
- 38:16Speaker 2: How do you not pay attention to it?
- 38:17Speaker 3: But while that's happening, there's a whole bunch of other
- 38:20Speaker 3: dangerous shit with long-term implications that is happening that's being
- 38:23Speaker 3: done by McConnell, the remaining Koch brother, the Federalist Society,
- 38:27Speaker 3: Brett Kavanaugh that is also happening. Where is the balance
- 38:30Speaker 3: of attention? Just to go back to the point we
- 38:33Speaker 3: were saying before, there has been this discussion about Well,
- 38:36Speaker 3: Joe Biden had no coattails, right? Like he didn't bring
- 38:39Speaker 3: all his people across the finish line. It is, he
- 38:42Speaker 3: ran against Trump, not against the Republicans. I find that
- 38:46Speaker 3: argument to be somewhat absurd because Joe Biden has, he's
- 38:51Speaker 3: running against Donald Trump. He has no choice to run
- 38:54Speaker 3: against Donald Trump. Like that is, that is the fact.
- 38:58Speaker 1: Like you're in it again, like you're in a campaign
- 39:00Speaker 1: like that. You're looking at a map every day. You're
- 39:02Speaker 1: looking at data and you're like, how do we get
- 39:04Speaker 1: to 270? That is our, that is your job. As
- 39:06Speaker 1: a person who is running for president in a campaign,
- 39:09Speaker 1: whatever it takes to get to 270, you do it.
- 39:13Speaker 2: That's it.
- 39:13Speaker 1: You have no other obligation.
- 39:15Speaker 3: And I would say, I actually think the Biden campaign
- 39:18Speaker 3: does not get enough credit for some of the ways
- 39:20Speaker 3: they went out of their way to try to help
- 39:24Speaker 3: Senate Democrats.
- 39:26Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's why he was, I mean, Iowa, Iowa,
- 39:29Speaker 1: he went to, right.
- 39:30Speaker 3: Harris went to Texas, right. And that's not just about
- 39:32Speaker 3: MJ Hager and John Cornyn. That's about the Texas state house.
- 39:35Speaker 4: Right.
- 39:35Speaker 3: Which we obviously also did not get. That's why Barack
- 39:38Speaker 3: Obama was in Georgia. I think on two occasions before
- 39:41Speaker 3: the election, you.
- 39:42Speaker 1: Know, five 38 has a piece about this too, about like,
- 39:45Speaker 1: was there a ticket splitting or not? And they, they
- 39:46Speaker 1: come to the conclusion that there wasn't that much ticket
- 39:48Speaker 1: splitting in So the other possibility for what happened in
- 39:51Speaker 1: 2020 is because Trump brought out this surge of Trump
- 39:55Speaker 1: voters who sat out in 2018 and may even have
- 39:59Speaker 1: sat– and a lot of them sat out in 2016.
- 40:01Speaker 1: And so you bring in a whole bunch of new
- 40:02Speaker 1: Trump voters into the electorate and they vote Republican up
- 40:06Speaker 1: and down the ticket, then– It's enough for Biden to
- 40:09Speaker 1: squeak through in these states that add up to 270.
- 40:12Speaker 1: But a lot of the seats we won in 2018
- 40:15Speaker 1: were Trump districts. So if it's a Trump district, a
- 40:18Speaker 1: district that Trump won in 2016, like Biden still didn't
- 40:21Speaker 1: win that district in 2020. And which is why the
- 40:24Speaker 1: Democratic House member lost it too. It was a Trump
- 40:26Speaker 1: district in 2016. So if you bring out more Trump
- 40:28Speaker 1: voters in 2020, you're going to lose if you're the Democrat.
- 40:32Speaker 1: And the same thing in a lot of these Senate races, right?
- 40:34Speaker 1: Like Joe Biden didn't win North Carolina, which is why
- 40:37Speaker 1: Cal Cunningham didn't win North Carolina.
- 40:39Speaker 2: And even if it was at one.
- 40:40Speaker 3: Of those random Hillary districts in 2016 that had Republican
- 40:45Speaker 3: members that we won in 2018 because Democratic turnout was up,
- 40:49Speaker 3: Republican turnout was up as well, but not by as much.
- 40:52Speaker 3: when turnout goes up equally and there were more Trump
- 40:57Speaker 3: voters than Democratic voters in that district, you're not going.
- 41:01Speaker 2: To win that district, right?
- 41:02Speaker 1: That's the answer. It's very simple.
- 41:04Speaker 3: You know, I worked in South Dakota in 2004, right?
- 41:07Speaker 3: So I did two Senate races in South Dakota, 2000, 2004. 2002,
- 41:08Speaker 3: we won by 524 votes. And 2004, I was working
- 41:09Speaker 3: for Tom Daschle and we we knew what our vote
- 41:17Speaker 3: goal was. We had to turn out, virtually in South Dakota,
- 41:20Speaker 3: you have to turn out basically every Democrat to possibly win.
- 41:24Speaker 3: And we did, but Bush was on the ballot. And
- 41:26Speaker 3: Bush generated huge turnout in that election, which is how
- 41:29Speaker 3: he beat Kerry, despite being somewhat unpopular for invading the
- 41:32Speaker 3: wrong country after 9-11. But we just ran out of voters, right?
