Latest / Pod Save America / “Infrastructure 1, Democracy 0.” (with Sen. Amy Klobuchar!)

Transcript

“Infrastructure 1, Democracy 0.” (with Sen. Amy Klobuchar!) · Pod Save America

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Tired of talking about Mr.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Mansion and Ms.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Cinema. Me too. Me too, Bernie. I'm also sick of
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: talking about Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema.
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: Bernie Sanders, voice of the people.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: But alas, here we are. Welcome to Pod Save America.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: On today's show, Dan talks to For the People Act
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: lead sponsor Amy Klobuchar about what's next for voting rights legislation.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden lays out his crime strategy in response to
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: rising gun violence. And we'll try to answer the question
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: on everyone's mind these days. Could the next Speaker of
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the House be Donald Trump? Crazier shit has happened. But first,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: check out Hysteria's 150th episode where Aaron and Alyssa talk
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: to Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin about the Equality Act. And
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: congrats on 150. Very exciting, Hysteria. Don't miss our new
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: scripted comedy that everyone's talking about, Edith, which explores the untold.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: True-ish story of America's secret first female president, Edith Wilson,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: the former first lady who basically ran the country for
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: a while after Woodrow Wilson had a stroke. The cast
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: includes Rosamund Pike, Clark Gregg, Stephen Root, Darcy Carden, Esther Provitsky,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: and an up-and-coming young actor named Andy Favreau.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Oh, nice. I didn't realize that.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: In the cast. Yeah. And many more. Many more. New
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: episodes every Thursday. The first two are out now. The
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: second one's out today. It is so funny. Go check
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: it out. It's an excellent podcast. Finally, Dan, Campaign Experts
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: React is back. People are smashing subscribe buttons all over
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: the internet. Tell us about the latest episode.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Well, first, the mere presence of this episode is a
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: rebuke to Elijah, who tried to cancel us. And then
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: the fans reacted, and they told him.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: And they canceled Elijah.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: Yes. Campaign Experts is uncanceled. Elijah is canceled. I am
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: joined by Campaign Experts React favorite, Cornell Belcher, to talk
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: about the crime ads in the recent New Mexico special election,
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: some of the ads being used to persuade Joe Manchin
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: to support democracy. And we talk about why some of
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: these crazy MAGA Senate candidates are less crazy than you think.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Awesome. Check it out.
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Actually, what's the website there? Oh, it's YouTube.com. YouTube.com slash
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Crooked Media.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: Keep that in. That right there was the examples of
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: how hard it is to have a video product in
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: an audio company.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Anyway, check it out, youtube.com slash cricket media. That's the website.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news. All 50 Senate
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Republicans filibustered the For the People Act on Tuesday, refusing
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: to even allow a debate on the voting rights and
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: election reform proposal that all 50 Democrats now support. Senator
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Joe Manchin, who had been the lone Democratic holdout, voted
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: to move forward after his party agreed to several compromises
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: designed to get Republicans on board, like adding a national
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: voter ID requirement. But alas, Joe's GOP pals told him
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: to fuck off, to which Joe said, sure, OK. And
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: since Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema keep saying over and over
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: that they refuse to get rid of the filibuster, we
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: are now at an impasse on voting rights, election reform
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: and pretty much every other piece of Joe Biden's agenda
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: that doesn't directly affect the federal budget. Dan, you wrote
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: a spicy message box yesterday where you engaged in your
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: usual Monday morning quarterbacking. Tell us, why do you think
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Democrats shit the bed here and what could they have
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: done differently? How's that for a setup?
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, just toss it up there. I want to
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: stipulate that this vote was always going to fail.
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: There is nothing more on brand for the Republicans than
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: to use a legislative loophole designed to block the majority
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: to stop a debate on democracy.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: Perfect. That was always going to happen. But the point
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: of this vote was to highlight Republican obstruction, to essentially
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: put together proof to Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, untold others,
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: including perhaps Chris Coons of Delaware. that you could not
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: work with Republicans on voter rights, that they were going
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: to block it under all scenarios. But the problem with
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: it was that we have known for months that Joe
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: Manchin was not going to support the current version of
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: the For the People Act. And we still did not
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: have a deal with him to have him on board
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: to support the motion to proceed until hours before the vote.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: And what that did is it took the conversation for
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: much of the run-up to the vote from Republican obstruction–
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: and sort of hatred for democracy to democratic weakness and
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: democratic dissension. Really, so we leaned into the off-mocked and
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: rarely but sometimes true meme of Dems in disarray. Like
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: what I think this brought forward is two things that
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: are worth noting. The first is there has never really
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: been a real plan for how we're going to get
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: this done. There are two paths. One involves getting people
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: to flip on the And there's been a lot of
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: confident sort of failure is not an option. We're going
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: to get this done. It's the most important fight in
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: a generation. And the first response to the most important
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: fight in a generation is a doomed to fail procedural
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: vote where you have not done the hard work of
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: getting all members of the caucus on board beforehand. And
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: that is problematic. And it makes me very concerned about
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: where this is going, our ability to get this done.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: And even if we can't get it done, our ability
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: to successfully make the case to the public about the
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: dangers Republicans present to democracy and majority rule in this country.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: So in terms of the question, what basically Chuck Schumer
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: could have done differently, and I guess Joe Biden and
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: the White House to an extent, your answer would be,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: we basically should have figured out our shit beforehand long
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: ago in terms of a bill or a compromise bill
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: that all 50 Senate Democrats could get behind, including Manchin.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: So the Manchin compromise should have just come much earlier
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: in your view is what you're saying.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: But also Democrats haven't agreed to the Manchin compromise yet either.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: Like we have known forever that the For the People.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Act- Though it seems like everyone's going to be on
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: board with that.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Eventually, yes. But they're not there yet. Like there was
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: a position where they could have adopted that before the vote,
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: but there was some Democratic resistance to that as well. Yeah.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: You don't have to adopt it because it's only a
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: motion to proceed to a bill. But the big thing
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: here is the For the People Act is based on H.R. 1,
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: a piece of legislation passed in January of 2019 that
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: was a message bill. It had no chance of becoming law.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: It was not written to be a law. It was
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: written to show what Democrats are for and the affairs
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: of democracy. And it's filled with a bunch of incredibly
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: important things. When it was repassed in 2021– It was
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: not adjusted to two realities. The first, a 50-50 Senate
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: where you need Joe Manchin's vote, or to address the
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: growing and now very real threat of election subversion, of
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Republicans being able to disregard electoral results and discard ballots
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: and mess around with election boards, et cetera. And there's
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: a bunch of provisions in that bill that are Good
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: in theory, they're good public policy, like public financing elections
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: that have never had a chance of being law. But
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: throughout this process, no one from in the Senate or
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: in the White House, I would assume, wanted to have
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: a tough conversation with the activists and say, you're not
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: going to get everything you want. So we're going to
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: have to deal with that now. And we just waited
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: and waited and waited and waited to the point where
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: it wasn't. It was too late to, actually. We didn't
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: have a plan. There was not a plan to maximize
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: this moment. They put a vote on the calendar. We've
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: known it was coming for months. And not enough was
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: done to prepare for it. And look, is this the
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: end of the world? No. It is one minor thing.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: But we ought to learn from the things that went
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: wrong there if we're going to have any chance of
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: doing this. Because the odds of success are so long
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: and the path is so narrow that you have to
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: do everything right to get it done. And we're going
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: to have to be smarter and tougher about this going forward.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and going forward is the big issue here, right?
