Latest / Pod Save America / “Bolton’s bombshell.”

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“Bolton’s bombshell.” · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: We have an insane amount of news to cover today.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Adam Schiff is going to join in a few to
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: talk about John Bolton's impeachment bombshell and where the trial
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: goes from here. We're also one week away from the
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: caucuses and there are more polls showing that Iowans are
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: feeling the burn. And later, you'll hear an interview Dan
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: did with Vox's Ezra Klein about his new book, Why
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: We're Polarized. Before we get into all that, the latest
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: episode of The Wilderness is out. This is one of
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: my favorites. I sit down with Obama-Trump voters outside of
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Milwaukee who backed Democratic candidates in 2018. And we talk
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: to people like Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin, Ilhan Omar, and
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: other strategists and organizers about how Democrats can win back
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: the Midwest in 2020. Their advice is very smart and
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: worth listening to.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: You really got a who's who of people I actually
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: want to listen to on this show.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, these are people who know me. How to win
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: in the Midwest. It's not just theoretical.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: The woman in Pennsylvania who started the group on her
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: own almost made me cry in my car.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I love Angela Aldis.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I just think, I don't know, I thought 15 minutes
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: with Selena Zito was probably a little much.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: But I feel like I've.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Heard some of it before. Now you know who to
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: take literally and who to take seriously. Subscribe at thewildernesspodcast.com.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Go subscribe. Love it. How was this weekend's show? Great.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Love it or leave it. Check it out. People in
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Iowa City are pumped that you're coming to their town.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Iowa City, big love it or leave it coming out.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: It was a very fun episode this week. I'm very
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: excited to go to Iowa. We have some exciting guests
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: coming out for that show. If you're in Iowa, come
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: check us out.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: You could be a guest. You could be a guest.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Plucked from the crowd. All right, let's start with the
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: biggest development since the impeachment trial began. Here's the lead
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: in the New York Times that broke Sunday night. President
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Trump told his national security advisor in August that he
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: wanted to continue freezing $ 391 million in security assistance to
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Ukraine and until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: former advisor, John R.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: Bolton.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: According to the Times and Bolton's lawyers, a draft of
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: the book was sent to the White House on December 30th,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: which means that some collection of Trump administration officials have
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: known what's in there for almost a month. And now,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: for a quick reaction to this news, we're going to
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: go to Representative Adam Schiff. On the pod today, we
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: have the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: lead House impeachment manager himself, Adam Schiff. Welcome back to
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: the pod, Congressman.
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: Thank you. Great to be with you.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: So, you know, I'm just looking at all this news
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: coming in. John Thune just said on the Bolton revelations,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: I don't think it changes the facts. I don't personally
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: see it as a game changer. What's your reaction to that?
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: My reaction is the president says that John Bolton is lying.
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: John Bolton says they had a direct conversation evidently with
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: the president in which the president said he was withholding
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: all this military aid to Ukraine to coerce these investigations
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: or something along those lines. Let's put John Bolton under
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: oath and find out the truth. Now, what Bolton said
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: evidently is corroborated by every single other witness we've already
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: heard from. So I would hope that Senator Thune and
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: all the other senators would want to hear these witnesses
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: unless they're prepared to say, we think the president is
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: lying and we think that there's no need for this.
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: I think the senators should want to hear this evidence.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: So it's now clear that Bolton refused to testify to
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: the House based on a lie since he had already
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: planned to reveal everything in his book. Does that constitute
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: contempt of Congress in your mind, or is there anything
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: else you can do as Intel chairman to pressure him
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: to testify if the Senate refuses to vote for witnesses?
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: Well, look, I think the senators should want to hear
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Bolton's testimony. They should want to have him under oath
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: and be able to evaluate his credibility. I see little
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: point in bringing him before the House when the triers
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: of fact should hear from him directly. So I would
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: urge the Senate to to move straight to live testimony.
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: I don't think that it's necessary to do a deposition.
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: I think the American people want to hear from Mr.
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: Bolton as well. So I would urge that this important
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: witness and others, but particularly John Bolton now, come forward
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: and testify before the Senate.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Can you subpoena a galley of the book?
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: You know, I don't want to get into specific documents,
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: but frankly, I think the most important records are probably.
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: John Bolton's notes. Those notes, I would imagine, were taken contemporaneously.
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: And so what John Bolton said after he had discussions
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: with the president, I think the senators should demand to see.
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: And so, yes, those could be subpoenaed. Obviously, any document
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: could be subpoenaed, but the most important may be the
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: notes that he took at the time of these events.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: There was one particular detail that caught my eye in
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: the Times story. Bolton's book will reportedly say that Trump
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: didn't want to release the aid until Ukraine, quote, turned
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: over all materials they had about the Russia investigation that
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: related to Mr. Biden and supporters of Mrs. Clinton in Ukraine.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: That seems slightly different than the quid pro quo that
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: other witnesses testified about, which was an announcement of the
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: Biden Burisma investigation. What did you make of that?
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, this is a good reason why we
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: should bring John Bolton in and find out exactly about
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: that conversation. At the end of the day, though, the
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: president's object is the same, and that is to use
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: this taxpayer money, use this leverage the United States had,
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: or he had as commander-in-chief over Ukraine by withholding money
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: they needed to fight a war with Russia to get
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: something that would help him essentially cheat in the next election,
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: get foreign help in the next election. And that could be, obviously,
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: in the form of what is purported in this manuscript,
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: information about the Bidens or Hillary Clinton that would discredit
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: the Mueller conclusion. It could be specific information about Biden's
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: firing of the former corrupt prosecutor general or his involvement
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: in that. And so I think it is of a
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: like character to what we've already had testimony about. But
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: if he can add additional insights, why would the Senate
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: not want to hear from him?
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: It seems like he may, in this book, also implicate
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Attorney General Bill Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Do you believe we need to hear from Barr and
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Pompeo as well?
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: Well, look, I think that certainly all of these witnesses
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: have insights into the full scope of the president's misconduct.
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: and people around the president. So they would all provide
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: useful testimony. But look, we're focusing, I think, on the
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: most important that go to the president's misconduct, to go
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: to the case where the president needs to be removed
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: from office. But I do think the American people are
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: entitled to the truth, the full truth, nothing but the
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: truth about the length and breadth of this corrupt scheme.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: Who was involved? Who was in the know? You know,
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: in terms of the Attorney General, the Attorney General of
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: the Justice Department had a role in trying to prevent
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: the whistleblower complaint from getting to Congress. We now know
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: that Bill Barr was made aware by John Bolton, if
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: this report is accurate, that he was mentioned on that call.
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: That is the subject of this whistleblower complaint. So by
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: withholding that complaint from Congress, Barr was also, in effect,
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: protecting himself and You could see when that call record
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: became public that Barr felt it necessary to immediately issue
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: a statement saying, they never discussed it with me, I
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: took no steps, I want nothing to do with this.
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: And that only underscores, I think, just why Bill Barr's
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: Justice Department wanted the whistleblower complaint never to be seen.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Noah Feldman, one of the Democrats' witnesses at the judiciary hearing,
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: recently said that if there are no witnesses and documents,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: he believes this impeachment trial would be illegitimate. Do you
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: agree with that?
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: I agree it won't be a fair trial. And, you know,
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: you can't have a fair trial where you deprive the
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: House or the President from calling relevant witnesses, so it
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: won't be a fair trial. And, you know, if there
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: are no witnesses and no documents... There's no fair trial.
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: There's no vindication of the president. And there's no exoneration
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: of the president. And I think that the American people
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: deserve a fair trial. So I think that if you
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: want to give content to that oath of being a
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: partial juror, you should want to hear the full truth.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: What are you hoping to be asked during the 16-hour
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: question period that will happen this week?
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, I think I'd certainly like a chance
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: to rebut some of the representations and misrepresentations in the
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: president's argument, that of his lawyers on the Senate floor.
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: But I think one of them has already been powerfully rebut,
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: and that is one of the president's lawyers was on
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: the floor saying, there's no direct evidence the president told
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: anyone to withhold the aid for these investigations. First of all,
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: that wasn't true to begin with, because Mick Mulvaney said
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: that he discussed this with the president and admitted there
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: was a quid pro quo over the aid and the investigations.
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: Gordon Sondland said he spoke to the president, and the president,
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: while saying there was no quid pro quo, then went
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: on to describe a quid pro quo in which the
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: president of Ukraine had to go to the microphone and
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: announce these investigations. Bolton would be the third direct witness,
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: and he would also corroborate all the circumstantial evidence, the
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: 2 plus 2 equals 4 that so many other witnesses
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: testified in the absence of any other credible explanation for
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: the withholding of the aid. and knowing that the president
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: was already tying the White House meeting to getting these investigations,
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: you could reach no other sensible conclusion. Bolton just is
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: a further increment of evidence in an already overwhelming case. But,
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: you know, he should be brought forward. And if the
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: president and his lawyers are trying to contest it, then
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: we should not turn away a witness who's already said
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: they're willing to cooperate. But, you know, questions about what
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: the president's lawyers are arguing and whether those arguments carry water.
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: You know, I'd certainly like a chance to respond to that.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: So, substance of the case aside, you know, as a
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: former speechwriter, I have been in awe of the closing
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: statements you delivered last week, all of which have gone viral.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: What was your process there? Were those off the cuff?
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Did you write them ahead of time? I've had a
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: whole bunch of people ask me this.
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, I've been doing really what I... did
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: during the testimony of the witnesses in the House, which
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: is I would listen to their testimony during the course
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: of the day and I would jot down notes about
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: things that were particularly striking to me. And so I
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: had notes, but there was certainly an impromptu quality to them.
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: You know, for example, when we played that clip of
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: Colonel Vindman talking about his father, which, you know, I
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: watched some of the senators watching that clip and I
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: saw them with tears in their eyes as he was
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: describing how he told his father, don't worry, Dad. Here,
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: right matters. And I thought to myself, that's a point
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: worth returning to in my closing. And so that's been
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: my process. It's a bit risky in a trial of
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: this importance, but I think people appreciate it when you're
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: speaking from the heart. And so I try to look
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: for things during the day that are worth being emphasized
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: at the end of the day.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: I will say, you know, I've watched you a lot
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: over the course of this impeachment, and in your final statement,
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know that I've ever seen you so passionate
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: and emotional. Was that anger? Was it frustration? What were
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: you thinking there?
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: You know, I don't know that it was so much
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: a conscious decision. I obviously feel very strongly about what's
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: really anguished about what this administration is doing to the country.
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: And I'm deeply worried about our future. And I think
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: that comes out. And, you know, certainly when you're at
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: this for hours and hours and you know the stakes,
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: then things tend to resonate within you more deeply. And
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: I think that's what you're seeing.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Congressman Schiff, thank you so much for everything. Good luck
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: with the trial this week, and we'll talk to you
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: again soon.
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: Thank you very much.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: All right, thanks to Adam Schiff for joining. So guys,
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: you heard the congressman. They're going to try to go
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: get this guy testifying. So before we talk about how
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: this New York Times story on Bolton affects the trial,
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: let's talk about the story itself for a second, because
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: There are quite a few gems in here related not
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: only to Trump, but the rest of his goons. What
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: did you guys think? Tommy, what was your first reaction
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: when you read this story?
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, my first reaction was, what an asshole. You know,
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: the revolution will be monetized. Like John Bolton thinks we
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: deserve the truth if and only if he gets paid
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: for it in the form of a book or a
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: corporate speech. And it's just outrageous. But I mean, he has,
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: the New York Times described it as dozens of pages
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: describing the Ukraine extortion plot. Everyone that we thought would
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: be in on the fix, Mike Pompeo, Mick Mulvaney, other
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: shady idiots, they're all in on the thing. I mean,
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: how many smoking guns do we need before we impeach
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: this guy?
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: As Gordon Sondland said, everyone was in the loop. I
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: do think, Tommy, it was funny that like 20 paragraphs
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: down in the story, the New York Times says Bolton
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: told people he wants to testify now, so he's not
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: accused of holding back to boost his book sales. Love it,
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: what'd you think?
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, he's refused congressional subpoenas. It's pretty baffling to...
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: It's just not defensible to say that I can't say
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: these things to Congress, but I can say these things
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: in a book because then it raises this sort of
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: philosophical question is what would happen if you read the
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: book out loud in Congress?