- 41:37Speaker 3: We turned out, we hit our vote goal. And then
- 41:39Speaker 3: there were just all these more Republicans because it's a
- 41:40Speaker 3: much more Republican state. We saw that happen in a
- 41:42Speaker 3: lot of places. And one takeaway from this election is,
- 41:45Speaker 3: The deck is just really fucking stacked against Democrats in
- 41:48Speaker 3: the Senate and in presidential.
- 41:49Speaker 4: Years, right?
- 41:50Speaker 3: With the exception of Maine, we won Senate seats where
- 41:53Speaker 3: Joe Biden won and we lost them where Joe Biden didn't, right?
- 41:58Speaker 3: And the one exception– I guess Georgia is the other
- 42:01Speaker 3: exception because Joe Biden did outperform John Ossoff in that.
- 42:05Speaker 2: We have to save another bite of that.
- 42:07Speaker 1: But critically, in Colorado and Arizona where we won Senate seats,
- 42:12Speaker 1: Mark Kelly and John Hickenlooper outperformed Joe Biden.
- 42:15Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 42:17Speaker 1: You know, and they ran a little bit to the
- 42:19Speaker 1: right of Joe Biden and they outperformed Joe Biden. Now,
- 42:22Speaker 1: I think in Colorado, you probably could have a more
- 42:23Speaker 1: progressive candidate because Joe Biden just crushed it in Colorado.
- 42:26Speaker 1: But in Arizona, with Joe Biden only won by 10,000 votes,
- 42:30Speaker 1: like Mark Kelly ran slightly to the right of Joe
- 42:32Speaker 1: Biden and won by a little bit more. Well, we're
- 42:36Speaker 1: going to talk about all of this in the coming
- 42:38Speaker 1: weeks and months because there's a lot to talk about.
- 42:40Speaker 1: But you're going to talk about it more with our
- 42:43Speaker 1: next guest, Dan Wagner. who knows more about data and
- 42:46Speaker 1: polling than we do. It's a very fun conversation.
- 42:49Speaker 2: We'll let the listeners judge that, whether he knows more
- 42:51Speaker 2: than us.
- 42:54Speaker 1: Are you kidding? I'm like Trump. I'm just going to
- 42:57Speaker 1: go with those like drudge online polls. I mean, we're
- 42:59Speaker 1: going to do that at Crooked Media.
- 43:02Speaker 2: We might as well.
- 43:03Speaker 1: We're going to put out one of those polls on
- 43:04Speaker 1: Twitter and then the winner, that's going to be the winner.
- 43:06Speaker 1: That's how we are with polling now.
- 43:08Speaker 2: All right.
- 43:08Speaker 1: When we come back, we'll have Dan's conversation with Dan Wagner.
- 43:20Speaker 3: I'm now joined by the founder and CEO of Civis
- 43:22Speaker 3: Analytics and the chief analytics officer for Obama's 2012 campaign,
- 43:26Speaker 3: Dan Wagner.
- 43:27Speaker 2: Dan, welcome to Pod Save America.
- 43:28Speaker 4: Hi.
- 43:29Speaker 2: I want to start with the polls, obviously. Yeah, that's
- 43:35Speaker 2: a thing. That is a thing, yes.
- 43:36Speaker 3: The polls were, of course, different than the actual election results.
- 43:40Speaker 3: And there's been a big debate about what that meant afterwards.
- 43:43Speaker 2: On one side is this view that pundits and.
- 43:47Speaker 3: Political observers have unrealistic expectations for how accurate polls should be.
- 43:52Speaker 3: And this is something that happened somewhat within the realm
- 43:55Speaker 3: of a normal polling error. And there are others who
- 43:57Speaker 3: believe that there's a fundamental methodological problem that is failing
- 44:00Speaker 3: to capture an accurate picture of the election.
- 44:02Speaker 2: Where do you fall on that?
- 44:06Speaker 4: Well, it depends how nerdy you want me to get
- 44:08Speaker 4: with my description.
- 44:10Speaker 2: Feel free to get very nerdy.
- 44:11Speaker 1: Okay.
- 44:11Speaker 2: Very nerdy.
- 44:12Speaker 1: Okay.
- 44:12Speaker 4: So polling 101, when you do a poll, there's kind
- 44:16Speaker 4: of three big steps. One is among a population, you
- 44:20Speaker 4: want to pull a sample that you think is as
- 44:23Speaker 4: representative of the population itself. You conduct that poll and
- 44:27Speaker 4: you're hoping that people respond to that poll at similar rates.
- 44:31Speaker 4: That can be a phone poll, an online poll, et cetera.
- 44:34Speaker 4: And you're hoping as well that people are presenting information
- 44:37Speaker 4: about your behaviors that are as reasonable as possible. Most
- 44:41Speaker 4: importantly being whether or not that person's actually going to vote.