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: We'll hopefully hear more from Senator Klobuchar on this in
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: a minute when you talk to her. But where do
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: you think that Democrats go from here, both on voting
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: rights and then on filibuster in general? And when I
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: say Democrats, if you were in the White House right
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: now advising Biden, what would you tell him to.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: Do? I mean, I also just want to stipulate, and
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: I wrote this in the piece, that I hate being
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: this person. I have become the person I hate. This
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: is always harder and more complicated than people on the
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: outside think. They are dealing with a whole bunch of
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: other things. And it's easy. You know, you and I
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: just spent last week making fun of the people who
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: believe in the Green Lantern theory of politics would say,
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: if you just give enough speeches and have enough meetings,
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: you can make the impossible possible. I don't think that's
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: the case here. I think it is nothing. David Axelrod
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: said this on TV the other day. If Biden had
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: talked about this every single day from inauguration to today,
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: the result still is a 50-50 motion to proceed vote
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: on this bill. It doesn't change that.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: And again, that's because– and it's so infuriating to keep
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: saying this because it is so frustrating– But like, this
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: is all about what you have to do to change
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Joe Manchin's mind. That's it. There's no more. There's no less.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: It is fucking Joe. He is infuriating to all of us,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: but he has a vote in the Senate and we
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: only have 50 of them on the Democratic side. And
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: threats aren't going to get you anywhere with Joe Manchin
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: because he could always switch parties because he's in a
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: fucking state that Trump won by 30 points. Because liberal
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Democrats yelling at him probably helps him politically in his
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: own state. So you can't threaten him. So you have
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: to figure out how to persuade him in a nicer way.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: And that's very hard to do. And it's fucking annoying.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: But it's like all of this shit that we keep
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: talking about just comes down to that. That's it. What's
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: going to change Joe Manchin's mind? You can protest in
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: the streets. You can yell online. You can do whatever.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: It's all about changing Joe Manchin's mind. That's it.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. And I think the order of operations
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: is important here. And this is where I think the
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: mistake happened in the beginning. You have to change the
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: filibuster to do this. There is no 10 Republicans. There
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: is no nine Republicans. There is not one Republican who
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: is going to be for something for voting right that
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: is substantial for voting rights because it's not in their
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: political interest. So you have to change the filibuster. In
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: order to change the filibuster, you have to find a
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: bill that all 50 Democrats support. So you have to
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: get Joe Manchin. So that is step one.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: And by the way, that should have been step one
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: like months ago. Yes.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: That is the problem is he has been telling us
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: and telling us and telling us he does not support
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: this bill. Now, granted, he seems to be a very
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: annoying person to work with. He seems very vague.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: And look, I just said it's all about like changing
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Joe Manchin's mind. There was a report, I think Ron
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Brownstein wrote this day in The Atlantic, that when civil
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: rights groups, the NAACP and Al Sharpton and other civil
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: rights groups met with Joe Manchin, they actually did succeed
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: in leading him to embrace a compromise that actually included
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: a lot more of the original provisions of H.R. 1
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: than he otherwise would have. So the guy can be persuaded.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: These groups met with them and they did convince him
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: to sort of embrace more of the provision. So it's possible.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: But like you said, he's very annoying because he's always
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: all over the place and he's always saying contradictory bullshit.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: And it doesn't seem to be super deep in the
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: details of the bill up until just this last turn
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: of the wheel here where he came out with a compromise.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: And I think there was some report, I think it
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: was the New York Times, where These Democratic senators who
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: have been talking to him in the hallway keep saying, well,
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: what do you want? What do you want? He won't–
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: what he would say is I want one Republican.
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: Well, it's like I want pigs to fly. Like that's
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: not an actual answer to the question. But still, if
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: you're going to have the vote, you got to have
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: Joe Manchin not hours before the vote, weeks before the
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: vote so that you can give people– you can drive
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: a message. You can drive an interview. You can do
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: the very first part of what is a very difficult two-step.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I guess the question now is, say Joe Biden does
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: what a lot of people want him to do, including me,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: which is make voting rights a big issue. Give a
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: lot of speeches on this. Say this is a top priority.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Fight for it as hard as he's fighting for this
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: bipartisan infrastructure deal, which we're going to talk about in
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: a second, and his reconciliation package and everything else. And
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I think the question that comes from that is, does
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden making this more of a priority make it
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: any more likely that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema change
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: their mind on the filibuster. That's what I can't really tell.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: It can't hurt.
• 13:08
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Well, apparently the White House has argued privately that Joe
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Biden being more public about this could possibly further polarize
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: the issue along partisan lines and make it less likely
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: for Manchin and Sinema to support reforming the filibuster. I
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: don't really buy that.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: I'm skeptical of that.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, what one of these reports also said is
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: that Biden privately and like take every anonymous report with
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: some grain of salt, which I mean, this isn't Trump
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: saying they made up the sources, just you never know
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: who the person is and how much it actually represents
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: the view of the president. But one of these reports
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: said that they have decided that the odds on voting
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: rights are incredibly slim to impossible. Infrastructure is a very
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: real life possibility, which we'll talk about in a minute.