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Or not in Congress.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: So he's, you know, he's full of shit, you know,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: like I, you know, I feel like I've said this
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: a million times, but I think John Bolton cares about
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: two things, preemptive war and John Bolton. And so he doesn't,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: he's not trying to protect Trump. He's not trying to
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: hurt Trump. He's trying to do what's best for himself.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: And it seems like he cares about another kind of
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: regime change right now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: he's really he is nothing if not consistent. Yeah.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: No, he definitely loves a good preemptive strike. That's for sure.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: It's like we have an hour and a half long
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: tape of Trump saying, take out the ambassador. We have
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: the national security advisor detailing the entire extortion racket over
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: dozens of pages. What else do we need? I mean,
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: this is Nixon tapes-esque.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: It's also just, you know, we'll get to the politics,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: but what does this show us? Well, it's yet another,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: and this is what Schiff said as well. It's yet
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: more confirmation of what we already know. It's another camera angle.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: You know, we already have, it's, it's as if we're
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: watching this car crash and we have, we have a
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: fucking recording from inside the car. We have footage from
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: this direction. We have footage from that direction. And now
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: we have, uh, yet another angle on this fucking, on this,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: on this wreck. And, uh, the, the, The reason I
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: think it's made such a big deal is not that
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: it's really told us something we didn't already know. It's
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: that it's harder and harder for five Senate Republicans to
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: say with a straight face that we don't need to
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: hear from John Bolton in the Senate.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: A few other nuggets from the story. Bolton says that he, Pompeo,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: and Defense Secretary Mark Esper basically asked the president to
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: release the aid a dozen times. Times, a dozen times
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: they asked him to release the aid. Trump said he
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: wouldn't do it until Ukraine turned over all materials they
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: had about the Russia investigation that related to Joe Biden
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: and Hillary Clinton, which is, you heard me ask Schiff
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: about this. It's just sort of one, the way it
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: was phrased in the Times is very odd, like, what
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: does the Russia investigation have to do with Joe Biden
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: and Hillary Clinton? It could very well be possible that
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump has all of his fucking conspiracy theories mixed up.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to go Occam's razor and just say
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: that Donald Trump is very stupid and probably garbled his words.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: But yes, he could also have in his head a
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: whole bunch of other conspiracy theories that haven't been debuted yet,
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: maybe on Rudy's new podcast. Yeah, I don't even think, look,
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: I'm happy for Donald Trump to be stupid. I don't
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: even think he needs to be dumb in this case.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: He just needs to be imprecise and not really care
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: what he's getting. He just really wants whether in some
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: cases he was saying, I want them to announce an investigation,
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: whether in other cases he's saying, just give me anything
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: that's documented that I can use against Joe Biden. You
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: know what I was thinking about when I saw that, right? It's,
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: you know, Pompeo is a liar and a fraud and,
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: and all, and you know, as, as Tommy likes to
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: point out, has been referred to as a heat seeking
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: missile for Trump's ass. Uh, but what you see in this,
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: we're right.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Uh, but the, uh, but, uh, You see this sort
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: of like all these people, whatever they're saying publicly, however
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: they're covering for Trump, clearly behind the scenes they understand
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: that this is wrong. And they're going to try to
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: get him to do it over and please stop this,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: please stop this. And then, you know, Trump seems sober,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: seems like maybe they've gotten their fucking hands around this thing.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: And then he just go takes a fucking... a whip
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: it off of Rudy Giuliani and they're back to where
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: they started.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: It's like Rudy Giuliani.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Huff and Rudy was the tough, was really
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: the explanation for this whole thing.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: It is. Rudy Giuliani was a drug for Trump because
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: it fed his narcissistic obsession with something that could help him,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: something that could vindicate his conspiracy theories about 2016 and
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: tip the scales in 2020. So there was nothing, it
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: is something that Schiff said in his closing. Why on
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: earth would you listen to Rudy Giuliani over Christopher Wray?
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Why would you listen to Rudy Giuliani after over all
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: these career National Security Council people telling you that what
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: you're doing is wrong, unhelpful, dangerous, et cetera, et cetera,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: et cetera, illegal? Well, just because he liked the fucking
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: high he got off of Rudy Giuliani.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: America's mayor is holding.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Well, so it seems like Bolton will also implicate a
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: few other members of the Trump administration. Pompeo told Bolton
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: that Marie Yovanovitch did nothing wrong. and that Rudy was
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: trying to get rid of her, probably to help his
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: own clients.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems notable.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: So that's great. Bolton says that he told Attorney General
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: Bill Barr that Giuliani was running a shadow foreign policy
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: and that it was a problem. And now, of course,
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: the Justice Department, through a spokesperson, is saying, no, I
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: don't know what you're talking about. You never told Bill
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Barr anything. What are you talking about?
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: Their denials are always so specific and so thinly sliced.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: I just don't believe a word he says ever.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: It's just, I mean, I think, and, you know, I
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: shift this, like, forget about just Bolton and Mulvaney. Let's
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: get Pompeo in there. Let's get Let's get Barr to testify.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Ask for all of it.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: Donnie Jr. was at the Lev Parnas dinner.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, God.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: He got some things to say if we're going to
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: do Hunter Biden.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: All right. So let's talk about what happens next. The
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: timing of this was exquisite because the core argument that
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: the president's defense team had been making to the Senate
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: over the weekend is that the president didn't withhold the
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: aid because he wanted an investigation and that no one
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: who spoke directly to Trump has testified otherwise. The Bolton
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: story has... completely destroyed that defense. So what happens now?
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: How does this affect the trial?
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I do just want to say,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: you know, look, we don't know where the, as of
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: this recording, I haven't seen that we know who leaked
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the information from the manuscript, whether it was from someone
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: in the White House, someone from Bolton's camp that they
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: denied it, someone from the publisher. If you are the
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: person who put this out today, I want to applaud
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: you for your political fucking acumen. Just really crushed it
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: on the timing.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Nailed it. My guess is, so what happened is the
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Bolton's lawyer sent a manuscript to the NSC for preclearance.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: And they are saying they did not send it to
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: anyone else. Do you think, Tom, I'm interested in what
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: you think about this. Maybe there's someone still at the
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: NSC who's loyal to Bolton who decided that they would
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: want to get it out to help Bolton. That was
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: my guess because, I mean, I don't know.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, you know, that sort of
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: preclearance process where you review a book for classification issues
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: or executive privilege or whatnot is supposed to be handled
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: by technocrats. But we know those people no longer exist anymore.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: So it probably got just forwarded around to the entire
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: executive team and whoever leaked it leaked it. Lev Parnas
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: with a highlighter. I mean, it's also like, I don't know.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: I don't know who to trust in this situation. I
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: don't trust anybody. And it was pretty notable that the
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: book cover popped up on Amazon like 15 minutes later.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Right. Interesting. So yeah, it could have been them. I mean,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Or they might have just said, ah, we've got to
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: get some pre-sales going.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Right, they could be taking advantage of the opportunity. They're
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: trying to make money either way. They don't even have
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: to think they're heroes here.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Oh, John.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: No one thinks they're heroes. I'm sorry.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: Do you think.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: I don't think John Bolton's a hero. I just want
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: to make sure that's out there. I don't know who's listening.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Should we have not started the podcast that we're developing?
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: I don't want to see this. John Bolton, American hero.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: It is just waiting.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the resistance. I mean, this does raise questions
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: that this... manuscript got to the White House on December 30th.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: So at least some combination of Trump administration officials knew
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: that this was coming out, knew it when they forbid
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: John Bolton to testify. And, you know, we don't know
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: for sure, but there's a question whether the Trump's defense
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: team knew it when they just told the Senate that
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: there has been no evidence that anyone talked directly to
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump about a quid pro quo.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: They're liars.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: I also would love to know if Mitch McConnell knew
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: about this existence and the contents of said book. Because, look,
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: Mitch's entire game plan here has been to prevent this
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: testimony from happening. And it wouldn't shock me for one
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: second if he was in on the fix. As he
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: told Fox News, he was coordinating every day all the
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: time with their team.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: And this isn't like a memoir about like, you know.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: what it's like to be on Air Force One. Lessons
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: in leadership. Yeah, like the apple slices from the mess.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Like this is a fucking, like this is a bombshell book.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Like this goes up the chain of command. People are
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: aware of this. This is if I did it, right?
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: This is if that's what I, like if I did
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: it and the room where it happened, Bolton's name of
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: his book, have a very similar energy. And I will
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: just say, tough weekend for Lin-Manuel Miranda.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: It's a tough weekend for all of us.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: All attention is good attention, right? So let's talk about
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: the Republican reaction to this development so far, and we're
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: recording this as it's still unfolding, as they're still trying
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: to get on the same talking points. So Romney has
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: basically said, I've said before I want witnesses, now I
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: really want witnesses. I want to hear from John Bolton.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Susan Collins put out a statement saying, I think this
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: strengthens the case for witnesses. Also notable that both of
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: them have not just said, spoken for themselves, but they said,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: we've now been talking to some other people. Romney said,
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I think it's likely now we'll get some witnesses. But
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: then Sam Stein at the Daily Beast put a list
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: together of other Republican responses so far from senators, which
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: has been, he's not telling the truth. He's not saying
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: anything new. He may not be a firsthand witness. Which
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: was Josh Hawley. Josh Hawley said, I don't know. Is
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: he a firsthand witness?
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: I don't know, Josh.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Can you read? Can you fucking read anything?
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: Is he the national security advisor? Because I'm pretty sure
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: he talked to the president of the United States.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Which is what the report says. So I don't know.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Absolute idiot. He won't change the outcome. That was from
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: a couple of Republican senators. He won't change the outcome,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: which is really telling on yourself. Yeah. He's aggrieved that
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: the Republican National Committee is attacking him on that. And
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: of course, some of them are falling back to the
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: house should have called him. The house should have called him,
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: which is outrageous. I will say that because they haven't
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: all coalesced on a single excuse for this. and they're
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: canceling press conferences left and right, and Romney's saying this,
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: and Colin's saying that.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: Canceling on NPR. They canceled on NPR.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: I do.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: What is this, Adam Driver shit?
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: I do think it shows that this is, you know,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: I saw a lot of people yesterday when this broke, like,
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: nothing matters, nothing's going to change. I hate those people.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Maybe you're right. What do you think, that we don't
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: think you're right? You think we're all fucking naive and
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: hopeful and optimistic? We're fucking not. I don't know.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: I don't think they're right. I mean, look, the polling
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: has already been like 70% in favor of calling new
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: witnesses and hearing people. I do think this book makes
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: it untenable for these Republicans to not hear from John Bolton.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: For Murkowski, for Collins, for Romney, for Lamar Alexander, although
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: he's retiring, for Cory Gardner, who's still in the witness
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: protection program. I mean, you have to think the pressure
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: is building on them to have witnesses. What possible excuse
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: could you offer to voters in your state or in
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: your district for not calling these people? It's all going
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: to come out in a book.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Of course the biggest Trump defenders are going to go
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: out and say what they've been saying this morning and say,
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: fuck it, who've already made up their minds. And look,
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: do I think that Mitt Romney and Susan Collins are
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: going to show some great courage and vote to convict
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump? I still think that's highly unlikely. But political
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: pressure works. And also, if you're Mitt Romney and you're
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: going to vote no on John Bolton as a witness,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: why put yourself out there and say, I want witnesses.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: I've been saying it all along and now I think
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: it's more likely we're going to get it. Why do that?
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Why not just say, walk by reporters and say, I'll
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: talk to you later.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Well, it's also, you know, okay, you're very sophisticated. You
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: are saying that you're very sophisticated to predict that a
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: very likely outcome is a certainty is not interesting or smart.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: It doesn't make you savvy. We all get it. We
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: all know what this deal is.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: It is, you know, it is obviously very likely that
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump will not be convicted by the Senate. saying
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: that something that is very, very likely is a certainty
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: is just playing the fucking odds. But, you know, on
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: the witnesses, you know, we're so, we're so in it.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Like the case for witnesses at a trial is that
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: it's a fucking trial. You know, like we're so beyond,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: like we are in outer space now. The case for
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: witnesses is, was ironclad the day he was impeached. It's
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: the case for witnesses is how trials work. It's in
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: the fucking bill of rights. You know, it's like, this is,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: this is what we do. You have a trial, you
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: call witnesses. Otherwise it's just opening statements. And there never
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: was a trial. There was a Maggie Haberman tweeted that, um, uh,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: to your point about them not really being on the
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: same page that, uh, many of the senators felt that
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: they were just blindsided by the existence of this manuscript,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: which I find delightful. It's, uh, it's, um, It's very
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: much just I'm horrified to discover that there may be
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: evidence that there was gambling in this casino.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Well, you can tell they're already starting to try to
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: move on to other excuses.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: So now they're saying, well, even if there was a
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: quid pro quo, even if he did condition assistance on investigations,
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: now they're prepared to say, well, Ukraine didn't feel pressure.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Ukraine didn't know, which is also not true because witnesses
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: testified that Sondland delivered the extortion scheme to the Ukrainians,
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: told them about it, told them this was going to happen.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: So they're going to say the Ukrainians. And of course,
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: when he got caught, he eventually released the aid. That's
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: what they're down to that now.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: They're going back to the Mick Mulvaney response that he
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: just debuted a few months too early, which is this
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: happens all the time. Deal with it. I don't care.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Right. There is an interesting, they are really stuck because they're,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: you know, I've seen sort of on like you know,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: National Review and a few other places, like, what's the
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: real story here? What's the real thing they're telling themselves?