- 44:44Speaker 4: So the sample that you get, whether or not people
- 44:46Speaker 4: answer it, whether or not people give truthful answers, yes
- 44:48Speaker 4: or no. And the thing that you learn is that
- 44:53Speaker 4: those things never happen. And so you have to introduce
- 44:56Speaker 4: statistical controls at each of those different levels. So when
- 45:00Speaker 4: you pick a sample in a phone poll, for example,
- 45:03Speaker 4: you're hoping that there's an even distribution. However, that's not
- 45:07Speaker 4: true because the people who have landlines are not representative
- 45:10Speaker 4: of the population. Second is you hope that people respond
- 45:14Speaker 4: at the same rate, but we've learned that since 1996,
- 45:18Speaker 4: when 40% of people used to respond to phone polls,
- 45:20Speaker 4: that's now below 1% in some populations. So in 2012
- 45:25Speaker 4: and races after that, less than 1% of young African-Americans
- 45:30Speaker 4: respond to a poll where over 10% of old women
- 45:33Speaker 4: respond to polls. So that population of people A to
- 45:37Speaker 4: B is not responding at the same rate. And then
- 45:39Speaker 4: typically you have a final bias, social desirability. What you
- 45:44Speaker 4: know is that everybody says that they're going to vote,
- 45:45Speaker 4: but that's not true, right? Many people voted in this election, obviously,
- 45:49Speaker 4: you know, a majority of registered voters, but everyone presents
- 45:52Speaker 4: it that they're going to vote. So you have this
- 45:55Speaker 4: error and that error compounds at each step, sampling who's
- 45:59Speaker 4: responding and who's saying they're going to vote or not.
- 46:02Speaker 4: And those errors tend to compound over time. That first part,
- 46:06Speaker 4: which is the sample of people that you're getting, especially
- 46:10Speaker 4: over phone polls, has become really, really difficult and so
- 46:14Speaker 4: problematic that phone polling may not really be of value
- 46:18Speaker 4: in capturing the true sentiment of the population. It may
- 46:21Speaker 4: be reliable in really homogeneous states, think of Iowa, Minnesota,
- 46:26Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera, but it's probably less and less
- 46:29Speaker 4: reliable for kind of standard diverse American states. That part
- 46:34Speaker 4: of it is probably a fundamental flaw for phone polls.
- 46:38Speaker 4: The second is non-response bias, which is something that is
- 46:44Speaker 4: especially prevalent in the polls this year and in 2016,
- 46:48Speaker 4: where we know that Trump supporters respond to polls regardless
- 46:53Speaker 4: of the mode at higher rates. And that is really
- 46:57Speaker 4: fundamental to that population. We know in the research that
- 47:01Speaker 4: we've done that those voters tend to have less social trust.
- 47:06Speaker 4: And as a result of that, they tend to participate
- 47:09Speaker 4: in surveys at a lower rate. And that's inclusive of
- 47:13Speaker 4: political surveys, commercial surveys, et cetera. And there's a lot
- 47:17Speaker 4: of research on why those people are less trusting of society,
- 47:22Speaker 4: less trusting of medical research, less trusting of vaccines. And
- 47:25Speaker 4: we're going to see that probably in the next two months.
- 47:29Speaker 4: And that's a kind of intrinsic barrier in polling and
- 47:32Speaker 4: political research generally. And then the final one, which is
- 47:35Speaker 4: social desirability, that's something that's going to be prevalent no
- 47:38Speaker 4: matter what. So sampling, a big problem, probably makes phone
- 47:42Speaker 4: polling existentially difficult and maybe retires the value of it.
- 47:46Speaker 4: Non-response bias is something that's prevalent, especially in these political surveys. However,
- 47:51Speaker 4: we think that you can introduce good controls to get that.
- 47:55Speaker 4: And then social desirability bias, also prevalent, but we think
- 47:58Speaker 4: we can get around that with good statistical controls. So long-winded,
- 48:03Speaker 4: nerdy explanation. I don't think polls are done forever, but
- 48:08Speaker 4: I do think that phone polls, at least in kind
- 48:11Speaker 4: of big, diverse American states, may have hit their end.
- 48:14Speaker 3: If phone polls have hit their end in places other
- 48:17Speaker 3: than Iowa and Minnesota, I guess, even though the Iowa
- 48:20Speaker 3: polls other than the Ann Seltzer poll were pretty off
- 48:22Speaker 3: as well.
- 48:23Speaker 4: Um, she, she does a bunch of novel waiting and
- 48:25Speaker 4: she deserves a lot of credit, um, for what she's
- 48:28Speaker 4: done that other people haven't done. Um, and other people
- 48:31Speaker 4: should be incorporating that, but you know, she's, she's very
- 48:33Speaker 4: smart and the things that she's done that other people
- 48:36Speaker 4: should do.
- 48:37Speaker 3: What can you help our listeners understand what the alternative
- 48:40Speaker 3: to phone polling is and whether that has proven was
- 48:42Speaker 3: proven to be at least a little more accurate in
- 48:44Speaker 3: either 16 or 20.
- 48:46Speaker 4: Yeah. Online polling, um, I think relative in this election
- 48:51Speaker 4: is moderately better. And I think a lot of the
- 48:55Speaker 4: people who are using a combination of online polling with
- 48:59Speaker 4: good statistical controls against the voter file, doing better in
- 49:04Speaker 4: different terms of weighting, geographic stratification, blah, blah, blah. There's
- 49:09Speaker 4: a set of things that you can do online because
- 49:12Speaker 4: you have a bigger pool of respondents because everybody's online.