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: The politics of getting something done that is on the
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: bread and butter issue of the economy is better for
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: the results in 2022 than trying and failing on voting rights.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: I think that that is not an insane political calculus.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: I understand how they get to that point. My view,
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: and I am incredibly biased on this issue, as you are,
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: is think that everything flows from a Republican effort to
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: install minority rule in this country. And if we don't
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: take it on and address it, both substantively and politically,
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: we are completely and totally fucked, right? That is the
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: Votes Save America slogan. And so there is this feeling
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: in its heart, like this is one of the sort
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: of the dissonance of the strategy. I don't think you
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: can say that the laws being passed in Georgia, Texas,
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: and elsewhere are Jim Crow in the 21st century, or
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: that this is an existential threat to democracy or those
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: things like that, and not make it a huge part
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: of your public messaging. I think that's good politics for
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: 2022 because we have to keep people fired up. And
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: if we cannot address it now, which I think is
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: a very live possibility, there are things we can do.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: We can expand the Senate. We can fight. We have
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: to know what is on the line in 2022.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Well, it's possible to both be realistic about your chances
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: for success, which are slim, and to fight like hell
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: for that success.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: And that's absolutely essential.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: And so my proposal here in understanding all these constraints
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: is that Joe Biden should say to Joe Manchin and
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Lisa Murkowski, and I choose Lisa Murkowski because she is
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: the only Republican in who has indicated support for some
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: voting rights reform, which is the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Obviously,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: that's not sufficient, but she's the only Republican in the
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: game who's decided to support any kind of voting rights measure.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: So you say to Manchin and Murkowski, OK, this failed. Manchin,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: you want a bipartisan election reform bill. You and your
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: friend Lisa Murkowski go find, just like you did on infrastructure,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans, craft a bipartisan compromise on
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: voting rights, And bring it to me. If you don't
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: want to break the filibuster because you want this to
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: be bipartisan, go get me a bipartisan group to start
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: these negotiations. Come to the White House. I'll have negotiations
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: just like I've had negotiations on infrastructure. And make this public.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Because I think one of the problems with this is
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: people like Murkowski and Collins and Romney and some of
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: these more moderate Republicans, or at least the ones who've
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: been playing ball on COVID relief and infrastructure, have gotten
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: off really easy here. Because, you know, like Murkowski and
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Collins gave speeches on the floor when they said no
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: to this to move forward on voting rights reform, where
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: they were like, HR1 is crazy. I could never back HR1.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: HR1 is not the, you know, S1 is not the
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: basis for bipartisan election reform, blah, blah, blah. They didn't
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: even come out against Joe Manchin's compromise. They started attacking
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the original bill, which like lets them off easy. And
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: I think the reason there is because they don't want
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: to be put in a position, forced into a position
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: where they now have to come up with a bipartisan
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: bill because they don't really want to. But I think
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: you have to put that kind of pressure on them.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: And I think Biden can put that pressure on them.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: and so can Manchin. Call their bluff. Make them come
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: to the White House. Make them negotiate. I think that's
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the only way to do it.
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: This is a place where Biden can be helpful, which
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: is name one voting rights provision you would support.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Name one.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: Name one single one that will get 10 Republican votes.
• 17:43
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: And again, he doesn't have to do this in a
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: snarky way. He doesn't have to do this in an
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: overly partisan way. Like, it's just about making it public
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: and putting this kind of pressure on them. Like, Mitch
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: McConnell's never going to– he doesn't fucking care. But these 10,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: 20 Republicans, you know, like I said, I still think
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: it's a very– it's long odds that this will work.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: But I do think it's– look, there's an inside game
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: and an outside game. I think this is the inside
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: game and then the outside game is, of course– activists
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: and organizers should keep up the pressure and hold events
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: all across the country and push for Congress and the
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: president to do something on voting rights. Absolutely, that should
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: still happen. I just think there should be sort of
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: an inside pressure, outside pressure game here.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: And one important thing you said, which is be realistic
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: about the chances, because I think, and this is challenging, right?
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: You don't want to be defeatist, but you also don't
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: want to falsely inflate And one of the things that
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: has been sort of haunting.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Which I worry that we've done.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: Yes, I agree.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: I worry that we've done that.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: I think about that all the time.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: And I certainly think the groups are doing that right now.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: I hear people saying like, oh, Joe Biden should fight
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: as hard for voting rights as he does on infrastructure. Well,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: it's like, come on. Joe Biden needed 51 fucking votes
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: on infrastructure- And he needs 60 on this or to
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: break a filibuster, which Manchin said he's not going to do.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: It is entirely different. Or someone said, oh, you know,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden should fight for this as hard as Barack
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Obama fought for the Affordable Care Act. Barack Obama had
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: 60 votes for the Affordable Care Act. If Barack Obama
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: only had a 50-50 Senate, guess what? The Affordable Care
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Act wouldn't have passed.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: The thing that haunts me about this, and like you said,
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: I worry that in my public comments on this, I
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: have been sort of naive More naive than I would
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: like to be or more hopeful than I wanted because
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: I think this is so important. And I do think
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: there is a path. I mean, the numbers are there
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: to do it. It just requires people to do the
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: opposite of the thing they keep insisting on writing op-eds
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: to tell us they're going to do. But the thing
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: that I've been thinking about is in 2020, there was
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: an article. I don't know whether this report is actually true,
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: but it said basically the DSCC was keeping the Kentucky
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: Senate race on their list of races to watch or
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: their top targets, whatever it is, because that was a
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: great way to raise money, even though they very well
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: knew that the odds of Amy McGrath winning that race
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: in one of the most public states in the country
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: in a presidential election year were basically zero. I wrote
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: this in the piece. It One of the cardinal rules
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: of politics is to treat your activists, volunteers, and voters
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: like adults. And if you try to trick them into
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: thinking that something is more possible than it is for
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: the purposes of keeping them fired up, that's a mistake.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: I think if we don't get this done now, it
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: becomes a huge issue for 2022. You have to– to
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: win elections, particularly midterms, you have to raise the stakes.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: The fate of democracy– is a high stakes thing. And
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: so that's why it's important to talk about it, but
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: understand that the current allotment of power in Washington make
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: it incredibly difficult, if not impossible. And impossible no matter what.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: Chuck Schumer does, Joe Biden does. This is where you
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: do everything exactly right and end up in the exact
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: same place.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: So one place where there has been slightly more progress
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: that I just want to get your thoughts on before
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: we get to your interview with Senator Klobuchar is right
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: before we started recording, Joe Biden came out in the
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Rose Garden with 10 Republican senators, 10 Democratic senators, and said,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: we have a deal on a bipartisan infrastructure package. What
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: do you think? What do you think about the big deal?