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: And one of the arguments went something like, obviously, what
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Trump did was terribly inappropriate. However, there's an election at
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: the end of this year. The aid was released. This
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: was discovered. He has paid a political price. It is
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: not worth removing him over this. But the reason they
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: can't fucking go out there and say this is because
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: they're terrified of, like, The equivalent of this in 1998
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: is saying Monica Lewinsky has never met Bill Clinton. All
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: of this is made up. It's a right wing host.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton did nothing wrong. They've been trying to get
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: him from day one.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, we know why they're not like if Mitt
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Romney and Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander and maybe
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: others go ahead and vote for witness vote to hear
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: from John Bolton. The tweets from Donald Trump and the
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: cry from the. conservative media echo chamber is going to
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: be deafening. I mean, he's going to be fucking DEFCON 1.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: They're scared.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Threatening all of them. It's going to be amazing to watch.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: He threatened Adam Schiff yesterday.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: They threatened Matt Geitz, who has been their number one
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: water carrier because he dared to vote against war with Iran, right?
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, he's the most vindictive. president in history. And
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: like I just love the projection from these guys like
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: Pat Sipleoni is calling the Dem case a plot to
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: subvert the election. It's just always projecting, always, always.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Right, a plot to make Mike Pence president so Republicans
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: maintain control of the White House. At least, the whole
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: overturning election thing is just a fucking, that's a whole
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: other story.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: It's not an argument.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: It's not actually, it's just a talking point to give them.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: Comfort about it. The one other thing here is this,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: it now seems like, you know, I think John Thune
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: was saying there's going to be a vote on witnesses
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: Friday or Saturday of this week, maybe, and everything usually
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: goes longer. if they do say yes to witnesses at
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: this point, doesn't look like Donald Trump's given a State
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: of the Union after an acquittal.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: That's for sure.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Sure doesn't. So that's fun.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: The one, you know, I would say like the one little,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the one fear is that, you know, Romney, Collins, others
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: that have gotten themselves, like they get themselves pretty far
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: out there. They can lose what, three?
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: They can lose three, yeah. And, Lamar, yeah.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: And they just hold, Cory Gardner, they get Cory Gardner
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: just sort.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: Of He probably knows he's going to lose anyway.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: He thinks he's done.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: He doesn't think it's going to affect him. They get
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Lamar as just sort of a fucking final, like, do it,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: you know, do it for us.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Do it for the team.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: Do it for the team.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: Like, don't... They could.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: They could get it.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Or, and look, we shouldn't be... I mean, we get witnesses.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: Collins and Romney and all those people feel good about
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: themselves that they voted for witnesses, and then they vote
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: to acquit the president, and then they can go back
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: and say, well, I was very moderate and reasonable because
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: I voted for witnesses. I'm like, that's still what we're landing.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: But again, our task here is to give voters this information...
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: to track this on a little bit longer to let
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: him make sure he doesn't get a full acquittal and
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: full exoneration and scream about it. And, you know, really
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: damning testimony from John Bolton on the way out the
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: door at the end of the trial. That's not a really,
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: that's not a full exoneration for Donald Trump.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: I'd like to see that.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: And one sign that I think even some of the
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Senate Republicans are starting to come to grips with the
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: fact that their witnesses is John Cornyn is back to floating.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: You get your witnesses. We're calling Biden. We're calling Hunter.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: We're calling, we're calling Adam Schiff. Again, I think calling
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Adam Schiff is a real, yeah, please catch that car.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: So believe it or not, the Bolton story is not
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: the only piece of new evidence that emerged over the weekend.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: On Friday, ABC News released excerpts of a recording of
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump talking to indicted Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: Igor Fruman at a 2018 fundraiser, which proves that when
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Trump said he doesn't know them, he was lying. Let's
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: play a clip of that tape, which was apparently made
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: by Igor Fruman.
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: The biggest problem there, I think, where we need to
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: start is we've got to get rid of the ambassador.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: She's still left over from the Clinton administration. Who were
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: the ambassador?
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: Were you Ukraine? Yeah, and she's basically walking around telling everybody, wait,
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: he's going to get impeached, just wait. Really?
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: It's incredible.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: Here we go tomorrow.
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: What's your initiative? I don't remember.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that will be, now that
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: we have a secretary....
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: Get rid of her.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Get her out tomorrow.
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: Get her out tomorrow. Take her out.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: Do it.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Take her out, said the President of the United States,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: to a random goon that he just met. That he
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: just met. I guess this is how hiring and firing
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: happens at the White House.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: Listening to these clowns like laugh excessively hard to every
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: one of his jokes is so painful. I know it's
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: a side point.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: No, it's a good one.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: I would just also say like Trump's comments about Ambassador
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: Yovanovitch are maybe not the worst part about that tape.
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: It's like an hour and a half of him schmoozing
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: with these rich donors, including foreign nationals, who are just
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: presenting Trump with their policy wish list that they are
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: buying access to. And so there's one guy who's a
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: Canadian steel magnate. He wants to limit steel imports to
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: the U.S. and he wants to get rid of safety
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: rules for truckers because that's a safe job, apparently. He
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: gave $ 1. 75 million to a pro-Trump super PAC called America
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: First Action. Now, that is illegal because he's a foreign national,
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: but he routed the money through one of his subsidiary
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: companies in the U.S. So it's just like this is
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: the most brazen corruption you could imagine. There's one guy
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: who's trying to get Trump to hold the Singapore summit
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: with Kim Jong-un. at a property he owns in Korea.
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, nothing is sacred in this meeting. You can
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: buy access to Trump. You can buy your way onto
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: the policy agenda.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: It is disgusting. And I will say, you know, we
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: were talking about this before the podcast, but like that story,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Ken Vogel wrote in the New York Times about all
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: this pay to play stuff going on at this meeting
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: and at the Trump Hotel in general. I mean, this
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: is stuff that voters will really care about if Democrats
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: tell this story right. The idea that Trump promised to
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: drain the swamp And has failed to drain the swamp,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: not only failed to drain the swamp, but like built
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: an entire new swamp really does piss people off. And
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: it pisses the Obama Trump voters off. It pisses our
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: base off. This is enough people. We've seen this in
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: our polling. We've seen another polling. So I do think,
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: you know, we've talked a lot about how impeachment is
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: not really breaking through to average Americans in any way.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: But this kind of shit will. All right. So let's
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: talk about 2020. The Iowa caucus is a week from today.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: And we have four new polls, three of which have
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders in the lead and one with that has
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Biden in the lead. Uh, the big one was the
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: New York times Siena college poll where Bernie's at 25% pizza,
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: 18% Biden's at 17%. Warren is at 15% and no
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: one else is in double digits. I think Klobuchar is
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: at 8% in that poll. Um, Guys, any specific takeaways
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: from any of the numbers in this poll or any
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: of the polling you've seen over the weekend?
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: The only thing is just, you know, Bernie's momentum doesn't
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: feel like noise anymore. It seems like it's really evident
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: across a wide number of polls. The fact that there
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: are still other outliers just tells you that nobody knows anything,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: but Bernie goes into the Iowa caucuses in a very
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: strong position, having kind of weathered a heart attack, come
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: back stronger, having been through a number of just really
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: strong debates, having actually not really drawn that much heat
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: from his fellow candidates over the course of the last
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: six months as one by one, whether it was Pete
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: for a while, Biden for a while, Warren for a while,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: became the potential front runner, faced a bunch of heat
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: and scrutiny and attacks, and then kind of lowered in
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: the polls. And just Bernie was sort of rock steady
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: through that whole period.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: So I just got back from Iowa on Saturday. I
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: was there to tape the final episode of my Iowa
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: miniseries on the Iowa caucuses. That comes out Tuesday morning,
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: so keep an eye on that. A few things. One,
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: we did an exclusive poll for that episode with Change Research,
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: and the results of that poll will be in that
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: episode tomorrow. So that's my way of baiting you into listening.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: You don't get any hints. You got to listen to
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: Positive America on the ground in Iowa tomorrow.
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: You know hints. The biggest takeaway I had was how
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: weird it was to be there with impeachment. We were
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: there Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. There were almost no candidates on
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: the ground. Some were stuck in D.C., but also Pete
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: and Biden weren't really there when we were there. Only
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: Andrew Yang was really working it hard. The guy's doing
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: a 17-day bus tour with four or five stops a day. Yang,
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: keep an eye on Yang. He's doing something interesting. The
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: thing that's notable, though, is no one knows what's going
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: to happen, but people feel like the Bernie campaign is
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: a mystery. And then I went and spent some time
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: with Bernie staffers and went to the AOC event. that
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: they did in Iowa City, and they feel like they
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: have the biggest volunteer base. They feel like they're doing
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: really well in terms of their field numbers. It's notable
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: they had the biggest surrogates in the state. They had
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: Mike Posner. They had AOC. They had Michael Moore doing
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: these big trips. I didn't see other candidates filling the
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: void for having their bosses out of town for impeachment
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: the way they were. Amy Klobuchar's daughter was there. She
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: did really great events, but we're talking about 30 people,
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: not 800 Um, yeah. Who else was there? I had a,
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: a professional curling coach who was, uh, doing events. So
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: like people are trying, uh, Elizabeth Warren had Jonathan Van Ness,
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: but you know, this thing, who knows where this thing
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: will go. It does feel like there is some pretty
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: undeniable Bernie Sanders momentum right now.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: What are people saying about some of the other campaigns
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: out there? And like, who's got after, after Bernie, uh,
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Is there any campaign where people are saying like, yeah,
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: they could make a run for this?
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think the problem is it's just
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: set up as this big prisoner's dilemma. I mean, if
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: you look at the New York Times poll, 55% of
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: respondents said they want a choice that is more moderate
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: than most Democrats. So that would make you think, okay,
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: that's well set up for Biden or Klobuchar or Mayor Pete.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: But all of them are splitting that like so-called moderate vote.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: And when you look at Bernie's support over time, It
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: has gained and it has lost nothing. His people are
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: rock solid, ride or die Bernie. They'll probably have second choices.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying they're Bernie or bust. There's anything nefarious here.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: But Warren has risen and fallen. Pete has risen and fallen.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: Biden's sort of been all over the place. Klobuchar has
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: surged a bunch. We'll see how that goes. But Bernie
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: just has this base that's not going anywhere.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: But the other interesting thing was So they asked the,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: do you want a candidate who's more moderate or more
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: liberal than most Democrats? And the moderate candidate wins by like,
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: it was like 55 to 36 or something. It was
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: a really healthy margin. But then they also asked, do
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: you want a candidate who's going to bring big change
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: to Washington and shake things up or something like that,
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: or one who will return to before Donald Trump? And
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: on that one, the big change won out. Not by
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: a lot, but by like a couple points. So I
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: do think, you know, ideology, as we've said for a
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: long time, is sometimes, you know... discussed a lot among
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: pundits and in D.C., and the way that voters think
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: about things is not necessarily in neat ideological lanes. They
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: think about candidates who are going to bring change, are
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: going to take things back to normal, like they might
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: be thinking about this race in different ways.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: And there's just a conflict inside of people intention when
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: they're going to vote here because they feel that the
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: country is broken in some fundamental way. The election of
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump shows that. And they are receptive to the
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: arguments that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren make about the
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: need for big and dramatic changes to get out of
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: this mess that we're in. And yet, at the same time,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: after Three years of a disastrous, mean-spirited, vicious, hateful, chaotic administration.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: And at a time in which the economy does seem
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: to be doing better, there is also a fear of
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: just chaos and uncertainty as well. And I think that
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: that's a completely reasonable place for a lot of people
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: to be.
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: One of the things, like, it just... It seems like
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: no one has figured out how to take on Bernie
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: or even tried. Even when they were all piling on
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: Elizabeth Warren over Medicare for All, they did it in
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: a way that was complimentary to Bernie, saying he's going
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: to raise taxes, at least he's honest about it. Like,
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: no one is even trying to lay a glove on him.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: And I don't know, I'm not sure who the right
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: messenger for that attack should be, but they should hurry up.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: In the Washington Post over the weekend, there was a
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: story about how Bernie's opponents are starting to confront him directly.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: But all it has in that story is, Mayor Pete
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: sent out a fundraising appeal that said, quote, we risk
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: nominating a candidate who cannot beat Donald Trump in November.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: Klobuchar said his Medicare for all position wouldn't be viable
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: in a general election. She went after that. But like
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden has just not really been attacking him at all.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: So I think that's changing today.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: So Weigel is, Dave Weigel is at the Biden event
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: right now. Biden is not referring to Bernie by name,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: but he is saying things like, As one of the
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: leaders of the Medicare for All effort said, I don't
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: know how much it's going to cost, but we have
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: to do it. That's not how a bill gets passed.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Hey, man. I'm never a fan of I'm not going
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: to name the candidate because it's a.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: And then he said, he says, I show how I'm
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: going to pay for everything in my campaign. Others say
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: they're going to spend $ 60 trillion. I don't think you
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: win with that. I think it scares the living daylights
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: out of people. He's not saying the name. But that
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: you see it's a he's too far left critique plus.
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: A he can't win critique in there.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: If I were them, I would try to figure out
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: how to make an electability critique. And look, I'm not
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: saying that that's the right thing to do morally or
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: objectively accurate. I'm just saying it's the tack I would go.