- 49:15Speaker 4: You can do good and novel statistical controls among that.
- 49:19Speaker 4: to get a better view of the population, but you
- 49:23Speaker 4: still do have this non-response issue and that Trump supporters
- 49:28Speaker 4: on average, anti-vaxxers, this population is still less likely to respond,
- 49:33Speaker 4: but marginally that mode of measurement is gonna be better
- 49:37Speaker 4: for those reasons.
- 49:39Speaker 3: And when you talk about Trump voters being less likely
- 49:43Speaker 3: to respond to polls, that is different than the quote
- 49:45Speaker 3: unquote shy Trump voter hypothesis, correct? Can you explain why
- 49:49Speaker 3: that is?
- 49:50Speaker 4: I'll give you an example that I think is interesting.
- 49:53Speaker 4: It kind of lives outside of politics, but sometimes having
- 49:56Speaker 4: examples outside of politics is more interesting. So we did
- 50:00Speaker 4: a study on vaccination and HPV uptake. So why is it?
- 50:07Speaker 4: who are the types of people that are likely to
- 50:09Speaker 4: vaccinate their children against the HPV disease and who are
- 50:14Speaker 4: the parents that are. And it's a fascinating result and
- 50:18Speaker 4: probably indicative of what's gonna happen next and what's the
- 50:21Speaker 4: next vein of research around who's gonna get the vaccine.
- 50:24Speaker 1: Who's not.
- 50:25Speaker 4: And what we found is that anti-vaxxers who tend to
- 50:30Speaker 4: be uniquely Republican, tend to correlate very highly with the
- 50:34Speaker 4: Trump base, get their information from very different pools of
- 50:39Speaker 4: people than people who believe in vaccination. Overwhelmingly, people who
- 50:44Speaker 4: believe in vaccination against very critical illnesses get their advice
- 50:49Speaker 4: from their personal physicians, their personal practitioners, and other experts
- 50:56Speaker 4: about the disease itself. Where anti-vaxxers, who again, it's a
- 51:00Speaker 4: lot of them, this is not a small population of
- 51:02Speaker 4: people who tend to be Trump supporters and Republican, get
- 51:06Speaker 4: their information about vaccination from the media and online. A
- 51:10Speaker 4: large majority of them get their information from that. So
- 51:14Speaker 4: what's important here is that they don't believe in the
- 51:17Speaker 4: guidance from experts and they don't believe in the guidance
- 51:21Speaker 4: from medical practitioners, which is super interesting because they don't
- 51:25Speaker 4: trust the guide from that. They tend to trust the
- 51:28Speaker 4: guidance from their specific media channels. and the guidance from
- 51:32Speaker 4: their online friends and family who are repeating those things
- 51:35Speaker 4: from their media channels. You know, thus they have, you know,
- 51:38Speaker 4: broadly lower trust in the guidance of experts and the
- 51:43Speaker 4: guidance of these types of mode of measurement in general.
- 51:47Speaker 4: And the consequences of that tend to lead towards how
- 51:50Speaker 4: much these people are participating in these kind of like,
- 51:54Speaker 4: you know, expert driven public opinion measurement exercises that are
- 51:57Speaker 4: so prevalent. So that bias is going to be present
- 52:00Speaker 4: in the political survey and that bias is going to
- 52:02Speaker 4: be present in other types of surveys, especially around the
- 52:06Speaker 4: COVID vaccine that we're likely to see.
- 52:09Speaker 3: As you're thinking about what polling and research looks like 2021, 2022,
- 52:14Speaker 3: have you thought about what recommendations you guys are going
- 52:17Speaker 3: to do or you have for others about how to
- 52:19Speaker 3: ensure that we get a more accurate picture of the electorate?
- 52:22Speaker 3: Because that's what I think some of us may not
- 52:24Speaker 3: realize is At the end of the day, do we
- 52:26Speaker 3: care if Nate Cohn's needle is correct?
- 52:29Speaker 2: Probably not. It's not consequential.
- 52:30Speaker 3: But for campaigns, we're making decisions. And a lot of
- 52:33Speaker 3: campaigns spent money in ways at the end of this
- 52:36Speaker 3: election that was based on bad data, right?
- 52:38Speaker 2: And had negative results.
- 52:40Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, the utility of polling data is to help.
- 52:44Speaker 4: So just like backing up, what does a campaign do?
- 52:47Speaker 4: There are two critical things that a campaign does. One
- 52:50Speaker 4: is spend money in the right place. And two is
- 52:52Speaker 4: to say, messages work that resonate and persuade voters. The
- 52:58Speaker 4: utility of polls this cycle was to say where we
- 53:01Speaker 4: should spend money or where we shouldn't spend money. The
- 53:04Speaker 4: utility of that in a presidential election isn't as high
- 53:08Speaker 4: because you're trying to build a map to 270 and
- 53:11Speaker 4: you don't need to be a rocket scientist to say
- 53:13Speaker 4: we need to invest our money in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.