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: I mean, it is a big deal, right? Joe Biden
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: ran in part on his ability to get things done
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: on a bipartisan basis in Washington. And he did. If
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: you had said- six months ago, a year ago, that
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: there was a Democratic president was going to strike a
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: trillion dollar, near trillion dollar infrastructure deal with Republicans, you'd
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: think that was insane. We have been dancing.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: We would have said that. We would have laughed.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we would have absolutely laughed. And so he- Let's
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: be honest. He has pulled something off here that proves
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: his theory of the case. And he deserves a ton
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: of credit for it. The Democratic senators deserve a ton
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: of credit for it. These Republicans who seem willing to
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: do something reasonable deserve some credit for it. They get
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: some demerits for trying to rig elections and steal democracy
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: and just general terribleness. But it's like I am relatively
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: bearish on the long-term politics of a bipartisan infrastructure deal.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: Infrastructure is not something that people feel in their lives immediately.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: But this is a huge feather in Joe Biden's cap.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Before we break out the balloons and the confetti cannon, though,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: I will say the devil is still in the details
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: here for a couple of reasons. Nancy Pelosi today has
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: wisely said or apparently she said this on a call
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: and it was reported out. She told other Democrats that
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: the House will not pass this bipartisan infrastructure deal unless
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: they see a full. reconciliation bill that will contain all
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: the rest of Joe Biden's economic priorities that could pass
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: through reconciliation, climate, housing, education, child care, health care, the works, taxes,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: raising taxes on the wealthy. And so what I'm trying
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: to figure out is, A, why did those 10 Republicans
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: go along with a bipartisan infrastructure deal knowing that next
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: up on the Democratic agenda is a Democrat's only reconciliation
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: bill that's going to contain All the progressive goodies that
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: basically Joe Manchin can stand, because that's how you pass
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: a reconciliation bill. And Joe Manchin, by the way, in
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: the Rose Garden just told reporters, yeah, part of this
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: deal is we're doing this bipartisan infrastructure deal now, but
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: there's going to be a Democrats-only reconciliation bill, and I'm
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: fine with that.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: I've been wondering this for a long time and trying
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: to figure out how the pieces come together. There was
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: a report a few– last week– yesterday, a month ago,
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: who the fuck knows at this point, that one of
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: the reasons why McConnell was open to this deal happening
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: was he thought it made a big bipartisan reconciliation deal
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: less likely. That getting something done on a bipartisan basis
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: would convince Manchin and Sinema that they would not need
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: to be on board for a big Democrats-only bill. That
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: doesn't seem to have borne out, according to what Manchin
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: said publicly. You know, So I don't– and I do
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: think there's a lot of road to travel here is
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: what's that reconciliation book going to look like? Once again,
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: it comes down to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and others.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: Is it really going to look like the $ 6 trillion
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: bill that Bernie Sanders wants? That seems unlikely. What will
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: be in there, what won't be in there? Can what
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: comes out of the Senate pass the House is an
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: open question with those narrow margins. So like you said,
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: a lot of road to travel here. Two reasons why
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: Republicans might have done this. One is– It just may
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: be that Mitch McConnell could not stop them. There are
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: enough Republicans who have been– Just.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Like we can't stop Joe Manchin. Yeah, who– they want to.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Do something, right? They're in the Senate. They abided by
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: a bunch of Trumpian bullshit for a long time. Here's
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: a chance to do something. There are human beings involved
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: in this process always who have to go home and
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: be like, what did you do this week? Nothing, right?
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I covered up some crimes. What did you do in
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: school today? I pretended I didn't read some Trump tweets. Yeah,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: that's right.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: I didn't read Twitter and I covered up some crimes.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: They can go home this weekend and say, we got
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: a deal, right? And then the other, if you were
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: to try to impute some sort of political strategy behind
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: it is the Republicans need to show in order to
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: make a case that they, for divided government, need to
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: show that they're not just a bunch of Trumpian lunatics
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: and here's a case for it, right? Like dividing government works.
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: Put us in charge. We can do things besides just
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: like enable Matt Gaetz or back Marjorie Taylor Greene or
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: all those things. It's an argument that Republicans can govern.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: I think it's probably more the human thing than the
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: political strategy thing. And I think this happened despite Mitch McConnell,
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: not because of Mitch McConnell. I think he just could
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: not stop it.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense to me too. OK, when we
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: come back, Dan talks to Senator Amy Klobuchar about what's
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: next on voting rights.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: Joining us now is Minnesota Senator and friend of the pod,
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: Senator Amy Klobuchar. Senator, welcome back to the show.
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: Well, thanks so much, Dan. I can't think of a
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: better title than being friend of the pod.
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: So thank you.
• 26:36
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: It's probably ranked slightly below Senator, but yes. After the
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: vote on Tuesday, your colleague, Senator Mazie Arano, told The Atlantic,
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: there better be a plan B. I just don't know
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: what it is. Do you know what plan B is?
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: Is there a plan B? What can you tell us
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: about the next steps after the voting rights bill was
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: stopped on Tuesday?
• 26:58
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: Well, plan B is really starts with all of us.
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: It starts with all the groups across the country this summer.
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: that are not just pushing to get this done. And
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't be working on it if I didn't think
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: we could. But it also involves registering people to vote
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: for next fall. And that's happening big time. As chair
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: of the Rules Committee, I'm starting out by taking the
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: show on the road. I think some of my colleagues,
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: Republican colleagues, actually need to hear from the people that
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: have stood in line for 12 hours and then are
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: going to be denied volunteers giving them.
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: Food and water.