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: The other challenge, though, is that like Bernie has this
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: online cash register that he just rings every time someone
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: attacks him. And then a couple million bucks just rolls in.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: And that's got to be terrifying for these candidates. He's
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: also done a pretty good job. of creating his own
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: media infrastructure. They're streaming more events. They're doing things that
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: are different and interesting and not going through the media filter.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: And like, look, uh, Joe Biden's schedule is very light.
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: He's like doing a couple events a day, maybe three
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: max just now he's like Pete's now in town in
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: Iowa and not leaving. I assume Biden will be the same,
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: but they have so much catching up to do.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: They do. And, um, you know, the New York times
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: had a story this morning about their poll where they
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: said that, um, There's a certain segment of Iowa voters
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: who voted in the Democratic primary in 2018, which was
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: a primary and not a caucus. And then now are
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: saying they're probably not going to caucus because caucus takes
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: a lot more to caucus than it does to vote,
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: as we've talked about. And Biden is leading those voters
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: by 11 points. And so and they're older. And so
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: one of we were just talking about one of Biden's
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: challenges this week is to mobilize voters. Older voters, which
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: is a tough challenge to do. And people who are
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: comfortable voting in a primary, but not necessarily going out
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: to caucus. Doesn't this sound a little familiar from 2007?
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: This is a very Clinton-Obama.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: And how about just a surprising uptick from the insurgent
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: who is going to head out. If Bernie were to
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: win Iowa, he leaves Iowa with just money kind of
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: falling out of the back of his pickup truck.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: A state that he won last time in 2016, next
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: up on the calendar, New Hampshire, which he's doing very
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: well and now Joe Biden is not doing very well in.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: And, you know, you and Dan talked about this, but
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: it remains true. You know, we don't know how much
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: money Biden has to leave Iowa with. But, you know,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: I remember in 2007, it wasn't just that Hillary Clinton
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: was surprised in Iowa. It was that her strategy left
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: her with very few resources after Iowa and New Hampshire left.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: And it seems like Biden might find himself in the
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: same position.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: If you're a potential Biden supporter and you're like, let's
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: say you're 75 years old and you are deciding whether
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: to step outside on a freezing cold night where it's
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: icy out and potentially fall and break your hip or not,
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: like that's not a tough call. They're not going to
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: do it. This is literally the kinds of considerations people
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: are making. And the challenge for Biden is that no
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: one seems to think he has a good organization. No
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: one seems to think he has a field team that's
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: doing get out the caucus calls and setting up rides
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: for people and making sure these folks get to the polls.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: Bernie's got a massive volunteer base. And their whole strategy
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: is to bring in brand new people to the caucuses
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: for the first time, potentially, Latino voters, young voters. And
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: if they're able to do that, they are going to
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: just swamp these precincts. And we're going to have a
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: turnout number for the Iowa caucuses in aggregate that's higher
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: than anyone expected, which will benefit him.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: Just to return to the New York Times poll on this,
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: I think it does tell a pretty simple story here.
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: And it's not just this poll, it's most of the polls.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: And that is that Joe Biden... has basically maintained his
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: level of support since the beginning of this race. He
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: hasn't moved up or down, but that's part of the issue.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: He hasn't gained almost any new supporters over time, right?
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: He's just kept his base. Bernie Sanders, in all these polls,
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: all of his momentum, all of the vote he's gained,
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: or at least most of it, has come at Elizabeth
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: Warren's expense. It's a pretty simple story. Elizabeth Warren fell
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: in the polls. Her support went to Bernie Sanders. Joe
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: Biden stayed the same, and that's why Bernie Sanders is
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: either ahead or tied with Biden now. I will say
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: on the electability argument that you were talking about, Tommy,
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: in the same New York Times poll, 56% of caucus goers,
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: this is the poll where Bernie is leading by eight points,
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: 56% of caucus goers said that they thought a democratic
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: socialist would have a harder rather than easier time defeating Trump,
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: which is a higher number than those who said the
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: same about a woman, a gay candidate, or one over 75.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: Then they did general election.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: It's funny to sort of like, Ah, electability. What's your poison?
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: You're right.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: Then they did general election matchups against Trump in Iowa.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: So the poll didn't just poll caucus scores. It also
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: polled some Republicans and independents, too, to do a general
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: election poll of the state. Trump beats Biden by one
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: point in Iowa, 45 to 44. But he beats Bernie
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: by six points, 48 to 42, which was the second
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: worst matchup of any Democratic candidate just ahead of Mike Bloomberg,
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: who did the worst. Now, you know, you can look
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: at this a couple of ways. Donald Trump won Iowa
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: by about 10 points in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, so
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: all of those are much closer than that. But, you know,
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: Bernie's campaign will put out a bunch of polls saying
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: Bernie beats Trump. And if you look at all the averages,
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: Bernie is currently ahead of Trump nationally by a couple points.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: But when you get to the battleground states where he
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: needs to win, I think Bernie is ahead of Trump
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: in Michigan, close in Pennsylvania, close in Wisconsin. not even
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: close in Arizona or Florida. And Joe Biden is ahead
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: of Donald Trump in Arizona and Florida. So could Bernie win? Yeah, absolutely.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: But are there real electability challenges that so far his
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: opponents have not been mentioning or explaining at all? It
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: seems like it with all the data, with the caveat that,
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: of course, polls are a snapshot in time. Campaign hasn't
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: been run yet. We don't know what's going to happen.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden could fare worse against Trump if he's the
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: nominee and a campaign goes on. Bernie Sanders could fare
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: better against Trump as the campaign goes on. But that
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: is where things are right now.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: And it's also just worth, you know, we talk, you know, oh,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: there hasn't been that much of an electability argument made
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: against Bernie.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: And that's certainly true.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: But part of the issue here is we're not dealing
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: with a decision between two people, right? For all we know,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of people out there who are looking
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: at Bernie and being like, I really like where he's at.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: But I just feel for electability, I want to be
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: with one of the moderates. But you have Joe Biden
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: who in a car in the moderate lane with a
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: bunch of moderates stuck behind him trying to pass him
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: and they can't get around him. And, you know, Bernie's
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: just passing them on the left. And there may be
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: a bunch of people over there in that moderate lane
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: that wish they could get behind one person and speed ahead,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: but they just haven't had the opportunity. And I think
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: there's really just one of two possibilities here. Either Joe
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: Biden will be the nominee of the Democratic Party, in
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: which case all of this past year has been the
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: story of a slow and steady march to an inexorable nomination.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: in which their strategy was correct and there were enough
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: people out there who were just ready to just go
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: for the safest pick. Or Joe Biden was the Jeb
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Bush of this race and he held the moderate spot,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: but wasn't able to make the moderate the nominee and
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: it left it open for someone else.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: So one note for Warren is that I do think
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: she has probably the best organization in the state and
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: maybe that can help her sort of keep the support
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: or build it or grow it in places that people
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: don't expect. What's really, I think, surprising about First, what's
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: surprising for her was how much Medicare for All and
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: that fight hurt her among young voters, according to the
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: New York Times poll. And two, that she was just
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: fighting an uphill climb from the very beginning over these
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: electability concerns, which are entirely sexist. Yes. And that just
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: really sucks. I mean, her team is doing a great job.
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: They're fighting it out. It's by no means over. But
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: I was trying to imagine how I would have felt
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: in 2008 if Barack Obama lost the Iowa caucuses because
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: a bunch of voters said an African-American couldn't win. And
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: I would be fucking outraged. Yeah.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, she did. So she got the biggest endorsement
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: in Iowa, the Des Moines Register editorial board over the weekend,
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: who wrote Warren's competence, respect for others and status as
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: the nation's first female president would be a fitting response
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: to the ignorant sexism and xenophobia of the Trump Oval Office.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: At this moment, when the very fabric of American life
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: is at stake, Elizabeth Warren is the president this nation needs.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: It was a great editorial. As you said, she's also
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: maybe got the best organization in the state, but she's
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: probably fallen the most of the top four candidates in
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: these polls. How much do you think the register endorsement
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: and the organization sort of could matter in this last
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: week here?
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: I think the organization could matter significantly. I think the
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: Des Moines register endorsement, like Hillary got it in 2008.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: Obama still won. I think it's I don't think a
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: lot of people pick up the paper and they say, oh,
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: the register endorsed this person. Therefore, I will. I do
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: think it is a good news story and a good
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: argument for the candidate who gets it at a key
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: moment when people are really paying attention. So it's obviously
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: a net benefit, but it's probably not going to move
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: a lot of voters. I mean, the good thing she
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: can do is you recut your TV ads, you put
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: in endorsed by the Des Moines Register, you throw up
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: some really great quotes, and it feels like a local
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: validation of who you are.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: Finally, let's talk about Pete, whose closing focus in Iowa
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: seems to be voters who supported Obama in 2012 and
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: shifted to Trump four years later. Campaign officials told CNN
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: that he's building an electability argument and is looking to
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: seize on the fact that Iowa has more so-called pivot counties,
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: those places that went Obama to Trump, than any other
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: state in the country. He'll be campaigning in those counties
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: all week. And he also headlined a Fox News town
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: hall in Des Moines on Sunday night. What does Pete
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: need to do here? What did you hear about Pete
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: on the ground when you were in Iowa?
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: I think the strategy is interesting. I mean, I think
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: what will happen on caucus night is there will be
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: a bunch of different ways to spin the results. You
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: could say, oh, I got the most in the raw
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: vote total. The traditional winner is a person that gets
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: the most delegates. So obviously that will be seen as important.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: But if you can make an argument that says I
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: candidate X or maybe just Pete did really well in
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: these counties that flip from Obama to Trump, that is
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: an interesting spin on electability. Now, a lot of these
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: counties that we're talking about that flipped are like way gone.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: There was one that flipped by, you know, 40 points,
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: 41 points. So I'm not I don't think we're winning
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: them back. But, you know, it's a it's a narrative
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: coming out of Iowa that is certainly interesting.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: I wonder if it's a story he's getting ready to tell,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: preparing for the fact that he may be in second
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: or third or even fourth. And that there's still a
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: good story for him to go on to New Hampshire.
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: Pete decided long ago that he would try to be
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: the better Biden as opposed to attack. Just show everyone
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: that he is the moderate who can win this race.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: And I will say that where he does have an advantage,
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: although it's also a challenge, is... you know, he's the
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: candidate in the New York Times poll where people said,
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: you know, I want a moderate and not a liberal, right?
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: And so Pete fits the moderate category, but also Pete supporters,
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: people who are supporting Pete, believe that he's a candidate
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: who can deliver big change in Washington and not go
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: back to the way things were. So he's the only,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: the Biden and Klobuchar supporters both think they're just the
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: candidate who can beat Trump and take us back. The
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: Warren and Sanders supporters think they're the candidates of big change.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: The Pete supporters are mixed. The Pete supporters actually think
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: he could represent big change because he's young and outside
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: of Washington, but also that he's not quite as liberal.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: But again, as I'm making that argument, that's like a
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: very on paper sort of argument. And, you know, voters
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: sometimes just vote who they like.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's true. But it still works if
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: you get to the simpler argument underneath. And I go
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: back to what Pete said in an interview, I guess,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: months ago at this point, where he basically said, if
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: you believe Joe Biden's going to be the nominee, you're
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: not in this race. If you're in this race, you
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: believe he's not. And if you believe he's not, this
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: is what you do. And so You know, who knows
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: how we leave Iowa, but he clearly is a very
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: smart guy and he's clearly thinking, well, I'm not going
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: to out Bernie, Bernie, and I'm not going to out
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: Liz Warren, Liz Warren. But if I out Biden, Biden
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: in Iowa and Biden has a abysmal performance in Iowa,
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: which is not predicting it, just if that is were
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: to happen, he would leave in a strong position.
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think Pete probably needs to beat Biden in Iowa.
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, someone I was talking to in Iowa, I
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: forget who it was, described him as America's favorite grandson,
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: which I thought was like a pretty good description of
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: It's notable, though, that, I mean, he's by far the
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: youngest candidate in the race, and he has terrible numbers
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: with young voters. And, look, this isn't predictive of the results,
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: but it was notable to me how universal the dislike
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: is for Pete among the other campaigns and staffs. Like,
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: they all kind of get along, but holy shit, if
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: you bring up Pete, they really have a bad taste
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: in their mouth for him. Why do you think that is?
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: I don't know exactly. Look, I mean, I think it's probably...
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: case by case. Like if you were on the Cory
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: Booker campaign and everyone was talking about a young mayor
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: who was a Rhodes Scholar, you could get why that
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: would kind of trigger you and piss you off. But
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: I also just feel like they don't trust him. And again,
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: I irrationally hated other candidates that we ran against the
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: Clinton campaign in particular. I was totally wrong about her.
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: She was a wonderful person to work with, a great
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: secretary of state. But it was just notable about the
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: sort of intensity of feeling around each campaign that I
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: heard from almost everybody.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: And yet, you know, and of course on Twitter, Pete is,
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: you know, scary. No one likes him on Twitter. But
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: it's notable in all these polls that he is extremely
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: well-liked in Iowa among caucus goers, even among people who
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: aren't supporting him.
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: I don't think this feeling extends to voters per se.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right. I guess the last person we should just
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: talk about, even though she's not in the top four,
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: Amy Klobuchar, like... She's gotten endorsements from the union leader
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: in New Hampshire. She got the Quasity Times in Iowa.