- 53:16Speaker 4: Like you don't need a PhD in social sciences to
- 53:18Speaker 4: do that. And largely the spend patterns that states had
- 53:23Speaker 4: or the campaigns had were largely right. The team invested
- 53:27Speaker 4: 90% of their money in the states that we needed
- 53:30Speaker 4: to win to get 270 electoral votes, even though we
- 53:33Speaker 4: were biased by two to three points in the outcome,
- 53:36Speaker 4: they still spent money in the right states. So it
- 53:38Speaker 4: wasn't super consequential in that regard. I think the part
- 53:42Speaker 4: that is overlooked, especially in the public conversation is given
- 53:49Speaker 4: the excitement around the horse race that we and other probably,
- 53:53Speaker 4: you know, private firms are much more focused on is
- 53:56Speaker 4: what is the message and what is the messenger that
- 53:58Speaker 4: is more and more effective at persuading people who are deeply,
- 54:03Speaker 4: deeply skeptical about Democrats and deeply skeptical of the kind
- 54:08Speaker 4: of body politic in general. That is a much more
- 54:11Speaker 4: important strategic question that I don't think gets as much
- 54:15Speaker 4: public conversation, or maybe it does kind of like superficially,
- 54:18Speaker 4: but not in the same regard that the horse race
- 54:20Speaker 4: conversation gets that we, and the campaigns probably internally think
- 54:25Speaker 4: much more about. So just as an example of where
- 54:29Speaker 4: we spend our time and thinking, this cycle we tested
- 54:33Speaker 4: around 3000 different ads in which there were hundreds of
- 54:38Speaker 4: different messages and many different messengers. And that is the
- 54:45Speaker 4: big strategic questions that campaigns now are really trying to
- 54:49Speaker 4: think about for a few reasons. One is I think,
- 54:53Speaker 4: you know, people like us who live within our own
- 54:57Speaker 4: eco chambers are increasingly or intrinsically, but also increasingly out
- 55:03Speaker 4: of touch with the people that we're trying to communicate with.
- 55:07Speaker 4: We exist on our own eco chambers. Other people who
- 55:09Speaker 4: don't vote for us live in their own eco chambers
- 55:12Speaker 4: and our standard intuition about what we should say and
- 55:16Speaker 4: about the messengers that we use to persuade people are
- 55:19Speaker 4: increasingly off. And we noticed that in a large amount
- 55:22Speaker 4: of ads and messages that we put together this cycle,
- 55:25Speaker 4: those ads actually caused backlash and they weren't effective at
- 55:29Speaker 4: actually persuading people to vote for us. And that was
- 55:33Speaker 4: like the bulk of the research that we were doing
- 55:37Speaker 4: using these online randomized controlled trials to figure it out.
- 55:42Speaker 4: And when you look at some of the results of this,
- 55:45Speaker 4: it's really just kind of fantastically interesting that the traditional
- 55:49Speaker 4: kind of guidance was a highly negative, high production ad
- 55:55Speaker 4: where you kind of like talk negatively about Trump for
- 55:57Speaker 4: on and on and on. And we found routinely that
- 56:00Speaker 4: those ads didn't really persuade people very well. In fact,
- 56:03Speaker 4: they caused backlash. So that's a half a billion dollar
- 56:07Speaker 4: discovery because that's kind of like the prevailing wisdom about
- 56:11Speaker 4: what ads are good is you beat the shit out
- 56:13Speaker 4: of your opponent for six months, you try and set
- 56:15Speaker 4: the narrative about it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And
- 56:17Speaker 4: what tended to work at a higher rate were, surprisingly,
- 56:22Speaker 4: were low production quality, ads that were either positive or
- 56:26Speaker 4: positive contrastive, and ads that had people or messengers that
- 56:34Speaker 4: reflected the communities that we were trying to persuade. So
- 56:37Speaker 4: like normal, authentic, personal conversations that tended to cost less,
- 56:43Speaker 4: but provided more of, I think, a deeper connection to
- 56:48Speaker 4: the people that we were trying to persuade due to
- 56:51Speaker 4: the authenticity of it. It wasn't kind of like these
- 56:53Speaker 4: elite Republicans standing up and saying, you know, I've changed
- 56:56Speaker 4: my vote, but rather the kind of messengers from the
- 56:59Speaker 4: community that we were trying to persuade speaking on behalf
- 57:03Speaker 4: of themselves and speaking on behalf of their own stories. And,
- 57:07Speaker 4: you know, that is probably the more interesting part, at
- 57:11Speaker 4: least within a campaign, of where research and science is
- 57:15Speaker 4: going is what's the message and who's the messenger. And
- 57:19Speaker 4: in terms of our company at Civitas, that's the primary
- 57:22Speaker 4: place where we were putting our research. I mean, there's
- 57:24Speaker 4: a quiet story behind that. It doesn't have the same
- 57:27Speaker 4: kind of like fun narrative about the horse race, but
- 57:30Speaker 4: that I think is the interesting part of going into campaign.