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: I think they have to find out what it's like
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: to have one drop-off box in the middle of a
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: county with tons of people. So that's my part, but
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: I think there's more. We are going to continue to
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: work to figure out a procedural way. I know the
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: listeners of the pod understand how we had a unified
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: party in the end behind this bill.
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: Yes, we were still negotiating.
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: Some of the details, but I think you heard from
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: people like Barack Obama and Stacey Abrams myself, that we're
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: in a pretty good place of getting an agreement with
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: Senator Manchin. That to me is not as much of
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: the big deal since he was including same-day registration, early voting,
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: all these things that we wanted in there. I think
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: the big deal is getting some procedural way to get
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: this through. And whether it's a standing filibuster, which he
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: has said he's interested in in the past, or some
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: other way to do this procedurally, we must get this done.
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: Failure is not an option.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: You know, from the outside, right? There's two ways to
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: get this done. There is convincing 10 Republicans to have
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: a miraculous conversion. Exactly. I'm very glad that you didn't
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: even let me finish that sentence. They don't have to
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: worry about my follow-up. Or as you mentioned, getting Senators Manchin, Sinema,
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: and perhaps others to change their mind on the filibuster.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: Senator Manchin has expressed some private openness and a little
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: public openness to do a change. Senator Sinema just wrote
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: an op-ed saying she was not going to change her
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: mind on the filibuster. From the outside, it seems like
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: we're in a really dire straits. From your perspective on
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: the inside, do you see more reasons for hope or
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: arguments you think could be made to change her position
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: or others' position to make an exception here or reform
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: the filibuster or something like that?
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, as I said, there are many different procedural ways.
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: We're just looking at all the options now that we
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: could proceed. I also think that there are people that
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: are such strong voices on this that are in very
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: red states, right?
• 29:29
  Speaker 5: Purple, they won them, so they're not all red.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: That'd be people like Jon Tester, who's a big fan
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: of this bill. People like Reverend Warnock, one of our
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: two new senators from Georgia.
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: That's one of.
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: The reasons Georgia's been the epicenter of voting controversies and
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: limiting people from voting after expanding it earlier this year,
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: last year. So I think that's really, one, you'll hear
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: their voices. And two, I just think getting out there,
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: and I want to differentiate, I'm not a Pollyanna about
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: getting Mitch McConnell or Republicans to support this, but I
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: don't think that we're doing our job if we don't
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: take it out on the road and make the public
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: understand this. Let's not forget, Dan, that in Georgia, one
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: of the motivating forces for voters in that early January
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: election was how Donald Trump and the Republican Party had
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: messed up with their state in terms of not validating
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: their election, questioning their election officials, questioning the results. basically
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: dissing our democracy. That's what these guys are now doing
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: on a national scale. So for us just to be
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: quiet about this and not take it out there, I
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: don't want to confuse that, that we're going out on
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: the road, that we're continuing to push this bill. I
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: don't think that should be confused with thinking, well, at
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: this moment in time, we think we're going to get
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: 10 Republicans. I don't think we can right now, but
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: you never know what happens six months from now, a
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: year from now when the public pressure keeps going.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: You alluded to negotiations with Senator Manchin around the text
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: of a bill he could support. Are there specific things
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: in his compromise that you oppose or specific things you
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: want to ensure in there before we? Because it sounds
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: like we are not yet at that point where there
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: is a fully agreed upon bill that all 50 senator
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: Democrats could support.
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: Exactly.
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: Well, he'd be the first to tell you that. But
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: let me say everyone that's worked with him on this
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: knows he's negotiating in good faith. You know, he included
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: that 15 days.
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: Of early voting.
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: That would be very helpful in states like Georgia. That's
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: why you heard the support from them. He included the
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: when you go get your driver's license, that you are
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: able to be automatically registered for vote. And by the way,
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: that would include the 16 and 17-year-olds. They can't vote,
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: but at least their data will be in there so
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: that they are automatically registered when they can. He now
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: has included in our negotiations same-day registrations. The sticking points,
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: of course, are the voter ID and how that's defined.
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: Do remember, he's not just talking about a photo ID.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: He actually was talking about multiple kinds of documents, some
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: kind of sworn statement, which we had in our own
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: bill to begin with. And the second area of which
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: we have to work things out is, of course, vote
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: by mail. I don't think we can go backwards on
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: that anymore, Dan, after the pandemic. 34 states don't require
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: an excuse. So those are two. And then, yes, what
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: would I like to see added to his proposal? You know,
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: there's a lot of things, obviously. But how about notary
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: publics having to sign off on getting a ballot? I
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: think some of your listeners would be shocked by this.
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: Six states, including South Carolina, basically say if you want
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: to get a vote by mail ballot or absentee ballot,
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: whatever you want to call it, you've got to have
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: a notary public come and sign for it. Now, that
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: isn't hard, right?
• 32:46
  Speaker 5: What a joke.
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: Someone with COVID had to have a notary public through
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: a window sign their little notary signature with their little
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: stamp just to be able to get their ballot.
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: That's crazy.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: One real threat to democracy in this country is not
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: just voter suppression, but election subversion and the idea that
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: Republicans will cast out legally count votes. State legislators would
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: be able to get rid of election officials who they
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: disagree with. You know, this is something that we came
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: very close to this being a gigantic problem in 2020.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: It's not addressed in the For the People Act S-1
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: in any form. But you, along with Senator Warnock and
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: others have co-sponsored a bill. Can you tell us, one,
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: what's in this bill and why, you know, how real
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: a threat do you think election subversion is? Sure.
• 33:34
  Speaker 5: It's a real threat. It's happening right now.
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: And it basically prohibits these legislatures from taking over. and
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: throwing out the work of the people who are supposed
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: to do it, which is the election officials. And we
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: actually are working on getting that in the ultimate bill.
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: And we're in the midst of talking with Senator Manchin
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: about that another. So that's an example of, by the way,
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: they just keep coming up with new dirty tricks and
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: that you want to have a bill that That is
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: completely up to date. And I guess if you want
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: to look at any silver lining of Republicans completely blocking
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: debate on this bill, we now have a chance to
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: add that.
• 34:17
  Speaker 5: That's the only silver lining I could find.
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: But that is that's one. And the other thing we
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: didn't talk about is the Disclose Act that's in there
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: and was in Senator Manchin's proposal.
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: Yes, every piece of it was in there, which would be.