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: UCT.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: UCT. Does she still have a chance here? What is
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: Klobuchar trying to do here in this last week? Because
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: she's not hitting viability in almost any of these polls,
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: even as she's surging. Yeah. Mini-surging, I should say.
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, she certainly seems to have
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: some momentum and got a bounce out of this thing.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: But I think the bar for success for her is
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: a lot lower. I mean, I think if she can
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: get a surprise third or even a really close fourth,
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: that would make an argument for her to go on
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: and really keep competing in New Hampshire. And the later states.
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: The challenge, though, again, is it's hard for me not
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: to look at the way the support is split between
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: Biden and Pete and Klobuchar and think of all of
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: them as a spoiler for the others. And so I
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: don't know how they sort this out because each of them, look,
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: we've been running a campaign for a year or longer.
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: There's no way in hell you're giving up because you're
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: worried that you're the spoiler. You think you deserve to win.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: That's why you're in this race. But, you know, there's
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: a chance where those three end up making a path
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: for Bernie a lot easier.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: And look, we should just say, you know, we've been
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: looking ahead a little bit. But when you look ahead
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: a long way, you know, Bernie wins Iowa, let's say,
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: wins New Hampshire, even wins Nevada. There's a very good
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: chance Bernie could win the first three states. Joe Biden
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: wins South Carolina. We go to Super Tuesday. Bernie wins
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: the biggest prize of Super Tuesday, California, where he's currently leading.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: Even if that happens, there's a lot of states to go.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: And there'll be a lot of candidates who probably dropped
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: out by then and a lot of vote consolidated behind someone.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: So we could be in it for, this could be
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: a very long, drawn-out primary.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: Yay.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: Good times, guys, on that note.
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: Oh, wait, all over.
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: Okay, when we come back, we will have Dan's interview
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: with Ezra Klein.
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: We are now pleased to be joined by the founder
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: and editor-at-large at Fox, the host of the Ezra Klein podcast,
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: and the co-host of the Weeds podcast, and now the
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: author of the new book, Why We're Polarized. Ezra, welcome
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: to Pod Save America.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: Pleasure to be here again.
• 56:33
  Speaker 5: As I told you before we got on mic, I
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: read your book over the weekend. It really caused me
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: to think deeply about a lot of things, confirmed some
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: of my biases, made me question a lot of things
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: I've thought about politics. But I want to start by
• 56:47
  Speaker 5: asking you of, you know, based on my intro, you're
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: a very busy guy. Why is the topic of polarization
• 56:54
  Speaker 5: the one you wanted to explore?
• 56:55
  Speaker 6: So we've been talking for years back, including when you
• 56:58
  Speaker 6: were at the White House. So I've covered my background
• 57:00
  Speaker 6: is covering policy. And as I covered health care politics,
• 57:05
  Speaker 6: the Affordable Care Act fight, as I covered the Dodd-Frank fight,
• 57:07
  Speaker 6: the stimulus fights, the unemployment insurance fights, the effort to
• 57:11
  Speaker 6: reauthorize No Child Left Behind, like everything I've ever covered,
• 57:14
  Speaker 6: it always had really the same pattern. which is you
• 57:17
  Speaker 6: begin and you're in these rooms with members of the
• 57:21
  Speaker 6: Senate from both parties or think tankers from all sides.
• 57:24
  Speaker 6: And there's this big zone of potential compromise. Policy, as
• 57:27
  Speaker 6: you know, is it's a positive something. Usually you can
• 57:30
  Speaker 6: come up with a policy proposal that would make things
• 57:34
  Speaker 6: better for a lot of different people simultaneously. Doesn't mean
• 57:37
  Speaker 6: everybody gets everything, but you can really construct things to
• 57:40
  Speaker 6: be better. And then by the end, there'd be these wars, right?
• 57:43
  Speaker 6: And it all would just collapse down to that party
• 57:45
  Speaker 6: line vote. I mean, you remember during the Affordable Care Act,
• 57:47
  Speaker 6: at the beginning, Chuck Grassley, one of the central senators
• 57:50
  Speaker 6: in that saying, oh, we all agree on 80 to
• 57:52
  Speaker 6: 90% of health insurance. You know, we all agree on
• 57:54
  Speaker 6: having an individual mandate. And then later on, he's voting
• 57:57
  Speaker 6: for a point of order in the US Senate calling
• 57:59
  Speaker 6: an individual mandate unconstitutional. And so one of the things
• 58:03
  Speaker 6: that I found again and again in politics is that
• 58:06
  Speaker 6: A lot of the stories we told about it, the
• 58:09
  Speaker 6: stories we told about individuals and the ways we seem
• 58:11
  Speaker 6: to think at work just weren't true. They didn't describe outcomes.
• 58:15
  Speaker 6: They weren't a framework that was usable. And slowly I
• 58:18
  Speaker 6: came to realize that you had to understand things through
• 58:20
  Speaker 6: the lens of party polarization, because in the end, it
• 58:23
  Speaker 6: was party polarization that was driving the outcome of every vote,
• 58:26
  Speaker 6: driving the outcome overall of elections. It's why Donald Trump
• 58:29
  Speaker 6: ends up putting together a coalition that doesn't look like
• 58:31
  Speaker 6: something fully new in politics. It looks like Mitt Romney's
• 58:34
  Speaker 6: coalition with some changes on the edges. And so trying
• 58:37
  Speaker 6: to come build a ground-up theory of how polarization works,
• 58:42
  Speaker 6: how it works on us psychologically, how it sorts the
• 58:44
  Speaker 6: parties into coalitions, how the media is involved in it,
• 58:47
  Speaker 6: seemed to me important to just have a way of
• 58:49
  Speaker 6: understanding politics that described what was really happening as opposed
• 58:53
  Speaker 6: to what we wished was happening.
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: And when you talk about polarization in the book, you
• 58:59
  Speaker 5: make it pretty clear that this is a trend we've
• 59:03
  Speaker 5: been on for a long time. But it's not necessarily
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: a bad trend. In fact, there was a point in
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: time where political scientists thought we needed more polarization. Can
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: you explain that?
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 59:11
  Speaker 6: And I think it's useful here to say we don't
• 59:14
  Speaker 6: even define that term well. So polarization just means things
• 59:16
  Speaker 6: are clustering around two poles, right? Think about it in
• 59:19
  Speaker 6: terms of magnets. If you have a bunch of metal
• 59:21
  Speaker 6: filings on a table and two magnets on the sides,
• 59:24
  Speaker 6: If polarization, if the magnets are weak, you have a
• 59:26
  Speaker 6: lot of filings all between, then turn up the power
• 59:28
  Speaker 6: on them, the magnets go to both sides, now you
• 59:29
  Speaker 6: have a polarized thing. And we did not always have
• 59:34
  Speaker 6: the parties function that way. During the mid-20th century, which
• 59:38
  Speaker 6: is where a lot of people in American politics baseline
• 59:40
  Speaker 6: their understanding of what American politics should look like. It's
• 59:42
  Speaker 6: a period of time where American politics is thought of
• 59:45
  Speaker 6: by historians and political pundits to have worked best. the
• 59:48
  Speaker 6: parties were not polarized. And this is genuinely weird to
• 59:51
  Speaker 6: immerse yourself in this history because they were called Republican
• 59:53
  Speaker 6: and Democratic parties. There is a superficial similarity, but you
• 59:56
  Speaker 6: have liberal Republicans in the Northeast, you have conservative Democrats,
• 59:59
  Speaker 6: particularly in the South. You functionally have a four-party system
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 6: of Democrats as we think about them today, Dixiecrats in
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 6: the South, liberal Republicans in the Northeast, and Republicans. And
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 6: during that, you also have a lot of demographic mixing
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 6: in the parties. So the parties just look pretty similar.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 6: You have rural Democrats and you have rural Republicans, urban
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 6: Democrats and urban Republicans. You have a lot of black Republicans.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 6: Jackie Robinson famously is a Republican. And what happens in
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 6: this period is that the Democratic Party becomes a party
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 6: of civil rights. And race was fundamentally the thing deforming
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 6: the party system. You had a very conservative wing of
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 6: the Democratic Party in the South that was Democratic, not
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 6: because ideologically they were liberals, but because the Republican Party
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 6: had invaded the South. and occupied it. And so they
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 6: were democratic. And this was not actually as good a
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 6: period as our political histories like to pretend it is.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 6: And I think it's an important point because we use
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 6: polarization so often as an epithet. It's bad if things
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 6: are polarized. And sure, it can be and often is.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 6: But oftentimes, the alternative to polarization is suppression. And one
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 6: of the things that kept the American political system depolarized
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 6: in the 20th century was a lot of suppression of
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 6: of particularly racial justice issues. Southern Democrats use their power
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 6: in the Democratic Party to block anti-lynching laws, civil rights laws,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 6: and so on. So Civil Rights Act changes this. Barry
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 6: Goldwater then converts the Republican Party, which had voted in
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 6: pretty high numbers for the Civil Rights Act in Congress.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 6: He converts it into a home for white backlash politics.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 6: The Democratic Party becomes more of a party of racial justice.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 6: This creates the conditions for the Democratic Party to become
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 6: the liberal party and the Republican Party to become the
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 6: conservative party. A lot of these Southern Democratic conservative senators
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 6: like Strom Thurmond turn over. They become Republicans. And when
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 6: they become Republicans, notably, they become very conservative Republicans, right?
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 6: They had always been very conservative. And once that happens,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 6: it creates the space for this huge demographic sorting. And
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 6: we can go into the numbers on this, but you
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 6: end up having now these parties that are sorted very
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 6: heavily by race and by geography, by religiosity, by psychology,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 6: by culture, and by ideology. And as you stack these
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 6: pretty powerful identities on top of each other, you get
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 6: a huge amount of collision and conflict between the two-party coalitions, which, fine,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 6: fair enough, as you say. Political scientists thought, I think understandably,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 6: that we needed to have two very different-looking parties in
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 6: this country so voters could make informed choices and then
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 6: have those choices honored. The problem is, you know from
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 6: the White House, is we don't have a political system
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 6: where you can govern effectively if you can't get high
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 6: levels of compromise. And what polarization fundamentally means is you
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 6: cannot get that kind of compromise. So the problem on
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 6: some level is not actually polarization. It's that we have
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 6: a political system where you cannot govern amidst conditions of polarization.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 5: And you write in the book very persuasively about how
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 5: identity drives polarization and that political identity has essentially become,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: or partisan identity has become almost a mega identity, which
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: supersedes everything else about you, right? Whether you're, you know,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 5: you talk about your own identity as someone who was
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 5: from California and owns a dog and is a father,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 5: that ultimately the identity that drives so much else is
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: your partisan identity. What, that has not always been the case.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: What made that happen? And it seems to be like,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 5: and you write in the book about how this has
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 5: been happening on sort of an inexorable trend for a
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: long time, right? The Bush was the most polarizing president ever.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: Obama was the next most polarizing president. And then he
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: was superseded by Trump. So the last three presidents have
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 5: each been the most polarizing in history. That is very
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 5: different than Bill Clinton, who at the end of the
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: 90s was, despite being impeached, had an incredibly high approval rating.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: So do you have a sense of what, is it
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 5: that something happened around the turn of the century that
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 5: sped this process up? to make it so much more
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 5: extreme than it felt then. Because I've been in politics
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 5: since the last year of Bill Clinton's presidency. My first
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 5: campaign ever was Al Gore's presidential election. And I can
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 5: see the difference dramatically over that time. And so I'm
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 5: curious what you think are the factors that are making
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 5: it happen faster, if that's the case.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 6: So I should say that Bill Clinton was in his
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 6: time the most polarizing president in polling history. So it
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 6: has been rising in its way for a long time.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 6: You have a bunch of interesting stuff in there. So
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 6: let me take a couple of pieces of it. One
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 6: thing you've mentioned that is super important to the analysis
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 6: of the book is we make a terrible mistake in
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 6: talking about identity politics as a singular identity as if
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 6: we have one, but we all have many hundreds, thousands, right?