- 57:33Speaker 4: And again, the root cause is that I think we
- 57:36Speaker 4: as like elite fancy pants Democrats are increasingly out of
- 57:40Speaker 4: touch with this population and, you know, how we need
- 57:44Speaker 4: to build a conversation with them going forward.
- 57:46Speaker 3: Are Republicans equally out of touch or are they more
- 57:50Speaker 3: in law, elite fancy pants Republicans to the extent that exists,
- 57:53Speaker 3: or are they more in touch with these voters because
- 57:55Speaker 3: they live closer in a similar ecosystem?
- 57:57Speaker 2: Same, same.
- 58:00Speaker 3: When you look at the results of this election, in
- 58:05Speaker 3: terms of both how Biden won and then how Democrats
- 58:09Speaker 3: disappointed in a lot of places down ballot, Do you
- 58:13Speaker 3: have any sort of broad takeaways for what it says
- 58:16Speaker 3: about sort of the political environment where we go from here?
- 58:18Speaker 2: Oof. Hey, man, that's deep.
- 58:24Speaker 3: Let me make it maybe less deep, or at least is.
- 58:27Speaker 3: I look at this from my perspective and feel incredibly
- 58:33Speaker 3: elated that Joe Biden won and find that to be
- 58:36Speaker 3: not a particularly replicable situation.
- 58:39Speaker 4: People like Joe Biden.
- 58:41Speaker 3: He was an incredibly strong candidate, and Trump was actually
- 58:43Speaker 3: a relatively weak candidate. And it's very problematic that with
- 58:47Speaker 3: the political environment we at least thought we had, generic
- 58:50Speaker 3: Republican did better than generic Democrat. And that becomes challenging
- 58:53Speaker 3: in the elections we have to come.
- 58:54Speaker 4: Yeah. I think an underreported story this cycle is that
- 59:00Speaker 4: people overwhelmingly voted for ballots that support progressive policies. whether
- 59:07Speaker 4: that was the minimum wage increase in Florida, where a
- 59:11Speaker 4: state that Biden lost, we lost up and down the ballot,
- 59:16Speaker 4: but they voted for a material increase in the minimum wage.
- 59:20Speaker 4: South Dakota, I think it's South Dakota, voted for making
- 59:23Speaker 4: weed legal. So this kind of like wide base of
- 59:28Speaker 4: progressive policy was endorsed by people, by citizens all across
- 59:34Speaker 4: the board. But those same people who voted for a
- 59:37Speaker 4: minimum wage increase and those same people who voted to like,
- 59:39Speaker 4: you know, smoke pot recreationally voted for the candidate who
- 59:45Speaker 4: didn't support that, that policy writ large. And you know,
- 59:49Speaker 4: that that's a brand problem, which that's, you know, the
- 59:52Speaker 4: definition of that brand problem in corporate market research, where
- 59:56Speaker 4: if people like your products more than they like you,
- 1:00:00Speaker 4: then you have a, a brand problem. This is like Honda,
- 1:00:04Speaker 4: like Honda car circa 1998, like people would get in
- 1:00:08Speaker 4: the car and be like, oh man. This has got
- 1:00:10Speaker 4: great handling.
- 1:00:11Speaker 1: I love the steering. It's got a lot of.
- 1:00:12Speaker 4: Power, but gross. It's a Hyundai. And that is a
- 1:00:16Speaker 4: little bit of the problem is that people like the
- 1:00:19Speaker 4: Democratic product, but they don't like Democrats at the same
- 1:00:23Speaker 4: rate that they like the product. And that's a definition
- 1:00:26Speaker 4: of a brand problem and where a lot of the
- 1:00:28Speaker 4: investment needs to be put. I mean, the uncontrollable problem
- 1:00:35Speaker 4: is group consolidation within echo chambers. I mean, I think like,
- 1:00:40Speaker 4: you know, some of the most interesting research is in
- 1:00:44Speaker 4: looking at the kind of tone and feel and the
- 1:00:48Speaker 4: persuadability of the organic conversations that tend to come up
- 1:00:52Speaker 4: on the Internet. You know, the stratification, the polarization and,
- 1:00:56Speaker 4: you know, everybody has seen the data is that areas
- 1:00:59Speaker 4: with elite, highly educated people, Democratic vote share has been growing.
- 1:01:04Speaker 4: And in areas where you have less educated people or
- 1:01:08Speaker 4: non-college educated people, support for Democrats has been going down.
- 1:01:11Speaker 4: And that's a trend that's accelerated since 2012 and maybe
- 1:01:16Speaker 4: all the way going back to 2008. And that's not
- 1:01:19Speaker 4: a reflection of, some people would say that's a reflection
- 1:01:22Speaker 4: of education itself and critical thinking and all that stuff.