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: Really helpful with the outside super PAC money and that
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: we can figure out who's giving that money.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: Obviously, the Senate is taking off shortly, was going to
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: be out in August. We now have a bipartisan infrastructure deal,
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: a pledge to move on, budget reconciliation for infrastructure. Where
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: do you think in the calendar we're next going to
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: hear or have a vote on voting rights and protecting democracy?
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: We must do it soon. We can't wait till right
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: before the election. So I can't give you the exact date.
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: A lot of this has to do with the procedural issue,
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: but nothing stops Senator Schumer, who has made this his
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: number one priority. That's why it's SF1. Nothing stops him from,
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: as he has said, bringing it up again when the
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: time is right. So I think you won't, there's just
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: no way we're letting this go dormant. We just have
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: to figure out the right thing. And remember, yes, the
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: infrastructure package, but we also have to have the second
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: part package, which is things like child care and housing,
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: things we've been talking about for quite a while. My
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: frustration right now in general with the filibuster is there's
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: other things we have to do, too, that don't fit
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: under reconciliation, which is where that second package will be.
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: That's the things like I just mentioned, child care, housing.
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: At least they can be related to taxes. And so
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: you're able to put them in there. But immigration reform
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: in a big way, like we should do it, like
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: many Republicans actually supported in the past. But every time
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: we just came up short. Or climate change legislation. Yes,
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: we can put some green infrastructure in the packages, but
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: that doesn't get us where we need to get. And
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: so that's why, again, to move on these major, major
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: bills that we've been waiting so long to do, we
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: can't sit around and wait for this archaic Senate procedure
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: to suddenly magically change.
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: On its own?
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: There are two sort of ticking clocks that are putting
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: pressure on the voting rights stuff. One is, obviously, we
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: have an election coming up next year, but more short-term
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: and more urgent than that is the provision, which very,
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: I think, people were pleasantly surprised to see in Senator
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: Manchin's compromise to deal with partisan gerrymandering and put in
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: place independent redistricting commissions. That has to happen very shortly
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: in order to be in place for 2022. Is that
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: one of the arguments that you're making to people in
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: the caucus about this?
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: Thank you, Dan, for bringing that up, because we know
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: how people have messed around with these districts that hurt
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: the popular will. And the popular will, when you look
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: at where people are on these, you know, 88% of
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: people wanting background checks for guns, you name it, they're
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: with us. And so the fact that you'll have states
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: that actually as Tammy Baldwin would point out, had a
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: Democratic governor, Democratic senator, and then the Republicans just dominate
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: these congressional seats. We have to make a change. And
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: that's what the gerrymandering commissions are about. And so that
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: is in Senator Manchin's proposal. Senator Angus King, who's an independent,
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: is a big fan of this. And so we can't
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: wait to do that because, as you point out, these
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: districts have to be determined You can't do it the
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: day before the election, figure out what territory you're voting
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: in and what you're serving.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: Before I let you go, I wanted to ask you
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: about two things unrelated to voting rights. First is this
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: infrastructure package. What is your view of how this should
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: be sequenced in terms of the bipartisan deal and budget reconciliation?
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: Or is your vote on the bipartisan deal contingent upon
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: an agreement to do a larger budget reconciliation plan that
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: includes some of the things you just mentioned?
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say most of our caucus believe that
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: we need to do these together.
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: Either they believe it in their heart, which I do.
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: And by the way, together, I don't mean on the
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: same day, because we can never do anything in the.
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: Senate on the same day.
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: By this, I mean we have a general agreement for
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: the money. We have a general agreement for what's going
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: to be in that second package. And then we most
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: likely vote on the bipartisan package first. The second package
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: will most likely be a Democratic package, just like the
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: incredibly popular and successful American Rescue Plan was done through
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: reconciliation with Democratic votes.
• 38:49
  Speaker 5: This will be a very similar situation.
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: So you can have an agreement in general terms on
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: that and then vote on the bipartisan bill first. And
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: so that's how I view it. We have to make
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: some decision. And even if you didn't believe that in
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: your heart, you got to believe it pragmatically because the House...
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: isn't just going to vote for this alone. They've made
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: that very clear. And so if you want to just get,
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: let's say you're someone that doesn't care about the second package,
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: and I think everyone does in our caucus, I do.
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: But if you didn't care about it, if you want
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: to get your own package through, you've got to get
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: it through the House. So you've got to get some
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: general agreement on the second package. And the same to
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: get the votes in the Senate, because I don't know
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: what number of Republicans you're going to get on this package,
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: but isn't going to be nearly enough. So you've got
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: to get a bunch of Democrats. So I think there's
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: a way to do this. And we've had many, many
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: discussions about this, not just in Senate leadership, but with everyone.
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: And I think there's general agreement, I'm not saying it's uniform,
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: that we're going to have to do something like that.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: Last question. You have written and focused a lot of
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: your energy on antitrust around big tech in particular.
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: Like having it be the last question when we have
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: one minute to go.
• 40:05
  Speaker 5: No, I'm kidding.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: Talk about it for an hour, Dan.
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: And we would love to have you back to talk
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: about it. But there was progress on this last night
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: in a House committee. Anything upcoming in the Senate that
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: you want to see trying to get done?
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: Actually, one of the bills that they passed out was
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: my bill, which actually has passed the Senate, which is
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: really the first key. And I know you know this
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: from your time in government. The FTC and the Antitrust
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: Division of Justice, which are key to getting all this done,
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: Lena Kahn, of course, is now, who I introduced at
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: the Commerce Committee, is now leading the FTC. They cannot
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: take on the biggest companies the world has ever known
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: with duct tape and Band-Aids. So what my bill does
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: is finally change the merger fees that are charged when
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: companies come with mergers. It'll bring in over 100 million
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: so that they can hire lawyers they need. I did
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: it with Grassley. I got it through the committee unanimously,
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: and it has sailed through the Senate. And so now
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: that is one of the bills they passed. They also
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: passed some really good tech bills, which I will be
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: taking on in the Senate. I'm currently working and very
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: close for a Republican author on one of them. And
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: so that is going to be key. The discriminatory one
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: that they have is very important. And then I have
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: a sweeping bill that goes beyond tech that would include
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: pharma and online travel and ag and all these areas.