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, as you say, I'm.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 6: Jewish, I'm a Californian, I'm a father, I'm a dog owner,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 6: I'm a vegan, I'm a liberal and so on and
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 6: so forth. What has been happening in politics is a
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 6: fusing of identities. So that When we are challenged politically
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 6: or inspired politically or simply asked to think politically, it's
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 6: queuing up a lot more parts of ourselves than it
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 6: would have been at other points. And the way political
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 6: scientists talk about this is cross-cutting versus unified identities. Cross-cutting
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 6: identities is think about a voter who is a Democrat,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 6: but they're a white evangelical male in the South. That's
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 6: a voter who might vote for Democrats most of the time,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 6: but is probably not going to be too threatened by Republicans.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 6: He will see a lot to connect.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: In with them there.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 6: On the other hand, if you imagine a voter who
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 6: is LGBT woman, African-American in an urban area, an atheist, etc.,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 6: the Republican Party is going to be much more threatening
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 6: to her because the Republican Party, both in terms of
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 6: its policy proposals, but also in terms of who it honors,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 6: who it respects, who it includes. has a lot less
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 6: respect for her way of life. And we have a
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 6: lot of data on this. In countries where there are
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 6: more cross-cutting identities, civil war is 12 times less likely
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 6: than in countries where they become very unified. So that,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 6: I think, is one important level of it. The way
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 6: I understand polarization of this kind is as a kind
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 6: of flywheel. You're asking, why does it seem to be
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 6: speeding up? And my answer would be that it's building
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 6: on itself. So the first half of the book is
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 6: about building this sort of history and psychology. How do
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 6: we think about identity? How do we understand information when
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 6: we're looking at it through the lens of identity? And importantly,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 6: identity being something we all have, not as we sometimes
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 6: say it in politics, something only more marginalized groups have.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: But the second half of the book is all about
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 6: the ways it has created these feedback loops with institutions.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 6: And this is where I think we really get into
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 6: this story of acceleration since the turn of the millennium.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 6: So a couple of examples. One is in media, which
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 6: I'm in, which you're in. When you go back, when
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 6: there were local monopolies, you had three networks that had
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 6: airwave monopolies, you had a local newspaper, you had some
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 6: radio stations. The business model was built on trying to
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 6: not offend anybody because you needed everybody who might watch
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 6: advertising to justify your monopoly. That was how the whole
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 6: system functioned. As we've moved into choice-based media, you have
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 6: cable news, you have digital news, you have podcasts, you
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 6: have everything, this entire smorgasbord of information that we benefit
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 6: from and sometimes are overwhelmed by. It becomes a situation
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 6: where you're competing for an audience that, one, has a
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 6: lot of other choices, but two, because they have a
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 6: lot of other choices, people who opt into political news
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 6: are very polarized. They've chosen a side. They have something
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 6: they're fighting for, right? They're here because they care. But
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 6: that over time does change the way you operate. It
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 6: changes the kinds of headlines that get clicked on. Even
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 6: if you're trying to do pretty non-polarizing work, If what
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 6: is going viral on social media is your most polarizing work,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 6: because that is what connects into people's identities, that's also
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 6: going to change people's perceptions of you. But what happens
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 6: then is if the media polarizes to reach a more
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 6: polarized audience, that then polarizes the audience more, which then
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 6: polarizes the media more, and so on. Elections are another
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 6: great example. There is both on-the-record discussions from the Bush team,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 6: like Mark McKinnon, but also political science suggesting that For
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 6: most of, say, the 20th century, the way that political
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 6: consultants and campaigns thought about the electorate was you had
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 6: these big groups of swing voters, and you were trying
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 6: to hit that persuadable middle. Bill Clinton was a candidate
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 6: who was designed to hit a persuadable middle. He was
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 6: a Democrat, but he was a Southern white man. He
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 6: made a big show of moderation. He challenged the Democratic
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 6: Party on key issues. He was a DLCer. And so
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 6: what they were trying to do was create a Democrat
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 6: who could get the base because he was a Democrat,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 6: but having lost two presidential elections before that, could win
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 6: over these sort of wavering voters in the middle. What
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 6: begins happening is that the number of those voters begins shrinking.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 6: And it's the Bush administration, particularly the Bush team in 2004,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 6: that looks at the 2000 results and realizes there just
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 6: aren't that many persuadable voters anymore. What we should be
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 6: doing is running base mobilization campaigns. And so Bush in
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 6: 2000 runs as this almost quasi-Democrat. He makes a big
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 6: deal of his relationship with his Democratic lieutenant governor in Texas.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 6: He runs on closing the racial education gap and, you know,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 6: runs basically as a Republican Democrats can feel OK about.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 6: Maybe not going to love, but feel OK about. That's
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 6: where you get Ralph Nader and this Tweedledee and Tweedledum stuff.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 6: By 04, he's a Republican Republican. can feel great about
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 6: a much more divisive campaign. And this kind of thing
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 6: stacks as you get campaigns that are much more about
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 6: drawing sharp lines to inspire your base. That makes it
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 6: so there are fewer undecided voters because the choice is clear.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 6: That then further incentivizes you to run that kind of campaign,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 6: which makes fewer persuadable voters and so on and so forth.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 6: So it all has this flywheel quality building on itself.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 5: In the book, in the intro, you talk about how
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 5: we look at a broken political system, it seems like
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 5: just a giant shit show. But it basically boils down
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 5: to rational people acting rationally within their own interests. What
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 5: do you mean by that?
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 6: I think that we have a tendency to look at
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 6: when things are broken and say either somebody is screwing
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 6: us over or they're bad people. If we could just
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 6: get a different person in there. The thing to understand
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 6: about American politics is it is a system and the
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 6: system shapes the incentives of the people who are in it.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 6: And I think one of the truly radicalizing and frustrating
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 6: things of American politics is there's this endless fight to,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 6: we see things are broken and so we try to
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 6: replace the people, but we don't make the system work better.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 6: And I think you see some of this playing out
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 6: in the Democratic Party right now. Look, one theme of
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 6: the primary has been a building critique of the Obama administration.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 6: Why didn't it get more? Why wasn't it able to
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 6: pass a public option into Obamacare and a stimulus that
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 6: was twice as large. And I think that because there
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 6: is this tendency to look at that in terms of
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 6: this individualized narrative, Larry Summers didn't pass on the thing.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 6: And you and I have been through this a lot.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 6: I think there's a real under-emphasis on structural and institutional
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 6: barriers that are why people make the decisions they make.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 6: Why Nancy Pelosi says we can't pass a stimulus of
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 6: over a trillion dollars. Why The Obama administration ends up
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 6: having to spend a bunch of time worrying about Ben
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 6: Nelson's vote on the Affordable Care Act. And he's the
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 6: hinge vote. It's not, you know, somebody who's much more liberal.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 6: And so if you want very different outcomes, you need
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 6: a different system that incentivizes people to make different decisions.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 6: And it's one reason in my work, and I know
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 6: you guys do a lot of this too, I focus
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 6: a lot on things like the filibuster and the structure
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 6: of Congress and what is happening in the campaign finance system.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 6: Because ultimately, people are going to make the decisions that
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 6: make sense for them to make. And the reason things
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 6: work the way they do is not because American politics
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 6: is somehow failing. The very scary thing is it's working
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 6: as we've designed it to work. In some ways, Mitch
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 6: McConnell is the best example of this. He has been
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 6: doing a string of things that drive liberals absolutely crazy,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 6: and I think correctly so, Merrick Garland being only one
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 6: of many, many examples here. But he has been rewarded
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 6: for it again and again. He is one more power
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 6: He has won a lot of his policy objectives. And
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 6: I think the thing to read from his success is
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 6: to recognize that he understands how to operate in a
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 6: polarized system and is willing to do that. And so
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 6: if you don't want that to work, you need to
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 6: understand why it is working in the first place. It
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 6: can't just be Mitch McConnell's a bad guy. Mitch McConnell's
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 6: responding to a world around him. And if you don't
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 6: want that kind of strategy to be the one people choose,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 6: you need to change the actual rules of the game.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 5: When I read the part about you saying people acting rationally,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 5: I agree with that in terms of their short-term incentives.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 5: Because you talk about the 2012 RNC autopsy, where after
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 5: Obama wins, the Republicans all look at this, all the
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 5: Republicans get together, from the far right to the middle,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 5: every established Republican at least, looks at it and says,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 5: we have to change who we are if we want
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 5: to win again. And it's not just a win in
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 5: 2016 strategy, it is a long-term strategy that the demographic
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 5: trends are working against us. And if we don't become
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 5: a party that appeals to a broader group, then we
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 5: cannot win elections. Texas will eventually go blue, Central Electoral
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 5: College lockup. Is there a short-termism here that is pushing
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 5: at least the Republican Party in this direction?
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 6: There's always a short-termism. Let's talk about the Republican Party
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 6: for a minute, though, because I want to note that
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 6: their incentives are strange and warped. And something I want
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 6: to be very careful not to seem to fall into
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 6: a trap of is some kind of false equivalence. Polarization
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 6: is a structure that we are all operating in, the
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 6: systems that we are all in are affected by it.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 6: But the Republican Party has responded very differently. And I
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 6: think for two reasons that really relate to what you're
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 6: saying here. One is the Republican Party feels itself to
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 6: be and in some ways is the representative of a
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 6: what has traditionally been a demographic majority with a hammerlock
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 6: on American political power that feels itself losing it. And
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 6: there is very little that becomes as desperate as a
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 6: majority group that feels itself declining in numbers. And I
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 6: have a lot of evidence in the book that shows
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 6: that when you confront people with the feeling of demographic change,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 6: and a lot of things that are happening in our
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 6: society right now do confront people with the feeling and
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 6: reality of demographic change, Obama being just one of them,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 6: they become much more conservative. They become more conservative on
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 6: issues in terms of what party they support, And we
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 6: are living through this very intense era of change. According
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 6: to demographers, we'll become a majority minority country racially in
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 6: the 2040s. The same thing is true on religion. By then,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 6: it is expected that people who claim no religion will
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 6: pass Protestants, which are currently the most numerous group. It
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 6: is true on immigration, where we've gone from about 4%
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 6: of the country being foreign born in the 70s to
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 6: about 14%, 15% now, and we're moving towards a record
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 6: number in the next couple of decades. And so the
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 6: country really is changing. And that is, I think, one
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 6: of the important contexts to see in our politics. And
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 6: the Democratic, I'm sorry, the Republican Party, it represents the
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 6: part of the country that is feeling those changes very
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 6: acutely and feeling very threatened by them, particularly white Christians.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 6: And so what happens around that autopsy is that a
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 6: part of the party that does not feel personally threatened
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 6: by this, it just wants to hold and win power, says, well,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 6: let's change. Let's become more accepting of immigrants. Let's become
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 6: a more open and inclusive party. And Donald Trump is
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 6: one of the people who recognizes that that is not
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 6: what the Republican base wants. What the Republican base wants
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 6: is to hold power in the form that they are
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 6: currently in, not to be told they have to change
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 6: their form. The other thing, though, that I think is
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 6: really important about this is another way in which the
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 6: Republican Party has been able to act in, I think,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 6: very strange ways is that they do not have to
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 6: run by the normal rules of democracy. So if you
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 6: think about the major power centers in American politics, the House, Senate,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 6: White House, and Supreme Court, three or four of them
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 6: are held by the party that won fewer votes in
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 6: the relevant elections for those offices. Donald Trump, of course,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 6: won a few votes in Clinton. Democrats won more votes
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 6: in the Senate over the past three cycles than Republicans did.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 6: But because Republicans were able to sort of leverage their
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 6: geographic advantage into majorities there, they were also then able
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 6: to hold the Supreme Court. And so the Republican Party
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 6: has been able to run a strategy that actually would
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 6: not work for Democrats, which is to cling on to
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 6: a shrinking power base that is very well geographically distributed.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 6: But that has, I think, put them and the country
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 6: in a pretty dangerous place because instead of being able
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 6: or being forced to reform and to open themselves up,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 6: they're like tightening down. And in part, in order to
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 6: hold on to power, becoming much more skeptical of small
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 6: d democracy itself, trying to restrict who can utilize a franchise,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 6: trying to restrict how money flows such that they're quite
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 6: advantaged by it. And one of the things that really
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 6: scares me is a dawning legitimacy crisis where You have
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 6: a party that does not win majorities using geography to
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 6: keep power and using that power at the Supreme Court level,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 6: at the Senate level, et cetera, to make it harder
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 6: for the other side to ever win power, to gut
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 6: public sector unions, et cetera. That's a kind of conflict
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 6: where you're fighting over not who best represents a country,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 6: but who will be able to be politically participating in
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 6: the country that is both very unfair, but becomes very
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 6: dangerous for political systems in the long run.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 5: I think you write very persuasively about the challenge that
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 5: Democrats have is that because of geography, electoral college, gerrymandering,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 5: all of the structures in our democracy, Democrats have to
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 5: appeal to voters who are much more conservative than, as
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 5: you said, the median Democratic voter, which limits the ability
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 5: to succeed pushing, obviously, more ideologically, you know, traditionally leftward ideas, potentially, right?
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 5: But there is this non- policy ideology part of the
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 5: Republican Party strategy, which is about power accumulation, right? That
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 5: is voter suppression. That's McConnell in the Merrick Garland seat.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 5: It's gerrymandering. When I read your book and I look
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 5: at all the forces that are moving America into a
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 5: more polarized way, it does raise this very uncomfortable question
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 5: for Democrats is, what is the argument other than just
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 5: doing the right thing against Democrats doing the inverse of
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 5: what Republicans are doing. So examples of that would be,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 5: and I think that they are not morally equivalent, but
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 5: it's the inverse idea. So as soon as Democrats have
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 5: power in a state, why not? The sort of democratic
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 5: reforms that we look at are pretty, they're very important,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 5: but they're pretty common sense. Automatic voter registration, more early voting,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 5: vote by mail, that sort of stuff. But you could
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 5: go much more aggressively on ex-felon voting rights. Um, you could, um,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 5: do things like keep like in the Senate at, you know,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 5: why not add two Supreme court justices and get some
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 5: rulings for a few years, right?