- 1:01:26Speaker 4: I think that's a pretty elitist point of view. What
- 1:01:29Speaker 4: it's more reflective of is what are the cultural differences
- 1:01:34Speaker 4: going on between these two populations and reflective of the
- 1:01:38Speaker 4: information systems that people live in online and the cultural
- 1:01:43Speaker 4: entrenchment and psychological entrenchment that that tends to cause and
- 1:01:48Speaker 4: how people actually kind of live within those different online
- 1:01:52Speaker 4: information networks. And it's interesting when you look at like
- 1:01:57Speaker 4: what is the fundamental content that those two different communities
- 1:02:02Speaker 4: are absorbing within their own ecosystems. And a predominant narrative
- 1:02:08Speaker 4: and a fundamentally interesting narrative in people who are living
- 1:02:12Speaker 4: or kind of like, quote, less educated people in their networks,
- 1:02:16Speaker 4: that's a little bit derogatory, but rather these kind of
- 1:02:18Speaker 4: cultural centers of people online is a message about, yes,
- 1:02:23Speaker 4: I'm not as educated, but I am smarter than you are.
- 1:02:28Speaker 4: You can call it street smarts or whatever, I'm not as, quote,
- 1:02:31Speaker 4: formally educated than you are, but I'm actually smarter than
- 1:02:34Speaker 4: you are. Or you are advanced, the things that you
- 1:02:39Speaker 4: believe in terms of progressive politics are out of touch
- 1:02:43Speaker 4: or reflective of kind of like your own underlying problems
- 1:02:46Speaker 4: as opposed to something that's going to be truly beneficial,
- 1:02:49Speaker 4: whether that's attitudes on education or, you know, other things
- 1:02:52Speaker 4: like that. Maybe this is a, you know, kind of
- 1:02:55Speaker 4: a digression, but, you know, my favorite meme this cycle
- 1:03:01Speaker 4: is a picture of a teacher and a mechanic. And
- 1:03:04Speaker 4: the teacher is talking about how hard it is or
- 1:03:07Speaker 4: why it's unfair for that person to support their students
- 1:03:12Speaker 4: with funding and why it's unfair, the student loan situation.
- 1:03:16Speaker 4: And it's contrasted with a mechanic who is looking over
- 1:03:20Speaker 4: his toolbox. And that mechanic is responsible for buying his
- 1:03:25Speaker 4: own goods and and supporting his own education without government support.
- 1:03:30Speaker 4: And it's this kind of truly like interesting story of
- 1:03:34Speaker 4: privilege and government subsidy versus a story over here about
- 1:03:40Speaker 4: self-reliance and personal independence and freedom. And they have all
- 1:03:46Speaker 4: these kind of like conversations about how they contrast out
- 1:03:50Speaker 4: of touchness and personal privilege versus concepts about independence, freedom,
- 1:03:55Speaker 4: and self-reliance. And those are kind of like these macro themes,
- 1:03:59Speaker 4: but those macro themes are reflected in these kind of
- 1:04:03Speaker 4: like cultural anchors that people are created and they're recreating
- 1:04:07Speaker 4: on the internet that are reflective of some of these
- 1:04:10Speaker 4: broader macro themes. And that is the fundamental, I think,
- 1:04:15Speaker 4: cultural problem that we are competing with are these kinds
- 1:04:20Speaker 4: of like psychological narratives on the internet. or social psychological
- 1:04:26Speaker 4: narratives on the internet that we have probably understudied and
- 1:04:30Speaker 4: been less compassionate about. I do think the methods that
- 1:04:35Speaker 4: we've developed in terms of message testing, very objective, veil
- 1:04:40Speaker 4: of ignorance message testing have been a great way to
- 1:04:43Speaker 4: understand what forms of communication and messenger we can get
- 1:04:48Speaker 4: to actually reach out to those people into those chambers.
- 1:04:52Speaker 2: Um, but fundamentally it's.
- 1:04:53Speaker 4: You know, a hard problem because it is a condition
- 1:04:56Speaker 4: of the internet and as a condition of the America
- 1:04:59Speaker 4: we've created.
- 1:05:01Speaker 3: Last question for you, at least from 2012 on there's the,
- 1:05:05Speaker 3: you know, the quote unquote education gap had been, we
- 1:05:08Speaker 3: believe primarily centered around white voters, democratic share of the.
- 1:05:12Speaker 4: Oh yeah, this is interesting. Yeah.
- 1:05:14Speaker 3: And so the, this is the first election where it
- 1:05:16Speaker 3: appears to at least in some small but significant ways, um,
- 1:05:21Speaker 3: affected non-white voters as well. And I wanted to get
- 1:05:23Speaker 3: your sense of whether that is an aberration or a
- 1:05:27Speaker 3: trend that is deeply dangerous to Democrats.
- 1:05:29Speaker 4: Yeah, deeply dangerous.
- 1:05:32Speaker 2: I thought you might say that, yes.
- 1:05:34Speaker 4: So we did a study, and hopefully I'm not getting
- 1:05:38Speaker 4: myself into trouble talking about this, but it is what
- 1:05:40Speaker 4: it is. But we did a study this year where
- 1:05:46Speaker 4: we asked people just kind of generally about the social
- 1:05:51Speaker 4: themes that, you know, Democrats versus Republicans were advocating along
- 1:05:56Speaker 4: a few dimensions. One was just kind of like general
- 1:05:59Speaker 4: progressive policy and two was some of these kind of
- 1:06:02Speaker 4: like attitudes about like beingness, like.
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: Being in freedom.