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: And there is interest in the Republican caucus, I would say,
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: for parts of that bill, just like Grassley and I
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: just did the fee bill. So that's something else I'm
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: working on with the House, with the Senate, We are
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: a small but mighty group who's willing to work on
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: antitrust and understand it and work with the Republicans. And
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: I've always said there's no monopoly on good ideas. We
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: can't afford divides in our little group because we have
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: so much up against us. We've got major companies against us.
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: We've got people in kind of both parties who go, oh,
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: I don't want to deal with this. We've got a
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: lack of knowledge. And the one thing that's been great
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: With the Biden administration and President Biden putting in Lena
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: Kahn and Tim Wu, both outside of the box thinkers,
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: that we are moving forward. And Merrick Garland used to
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: teach a class on antitrust. So there is an understanding
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: that we haven't had for a long while.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: I know you have to go. So thank you so
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: much for joining us. And we would love to have
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: you back to have a much longer conversation about big
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: tech and all your efforts on antitrust.
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: That would be wonderful.
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: We can talk about app stores, home technology. Yes.
• 42:42
  Speaker 5: You name it.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Senator.
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: So, along with voting rights and infrastructure, President Biden also
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: focused on the issue of crime this week with a
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: White House speech that laid out his strategy to prevent
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: gun violence. While overall crime is down nationally by 6%,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: homicides went up anywhere from 25% to 40% in 2020,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: the single biggest one-year increase since 1960. Murders are up
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: in just about every major city. There have been at
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: least 293 mass shootings since the start of this year,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: 10 last weekend alone.
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: Oof.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Polls showed that crime was one of the second most
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: important issue for Democratic voters in the New York City
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: mayor's race, which Eric Adams is currently leading, a former
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: captain in the NYPD who focused his campaign on fighting
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: crime and violence. And if that's what's happening in Democratic politics,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: you can imagine what Republicans are doing with this issue.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: But just in case you can't imagine, here's a taste.
• 43:46
  Speaker 6: You will not hear Joe Biden beg forgiveness from the
• 43:49
  Speaker 6: thousands of families whose loved ones have been killed by
• 43:52
  Speaker 6: the Democratic Party's nihilistic embrace of crime and disorder.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: Looting is reparations.
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: You go, looters.
• 43:58
  Speaker 6: Defund the police.
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: It's childish.
• 44:00
  Speaker 6: It's all so ridiculous. And no sane person believes a
• 44:04
  Speaker 6: word of it. The same talk about gun control and
• 44:08
  Speaker 6: assault weapon like AR-15s are the problem. So if you're
• 44:12
  Speaker 6: opposed to getting murdered outside Cheesecake Factory, you're a white supremacist.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Love that last one. All right. I want to get
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: to the policies that Biden outlined on Wednesday in a second.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: But first, I want to get your reaction to a
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: CNN report that the White House has been alarmed, quote,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: alarmed by the rise in violent crime. They think it
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: could get worse this summer. And that's one reason why
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Biden gave this speech. What do you make of how
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: seriously they seem to be taking this issue?
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: I would like to make one point first that just
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: so we put this in perspective, what year did you
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: say the increase in murders happened?
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: That would be 2020.
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: The president 2020 was.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: It wasn't, it wasn't Joe Biden and Antifa.
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: Definitely. It was Donald Trump. So we should just stipulate
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: that the Republican view is in the year 2020 that
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: The rise in murders was a result of big city
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: pro-Antifa Democratic mayors. And in 2021, the person responsible for
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: the rise in murders is the Democratic president.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Right, of course. Amazing how that happens.
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: The fact that Republicans make up a bunch of bullshit
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: about crime as part of a political strategy does not
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: mean it isn't an actual real issue that affects people's lives.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: And a rise– And murder at that scale is something
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: that has to be dealt with. And there are limits
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: to what the federal government can do, given that so
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: much of policing and law enforcement happens at the state
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: and city level. But Joe Biden's president of the United States,
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: murder is up in the United States. Addressing it seems
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: like the exact right thing to do substantively, if not politically.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: Right. So there's a few questions here. What is causing
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: the increase in violent crime? How real is it? How
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: serious is it? And then what is the public's perception
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: of it? Which are not all the same thing, right?
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of, you know, people, again, there's
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: some statistics about how crime overall is going down. There's
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: not enough data yet to find out whether sort of
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: the skyrocketing murder rate from 2020 is going to be
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: replicated again in 2021. And we don't know whether people's
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: perceptions of crime are driven by what they're actually seeing
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: in their communities or sort of the media coverage and
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: political coverage of crime. But regardless, when a bunch of
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: people are worrying about crime, and we know that from data,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: whether it's real or whether it's partly real and partly
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: driven by Republican attacks and media coverage, it's still real
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: to those people. They're still scarce. And to that end,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: I mentioned the poll about New York City primary voters,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: but nationally, Yahoo, YouGov did a poll just a few
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: weeks ago people said that violent crime is now the
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: number one issue that they're most concerned about ahead of
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: the pandemic and the economy. And then when asked who
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: has done a better job handling crime, 34% said Trump,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: 32% said Biden. Among independents, it was 39% Trump, 23% Biden.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: So I do think when you see numbers like that,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: which I'm sure the White House is seeing, and you
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: hear from local law enforcement officials and local officials that
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: crime is on the rise in the cities and that
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: is real, that is real, Yeah, you're going to have
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden go out there and give a speech about
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: crime and lay out a strategy, right?
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it would be insane not to. And
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: there has been, in some corners, some dismissing of these
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: numbers as a pandemic-related aberration because they run counter to
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: the long-term trends on crime since the 90s.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: And I think we should talk about why it would
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: be related to the pandemic. And a number of people
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: who study crime and sociologists— Progressive sociologists and people who
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: study crime have looked into this. And there's some belief
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: that the pandemic created the kinds of economic and social
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: dislocation and disconnection that can fuel crime. So you had
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: people struggling with finances, with mental health issues, a lack
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: of social services like schools, community centers, churches. And when
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: that happens in neighborhoods that were already plagued by violence
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: and trauma and inequality, it exacerbates the situation.
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: Right. I don't think it is– anyone can say it's
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: a one-to-one ratio, right? Because this happened because of the pandemic.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: But you also would have to be a moron to
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: say they're unrelated, right? It's obviously related in some significant way.