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: Like what is the argument?
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 6: Why not break California to six States?
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 5: Why not break California to six States? Why do we
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 5: need two Dakotas? All kinds of questions.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 6: Why do we need two Dakotas?
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 5: That is a fundamental question. As someone who lived in
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 5: South Dakota in my life, it's a question I ask
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 5: a lot. Um, I guess my question is why shouldn't
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 5: Democrats follow the short-term– I understand the long-term implications of
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 5: Democrats sort of adopting McConnell-esque nihilism. Like prevent– if we
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 5: take the Senate but lose the White House in 2020,
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 5: why not just say there will be no Supreme Court
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 5: justice full stop until the 2024 election?
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 6: I expect actually Democrats will say that if they take
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 6: the Senate and not the White House. But putting that aside,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 6: I think there are two answers to your question that
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 6: for me point in a little bit different directions. One
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 6: thing I want to say is I actually worry more
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 6: about the reverse. I think that one of the very
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 6: dangerous things is the idea of democracy becoming a partisan issue.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 6: Somebody made this point to me recently, but can you
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 6: imagine now a constitutional amendment that would bring voting down
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 6: from 21 to 18? Because obviously those voters would be Democratic,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 6: so it would never pass, right? Because it'd be understood
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 6: as a way to create more Democratic voters as opposed
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 6: to something just fair to do, given that we are
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 6: sending 18-year-olds out to die in wars. And I've heard
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 6: this from a lot of different Democrats talking to them,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 6: you know, out in the Senate and in the House,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 6: that they have in some ways bought into something that
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 6: I think is a dangerous idea, which is that even
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 6: if it is grounded on correct values... They shouldn't advocate
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 6: for things that might have the side impact of giving
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 6: them more power.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: So things like D.C.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 6: And Puerto Rico statehood, we should do because it is
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 6: the right thing to do. The filibuster we should do
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 6: because it is a better way to govern, to allow
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 6: majority parties to govern, and then the public can judge
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 6: them on what actually happened. A lot of these efforts
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 6: of democratization, I think they are the right thing to do,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 6: And that they should be argued for that reason. But
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 6: because it's becoming a partisan idea, bringing more people into
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 6: the political process, it's becoming something that people feel a
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 6: little bit dirty arguing for. There's actually a book by
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 6: a political scientist named David Ferris called It's Time for
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 6: Democrats to Fight Dirty, which was making the argument for
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 6: a lot of these plans, which in my view, they're
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 6: just good governance plans. And he would say the same.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 6: But the very framing that to me was a problem,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 6: that the idea they'd be fighting dirty to have automatic
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 6: voter registration. Now you get into this harder thing, though,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 6: which is what about the things where you are just
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 6: really trying to fight over power? So you hear Democrats
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 6: talking about court packing. Should the answer to what Mitch
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 6: McConnell did with Merrick Garland be, as you say, if
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 6: they had enough power to do it, to add seats
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 6: to the Supreme Court? There was more recently a proposal
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 6: to add something like 120 states and that could balance
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 6: the Senate back out. So you didn't have this very strange,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 6: not that any major Democrats are behind that, but it
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 6: was a legal proposal. And I've seen a bunch of
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 6: different things like this. And to me, the thing you
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 6: get into there is there's a version of politics which
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 6: is a finite game, as they call it. You're trying
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 6: to win right now. And a version of American politics
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 6: we also have to keep in mind, which is an
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 6: infinite game. You're trying to maintain the system's legitimacy so
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 6: that we continue having a system that can be governed,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 6: that we all agree is relatively legitimate. In America, we
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 6: don't have a recent history of constitutional collapse, but other
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 6: countries really do. And the idea that America will survive
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 6: forever is And so we should have, in this way,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 6: a somewhat philosophically conservative view that protecting the legitimacy of
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 6: the system we have been gifted is an important thing.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 6: So if you do things that are considered too illegitimate,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 6: that are just too much of a clear power grab,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 6: that will become the norm. And when you escalate against
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 6: that norm, you, I mean, we've seen this in history
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 6: over and over again, you eventually destroy the system you're in.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 6: So to me, there's a real difference between saying the
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 6: Democratic Party should be the party of democracy because democracy
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 6: is a good value that is worth fighting for and
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 6: always has been versus they should do whatever they can
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 6: do or want to do to amass power, no matter
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 6: whether or not is connected to any deeper values or
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 6: is justifiable behind any kind of veil of ignorance.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 5: This is one I really struggle with. I am someone
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 5: who obviously agrees with you on the filibuster. I am
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 5: actually for court expansion. I think it is the right
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 5: thing for Democrats to do because in my view, the
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 5: alternative of, like this is the stat that keeps me
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 5: up at night all the time, is when Brett Kavanaugh
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 5: is Ruth Bader Ginsburg's age, my daughter will be 32.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 5: She turns two in May. That is a very scary thing.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 5: And there is this danger for democracy when every year
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 5: you have with greater strength, perhaps a conservative white minority
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 5: governing a progressive diverse majority. And that is a very
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 5: dangerous thing for the system. But putting that aside for
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 5: a second, the real challenge here, I think the thing
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 5: you said, you talked about Democrats feeling dirty about power.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 5: That's actually not even a new thing because I have
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 5: wrestled a lot with why did Democrats not make DC
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 5: a state in 2009? Everyone supported it. Obama's born on
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 5: the campaign trail. Bill Clinton had the taxation without representation
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 5: license plates on. And it's something that I have come
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 5: out for publicly in recent years. And people ask me
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 5: all the time, like, well, why didn't you do it?
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 5: And I can't even think of a single conversation that
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 5: did not involve a phone call with Eleanor Holmes Norton
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 5: about the topic. It was never even considered. And it
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 5: speaks to this Democratic Party reticence about political power. where
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 5: Democrats sort of view political power as this ends to
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 5: a means of policy and Republicans think of it as
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 5: an end in and of itself. And do you think Democrats,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 5: both going back to 2009 and now, don't fully understand
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 5: the consequences of polarization? Are we as a party naive
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 5: about that?
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 6: I don't think Democrats at all understand. To be fair,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 6: I don't think most of us have a good theory
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 6: of polarization, which is why you should buy my book,
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 6: Why We're Polarized by Simon & Schuster. But no, look, like,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 6: Part of this book is an effort, on my part,
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 6: to wrestle with Obama's legacy. Here's somebody who his own
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 6: life had been a rejection of polarization's course.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: Logic, right?
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 6: Here's somebody who, in some way, if you looked at
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 6: the system too simplistically, he's never going to be president,
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 6: this African-American guy with a funny name and the big
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 6: ears and, you know, from Chicago. You remember the conversation
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 6: in the Democratic Party after 2004, right?
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 6: It worked for Evan Bay after 2004.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 5: There you go.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: There you go.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 6: It says it all.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: And yet he does.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 6: And the great irony of Obama is that in certain ways,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 6: his life is a rejection of polarization's logic and his
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 6: presidency is a confirmation of it. And how does somebody
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 6: like him, who wanted as much as he did, and
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 6: it really was authentic, and you would know it better
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 6: than I do, but I covered him quite a bit.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 6: He really did want to turn down the temperature on
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 6: this country's political divisions and thought about it a lot
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 6: and structured rhetoric in that way. I mean, my God,
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 6: looking at some of the things that people tried to
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 6: blow up into scandals for him from this vantage point
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 6: in the Trump era, it's just maddening. And yet that presidency,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 6: for all of his goodwill and good intentions, it ends
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 6: in Donald Trump, right? It creates symbiotically the backlash that
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 6: leads to Donald Trump. And so, yes, I really do
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 6: not think Democrats have a clear theory of polarization. I
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 6: think in a somewhat sick way, they've become accustomed, they
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 6: prefer the dangers of inaction and paralysis to the possibilities
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 6: of and dangers of power and action, which if you
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 6: believe in a progressive governing agenda, I think that you
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 6: should believe that if Republicans got enough power to actually
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 6: repeal the Affordable Care Act and kick 20 million people
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 6: off of health insurance, that voters would notice and be upset.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 6: I think that is true. But Democrats act often as
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 6: if it isn't, as if it is so much more
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 6: dangerous or Republicans would be able to govern. the dangers
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 6: that they can't. But at some point, the American people
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 6: need to see the difference and be able to make
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 6: decisions based off of it, or we just end up
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 6: in this endless symbolic war. And I love your example
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 6: about DC and Puerto Rico, but I would say that,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 6: my God, think about what that ultimately means. The Democratic
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 6: Party is more comfortable with disenfranchising the primarily black and
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 6: brown residents of DC and Puerto Rico than with the
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 6: perception that in giving these American citizens representation in Congress,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 6: because they would freely choose potentially Democrats in the Senate
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 6: and House, it would look bad. Like if you say
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 6: that aloud, it's deeply offensive, but it is. It's where
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 6: we've gotten. And I get the wanting to be careful
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 6: with the system. I think a lot of Democrats, and
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 6: this is maybe a broader point into the book, but
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 6: I think the other problem is that a very naive
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 6: view of polarization is to say, we have polarized more.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 6: The system has become less functional as we have polarized. So,
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 6: of course, the thing we need to do is turn
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 6: back the clock on polarization. For reasons I lay out
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 6: in the book, you're not going to do that. But
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 6: I think because so many Democrats operate in that space,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 6: they remember the 80s. They're afraid of things that would
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 6: make the situation worse. When at this point, we're just
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 6: in a new situation and we need to retune our
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 6: governing structure so that it can work in that context.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 6: I think something that makes polarization worse is government becoming
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 6: less and less effective. And so you would actually, in
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 6: some ways, I think, take some of the pressure out
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 6: of the system and even if the fights would be
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 6: bitter and real and divisive, the fact that one side
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 6: or the other could ultimately govern if we had a
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 6: more sensible system would, I think, allow things to be
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 6: better resolved and would allow people to see the consequences
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 6: of their various political decisions and allow them to make
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 6: better decisions in the future. I have enough baseline faith
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 6: in the American people taking care of their own interests
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 6: that if we had a system that allowed them to
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 6: translate those interests into policy, I think that they would
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 6: make decisions, maybe not always the ones I would make,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 6: but better than the mess we're in now.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 5: One of the things that fascinated me in the book
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 5: was it has been an article of faith among Democrats,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 5: including the Obama administration. If we could just give people
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 5: more information, rational arguments, facts, science, we could persuade them
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 5: of what was in the best interest of the country
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 5: or themselves.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: How'd that go?
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 5: It sort of depends on how you look at it.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 5: I mean, there's a longer debate we can have about that.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 5: But in the book, you talk about political science experiments
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 5: which actually show the opposite. Now, what struck me about
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 5: that was other than just being deeply depressing was you
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 5: started Vox, which is an explanatory journalism platform. And I
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 5: remember talking to you about it when you were launching it,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 5: which was the goal of giving people a better opportunity
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 5: to understand.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: Policy.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 5: How do you sort of reconcile those things?