- 1:06:08Speaker 4: As kind of like, you know, broad themes, like being
- 1:06:10Speaker 4: in freedom versus just policy. So one is policy and
- 1:06:13Speaker 4: two is kind of like place and country. And we
- 1:06:18Speaker 4: asked about kind of like the most critically was defund
- 1:06:20Speaker 4: the police. And we saw that overwhelmingly Latino voters were
- 1:06:28Speaker 4: the least supportive of defund the police by a massive margin.
- 1:06:33Speaker 4: Black voters didn't support it, white voters didn't support it,
- 1:06:35Speaker 4: but Latino voters were really the least supportive of defund
- 1:06:39Speaker 4: the police. And they shared, I think, a lot of
- 1:06:44Speaker 4: these attitudes Um, that were kind of found in some
- 1:06:49Speaker 4: of these lower education communities. Um, you know, one might
- 1:06:53Speaker 4: just be like reinforcement, cause like they live in the
- 1:06:56Speaker 4: same areas, um, and they tend to kind of like
- 1:06:59Speaker 4: coexist with other folks. And that might be just kind of,
- 1:07:02Speaker 4: you know, those things kind of rubbing off. Um, but
- 1:07:06Speaker 4: you can see it in terms of just like basic
- 1:07:09Speaker 4: sharing of policy attitudes, um, you know, looked more Republican.
- 1:07:14Speaker 4: And some of these kind of like feelings of cultural
- 1:07:16Speaker 4: association tended to be more kind of what shared more
- 1:07:22Speaker 4: by Republicans. Another piece of research on this is that
- 1:07:28Speaker 4: a lot of the kind of messages that Trump used
- 1:07:33Speaker 4: around the radical left and all that other stuff were effective,
- 1:07:38Speaker 4: but like not that effective. what was really effective that
- 1:07:42Speaker 4: he used was his kind of like connection to normalcy
- 1:07:47Speaker 4: and his connection to economic progress and underlying feelings about
- 1:07:52Speaker 4: self-independence and freedom. And I think we kind of like,
- 1:07:57Speaker 4: you know, kind of undersaw those themes as like how
- 1:08:00Speaker 4: much were they truly believing in some of the policies
- 1:08:02Speaker 4: and like second is we believe, you know, we like
- 1:08:06Speaker 4: elite fancy pants Democrats believe that he's kind of like
- 1:08:10Speaker 4: this crazy abnormal character. But, you know, he did a
- 1:08:14Speaker 4: good job with the communities that we don't have exposure
- 1:08:17Speaker 4: to connecting to normalcy. And that was a big thing
- 1:08:21Speaker 4: that he did. And that was largely, you know, reflected
- 1:08:25Speaker 4: in some of the message testing work that we that
- 1:08:28Speaker 4: we had done.
- 1:08:30Speaker 3: Well, this is a fascinating and deeply disturbing conversation. So
- 1:08:35Speaker 3: we've got a lot of work to do.
- 1:08:36Speaker 4: We have a lot of work to do. But I
- 1:08:39Speaker 4: think just from our perspective, there's two things we need
- 1:08:43Speaker 4: to do. One is just the broad introspection.
- 1:08:46Speaker 1: We get it.
- 1:08:48Speaker 4: And we have to put on this new veil of
- 1:08:51Speaker 4: ignorance and say, we don't know as much as we
- 1:08:55Speaker 4: think we know. Second is to admit bigotry. on the
- 1:09:01Speaker 4: election results versus the ballot results that we have a
- 1:09:04Speaker 4: brand problem, but people actually believe in the policies that
- 1:09:07Speaker 4: we care about. So that delta may be recoverable. And
- 1:09:11Speaker 4: the third is that we do have effective messages and
- 1:09:16Speaker 4: we do have effective messengers that we've identified through the
- 1:09:20Speaker 4: message testing that we've done. It's a matter of how
- 1:09:23Speaker 4: we identify those things and then consolidate a lot of,
- 1:09:27Speaker 4: you know, our discussion and the people that speak on
- 1:09:30Speaker 4: our behalf that look more like those communities that we're
- 1:09:32Speaker 4: trying to persuade, but ultimately are more effective based on
- 1:09:36Speaker 4: both kind of like logic, but also the testing that
- 1:09:39Speaker 4: we've done. So, you know, there's a path and it's
- 1:09:42Speaker 4: a reasonable path and it's not alienating the stuff that
- 1:09:45Speaker 4: we care about, It's just a matter of proper introspection
- 1:09:50Speaker 4: and doing some of the work that we need to do.
- 1:09:53Speaker 2: See, I feel better already.
- 1:09:54Speaker 3: Dan Wagner, thanks so much for joining us on Pod
- 1:09:56Speaker 3: Save America, and we'll talk to you soon.
- 1:09:57Speaker 4: All right.
- 1:09:58Speaker 1: Thanks, Dan.
- 1:09:58Speaker 4: Bye-bye.
- 1:10:03Speaker 1: Thanks to Dan for joining us today, and I hope
- 1:10:06Speaker 1: everyone has a great weekend. We will talk to you
- 1:10:08Speaker 1: next week.
- 1:10:09Speaker 2: Bye, everyone.
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