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 6: In some ways, I don't reconcile them. I say in
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 6: the book that this research for me is a bit
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 6: like staring into the abyss.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: And it really is.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 6: I think that The two kind of key ideas here,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 6: motivated reasoning, which is we often reason not to find
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 6: the truth, but to attain different goals. And then identity
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 6: protective cognition, which is when information forces us to question
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 6: our groups, question the people we trust, the people we love,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 6: we tend to reject that information or are very skeptical
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 6: of it. So one, it is not the case that
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 6: information is never under any context or circumstances useful.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: It's just it's very.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 6: Hard to convince somebody like all the way into something
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 6: they don't want to believe. But particularly if people already
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 6: have some baseline faith in you, which, you know, hopefully
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 6: people who listen to my podcast or read Vox do,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 6: then people are movable, right? I mean, you and I
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 6: have talked a lot. And I think over years, like
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 6: I remember you telling me things that really changed the
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 6: story I was writing because I found what you're saying convincing.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 6: So it isn't the case that when your interests are
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 6: sort of aligned to finding out the right answer that
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 6: you can't ever find the right answer. But it is
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 6: to be very careful with the idea that We hear debates.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 6: We hear political information as we are, not often as
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 6: they are, and trying to be very mindful of that
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 6: and thus a bit skeptical of maybe the naive view
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 6: of political debate, which is that what is, say, happening
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 6: on the floor of the House when 100 members of
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 6: the House give two-minute speeches on impeachment? Is it anybody's
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 6: actually trying to or will persuade anybody? I mean, to
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 6: believe that is to, at this point, defy all evidence
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 6: before us. So at the very least, we should move
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 6: towards having a reasonable view of this.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: In some ways.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 6: the information people most don't want to believe is information
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 6: about their own processing, right? The information about information. We
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 6: continue to operate on this much more fantastical and optimistic view,
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 6: despite all evidence to the contrary. So that's one thing.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 6: The other to the point very specifically about Vox is, look,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 6: there's a lot of media criticism and media wrestling in
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 6: this book, because obviously that's part of where I'm rooted.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 6: And I think that we in the media need to
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 6: think very hard about the role we play given how
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 6: the ecosystem we're in actually works. And to give an
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 6: example that's even a little bit different from the question
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 6: of giving people good policy information, we think about the
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 6: role we play as fundamentally we cover what is newsworthy
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 6: and the power, the kind of disciplining power we have
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 6: to the extent we have any is do we cover
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 6: it positively or negatively. But what has happened is that
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 6: it's allowed people to hack our definition of newsworthiness. We
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 6: cover what is outrageous, what is conflict-oriented, what is offensive.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 6: And so Donald Trump sucked up all the oxygen in
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 6: the 2016 Republican primary, and to some degree even from
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 6: the 2016 Democratic primary, by just being unbelievably outrageous and
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 6: offensive all the time. And what he understood was that
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 6: negative publicity didn't matter for him. What mattered was that
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 6: he was controlling the conversation. And so among other things,
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 6: I think the media needs to think a lot more
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 6: about its role as an amplifier, right? There's all this
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 6: talk about normalizing or abnormalizing Donald Trump and staying shocked.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 6: And I've made many of those arguments myself, and I
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 6: wrestle with them all the time. But sometimes I wonder
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 6: about what if instead of acting like a lunatic was
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 6: a shortcut into dominating the political conversation, Donald Trump was
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 6: ignored more or less, except for the times when he
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 6: acted like a president, that if he lied, he didn't
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 6: get fact-checked all the time in the sense that the
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 6: lies then got signal-boosted, but oftentimes people just learned to
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 6: turn it off. His rallies, it's just such a perverse
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 6: incentive system, and I don't have a great answer on this,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 6: which is.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: Why it's tough.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah, because the economics all push in the wrong direction.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 6: I mean, it is such a perverse incentive system. You
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 6: know how hard it was to get the media to
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 6: cover a carefully constructed speech on manufacturing policy set at
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 6: an Ohio steel mill in That was actually a guide
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 6: to what the administration was going to do versus if
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 6: Donald Trump does a rally where what the media knows
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 6: in advance about the rally is Donald Trump is super
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 6: pissed off today because of impeachment or whatever it might be.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 6: And he's going to go out there and be nuts.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 6: That rally has a great chance of getting covered live
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 6: on cable. Say what you will. That's not a good
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 6: incentive system for leaders.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 5: And I have spent probably more time than I should
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 5: thinking about what advice. I would give the next democratic
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 5: president on how to conduct themselves based on everything that
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 5: I learned in my six years working with president Obama,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 5: as all of these trends, particularly in the media are
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 5: catalyzing on themselves and having watched what happened in Trump.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 5: Like what would the argument other than just transparency be
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 5: for returning the white house briefing, which I think is
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 5: a good thing. And I actually think it helps you
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 5: govern better, which might be the argument because it's an
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 5: organizing principle. But other than that, it's like, What was
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 5: the point, right? Like, it's just a chance to get beat.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: Up every day.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 5: Or, like, should you ever give a policy-oriented speech? What's
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 5: the incentive? And I think that's a really hard thing.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 5: I did want to ask you about one thing, because
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 5: you brought up the Obama administration and, you know, efforts
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 5: to persuade people. One of the things that we told
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 5: ourselves at the end, because if you sort of think
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 5: about the iterations, we get in financial crisis, but also
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 5: huge Democratic majorities. a historic amount of legislation passed culminating
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 5: in the ACA and Wall Street reform. And then the
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 5: Republicans take over, then it is essentially no legislative progress,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 5: executive actions. But as we were thinking about the second term,
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 5: and I remember sitting down with President Obama right after
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 5: he won in 2012, with all of his advisors and
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 5: talking about what should we try to do, knowing We
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 5: were probably overly optimistic about legislative potential, but even that
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 5: was very constrained to a small handful of issues. What
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 5: would be success? One success would be moving the ball
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 5: in terms of public opinion forward on things so we
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 5: could hand it off to the next Democratic president, who
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 5: we obviously thought was going to be coming in right
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 5: after us. And in some sense, there was success in that, right?
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 5: Like on immigration reform, more popular, right? The climate change,
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 5: is more of a threat, right? Like a lot of
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 5: the things that we cared about, you know, sort of
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 5: gain public opinion. But so is there a distinction between
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 5: how polarized the American people are around issues and the
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 5: ability to translate their policy positions into political action?
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I think that's a key distinction. I'd say a
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 6: couple of things here, but, and I was probably a
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 6: little bit glib earlier when I was asking how that
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 6: worked out for you in terms of actually trying to
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 6: persuade people. I think it would be going way too
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 6: far to say that the lessons of these eras is
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 6: that an administration should not try to run a real
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 6: solid policymaking process, should not do the work of giving
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 6: speeches on policy that persuade, if for no other reason,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 6: then that creates good incentives inside the administration to actually
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 6: work out your ideas, to come up with arguments for things,
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 6: to consider counter arguments. I think the problem of the
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 6: Obama administration was not actually that persuasion doesn't work. Obama
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 6: was actually, in some cases, reasonably persuasive. And on certain
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 6: issues like immigration, things got more popular over time. The
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 6: problem with immigration was that John Boehner never brought the
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 6: bill to the floor. And this is why, again, I
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 6: do try to move things to this more systemic analysis
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 6: because I think that if you had, like in a
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 6: system that's parliamentary where winning the election more or less
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 6: means you have the capacity to govern, having a good
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 6: internal policy process where you have good reasons for the
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 6: things you're doing and you've constructed it on firm empirical foundations,
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 6: that helps you govern well. And governing well, I still believe,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 6: helps you win elections. There's very good evidence that the
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 6: state of the economy and the direction of the country
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 6: really do matter for whether or not people vote to
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 6: reelect a politician. The problem is that there is this
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 6: huge disconnect between that policy-making process inside the administration and
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 6: then what happened outside of its walls. And there was
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 6: never a way to answer that. Obama would give speeches
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 6: and then it's like, okay, but why isn't my job back?
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 6: Why do things still feel this way? Why aren't these
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 6: problems getting fixed? And so that's, again, one reason I
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 6: try to raise the alarm much more on how the
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 6: political system operates and translates all this in. Because look,
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 6: one of the arguments I make is that imagine you're
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 6: in a workplace and your boss needs your help to
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 6: finish a project. And if you help your boss, he'll
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 6: finish the project. And if he finishes the project, he
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 6: will get a promotion and you might get a demotion
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 6: and maybe you'll even get fired from your job. But
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 6: if you don't help your boss, he won't finish the
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 6: project and he might get fired and you might become
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 6: the boss. And In addition to that, you don't like
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 6: your boss and you don't like his project.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: So you're going to help.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 6: And that's functionally how Congress works. Like what I've just
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 6: described is the actual incentive structure of Congress, that the
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 6: minority party, which usually does not like what the majority
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 6: party is doing, has the power to make them succeed
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 6: or fail. And if they help them succeed by working
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 6: with them, the majority party will use that to win
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 6: seats in the next election to make the minority party
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 6: even weaker. Whereas if they make the majority party fail...
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 6: the minority party has a chance of becoming the majority
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 6: party in the next election. And in a context like that,
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 6: when those are your incentives, your arguments about why your
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 6: health care bill is great aren't going to work, right?
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 6: Like the amount of reasoning coming from that, and you
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 6: can take this fully on the level, right? If you're
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 6: a Republican, you're presumably a Republican because you believe it
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 6: is better for the country for Republicans to govern it.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 6: Like even if this bill would be better overall, you
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 6: think it's better if you're in power. This is a
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 6: crazy way to run a railroad. Like when you just
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 6: say it frontally, of course, things work the way they do.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 6: But we have so much mythology built in American politics
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 6: about how it worked at another time when things worked
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 6: differently and the parties weren't ideologically polarized and they didn't
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 6: cooperate internally well and so on that we sometimes can't
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 6: see it. And we expect just a good speech to
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 6: change it the way it does in the West Wing sometimes.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 6: But hell, even in the West Wing, if you look
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 6: at it, Jeb Harley, he didn't get very much done.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 6: It was a pretty weak presidency, all in all.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 5: Having to give up office because his daughter was kidnapped
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 5: was probably a challenge.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 6: I mean, yes. I'm not saying they didn't face headwinds.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 5: But I do like you say that and that is
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 5: how Republicans operate. But that is not how Democrats operate,
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 5: because if that was how Democrats operated, they would not
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 5: have done the potentially substantively appropriate but politically insane thing
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 5: of approving Trump's trade agreement.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 5: During impeachment.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 6: I think this is trickier.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: And here's why.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 6: And this is a place where I think the geography
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 6: issue matters a lot. Democrats are constantly trying to hold
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 6: center-right districts that identify a little bit Republican in a
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 6: way Republicans just don't have to do to win majority power.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 6: Democrats have to win somewhere between four and eight-point majorities
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 6: in the House to win power in the House. The
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 6: average state, according to Nate Silver, is six points to
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 6: the right of the average voter. So a lot of
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 6: Democratic strategy is actually appealing to slightly Republican voters, and
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 6: that makes them make other kinds of decisions. I don't
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 6: know if it's strategically insane to do the USMCA deal
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 6: or not, but I think it comes from that. It
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 6: comes from this thing where Republicans are competing to win
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 6: a minority, and Democrats are constantly competing to win more
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 6: than a majority. And that just structures your incentives very strangely.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 6: That said, I I do agree that Democrats operate in
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 6: a much more conciliatory fashion. I think there are a
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 6: bunch of reasons for that, but I think that geography
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 6: one is a big one. Democrats can't win if they
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 6: don't operate in a more conciliatory fashion, or at least
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 6: don't believe they can win if they don't operate in
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 6: a more conciliatory fashion, whereas Republicans have proven to themselves
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 6: and the world that they really can.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 5: I mean, the geography question is obvious, is definitely why
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 5: they do it. And I spent much of my pre-Obama
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 5: career working for red state Democrats. And there is a
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 5: question now that I wrestle with a lot about whether
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 5: geography is as important or whether all elections are national
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 5: elections and whether what, so this is like, the question is,
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 5: if you do something that helps, particularly in a presidential,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 5: if you do something that helps Trump, that probably hurts
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 5: red state Democrat X more than being able to run
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 5: an ad saying you voted with Trump helps them. That's
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 5: the question.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 3: I think that's right.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 5: And like you said, like 2014 was sort of a
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 5: test case in this, where you had all these Democrats
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 5: in red states run against Obama and And do just
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 5: as poorly relative to the partisanship of their state as
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 5: Democrats in bluer states.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 6: I think the idiocy of kind of quote unquote moderate Democrats,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 6: particularly in the Obama years, but in general, is not
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 6: recognizing that the best thing for them is that people
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 6: believe the country is being governed really well. The idea
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 6: that red state Democrats were trying to chop down the
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 6: size of the stimulus or make the Affordable Care Act
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 6: worse with higher premiums and higher deductibles and no public option,
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 6: and this was going to help them It was very,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 6: very strange. Maybe voting against something, there is some evidence
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 6: that like showing real independence from party helps, but shaving
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 6: it off on the sides definitely doesn't. I show a
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 6: lot of evidence in the book about the way all
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 6: politics is local is dead letter. I mean, all politics
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 6: functionally is national now. And there's a bunch of reasons
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 6: to look at that. And by the way, a bunch
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 6: of challenges that really poses for the political system, a
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 6: restraint on polarization traditionally. is you're able to appeal to
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 6: people's local geographic interests. And to continue using the Affordable
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 6: Care Act as the example, the thing that happens at
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 6: the end there, where Ben Nelson is from a red state, Nebraska,
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 6: so he cuts this deal to get Nebraska a free
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 6: Medicaid expansion. And then it becomes called the Cornhusker Kickback.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 6: And his Republican governor in Nebraska says they won't accept it.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 6: In the past, that used to work. And it allowed
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 6: unusual coalitions to form because maybe you didn't love the bill,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 6: but you did need the bridge. And now we don't
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 6: have that in a way that's a real problem. But
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 6: I don't think that means, I guess the way I'd
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 6: put that is that what that seems to mean to
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 6: me is that for the most part and over time,
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 6: political power comes into alignment with the partisan lean of
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 6: states and house districts. Not so much that individual candidates
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 6: can do much strategically to navigate these waters, right? Just
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 6: voting against Trump sometimes, voting for him. It doesn't do
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 6: all that much. There are a couple counter examples, a
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 6: guy like Joe Manchin in West Virginia, but they're much
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 6: more examples that prove the rule than they are models
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 6: that most politicians seem able to follow.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 5: Ezra, I could talk about this with you all day.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 5: I would encourage everyone to run out and buy Why
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 5: We're Polarized. It is an incredibly smart book that will
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 5: help you understand what has happened in politics and I
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 5: think really help you understand what is at stake in
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 5: this upcoming election in 2020. So Ezra, thank you so much.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 5: And please go check out the book, everyone.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate it. Thank you. All right, everyone. Thanks
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: to Ezra Klein and to Adam Schiff for joining us today.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: And we will talk to you on Thursday. Bye. Pod
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The senior
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller.
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Sominator, and
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team,
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yael Freed, and Milo Kim, who
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: film and upload these episodes as a video every week.