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: The thing that is notable is that the data thus
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: far in the first half of 2021, which while the
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: pandemic is far from over, but society has opened up
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: in some ways and some of the 2020 causes are
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: less present now. the murder rates are still up. In
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: the beginning half of this year, we're up 49% over
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: this point in 2019. And there are some sociologists and
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: criminologists who talk about sort of a self-perpetuating nature of crime,
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: like crime leads to more crime. But regardless of the reasons,
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: we can't dismiss it and we have to address it
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: substantively and politically.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: So Biden focuses on five main strategies to reduce gun violence,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: stemming the flow of illegal guns, more support and resources
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: for police departments, more community violence interventions, expanding job opportunities
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: and summer programs for kids and reentry programs for people
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: who've been incarcerated. What do you think of the plan,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: both from a policy perspective and a political perspective.
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: Well, as a noted expert on crime policy, it seems
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: great to me.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: As you always have been.
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: I think, substantively, it seems like the right thing to do. Politically,
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: I think it is sort of a masterstroke, which is
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: in the old 90s DLC world of smart politics, the
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: message to Democrats was be tough on crime and soft
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: on guns, right? That you had to that that was
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: the right approach. This is obviously substantively correct, but politically,
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: focusing on guns allows Democrats to go on the offense
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: on this issue because Republicans are the ones blocking the policies,
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: the common sense, incredibly popular policies to help with universal
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: background checks and other ways to stem the ready availability
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: of guns that lead to these crimes and these murders.
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: And so I think it's the exact right thing to do.
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: It is leading its front foot forward. And if done correctly,
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: can be a very strong way to defuse these attacks
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: and put Republicans on the defensive.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: The one thing we haven't talked about yet that we
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: should is the element of how Democrats should talk about
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: the police and police reform as they're trying to address crime.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: So Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist who studies crime, talked to
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Derek Thompson at The Atlantic about this. And he said,
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: there is some evidence that police and residents both decided
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: to pull back after the George Floyd protest. So the
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: police refused to involve themselves in certain incidents. And the
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: public is less willing to reach out to the police
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: for help because they don't trust the police. And Republicans,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: of course, are all over this issue. They're basically, they
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: see the rise in crime or in violent crime and say,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: look at the, and they're trying to like they did
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: in 2020, tie Democratic candidates to progressive calls for defunding
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: the police. And it was interesting. I thought, you know,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: Al Sharpton said to the New York Times a couple
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: of weeks ago, we're in a very precarious position. People
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: are afraid of the cops and the robbers. We have
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: both of them that we've got to deal with, which
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: I thought was a pretty good way to put it. Like,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: how do you think Democrats should navigate that?
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, incredibly challenging.
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: Because the power of the Republican media apparatus allows them
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: to convince large swaths of voters that the vast majority
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: of Democrats are for defund the police, whatever that means, right?
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, even we saw polling in 2020 in Wisconsin,
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: in Michigan, we're obviously at the center of the conversation
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: around police violence. And that showed that large portions of voters,
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: including in some cases, nearly a third of Democrats believe
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: that Joe Biden supported the position of defunding the police.
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: So there's a ton of power in that. You and
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: I talked about this a few weeks ago. I talked
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: about it with Cornell on Campaign Experts React. There is
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: some models of success in the New Mexico special where
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: crime was the center of the Republican attacks on the Democrat,
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: where the Democratic candidate who had supported the BREVE Act
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: and was being accused of defunding the police did two
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: things that were notable. One, she talked about her support
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: for law enforcement without backing away for her calls for
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: police accountability and police reform. or backing away from the
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: important conversation around structural racism in America and in policing,
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: and then took that and then pivoted to stronger attacks
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: against her opponent. And so I think address the issue.
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: Don't back away. It is not a binary choice between
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: talking about efforts to combat crime and also recognizing the
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: role of structural racism in policing, and then go on
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: the offense, right? I think that is sort of the
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: three steps there.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: And we should say the reason it's not a binary
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: choice or it shouldn't be a binary choice is not
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: just because it's like some Democratic strategy hatched in Washington
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: to win elections. Like this is where most of the
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: public is.
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: So, you know, and there are conflicting views among the public.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: So like Vox and Data for Progress did a poll
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: a little while back. And even among, just take black voters, right?
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: 63% of black voters said that most police officers cannot
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: be trusted, right? Totally understandable. 65% of black voters, almost
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: the same exact number, said that regular police patrols made
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: them feel more safe. So you have the same people thinking,
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: I don't trust a lot of police officers and yet
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: I feel that policing can provide public safety, which is
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: a very complicated nuanced views that a lot of people have.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: So I think when Democrats try to figure out how
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: to reform police departments, it is not necessarily contradictory to
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: say that I want to protect my constituents from both
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: gun violence and police violence, that I want to make
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: sure that we hold police accountable. but that we have
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: police around to help with gun violence. And by the way,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: we talk a lot about how police are asked to
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: do too much and police are doing everything and they're
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: responding to mental health issues and drug abuse issues and
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: all kinds of other things that police have no business
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: responding to. But when it comes to gun violence specifically,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: which is what's on the rise, there are not a
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: lot of alternatives to policing, at least in the short term, right?
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: Long-term ways to prevent gun violence, you know, get rid
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: of more guns on the street, pass more gun restrictions,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: community-based violence interventions, right? There's a whole bunch of real
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: programs that can work here. But those are programs that
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: pay dividends across the long term, right? In the short term,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: when there's murders in the streets right now and it's
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: gun violence, like policing is a strategy that works into
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: a strategy that the vast majority of Americans, of Democrats,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: of black voters, of everyone wants to see. And that's just,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: that's according to all the data, right? So I do
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: think that like, Democrats, it may sound contradictory that they
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: have to be both for police reform, but against complete defunding.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: But that's actually where most of the voters are, including
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: most Democratic voters.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: That's right. That's absolutely right.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, one last question on this is, what are
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: the elections we've seen since 2020 where crime has played
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: a central role? Tell us about the politics of this issue.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: So I'm thinking of the New York mayor's race, but
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: also the Buffalo mayor's race. which socialist India Walton just
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: won after pushing to reinvest some police funding. I'm thinking
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: of progressive prosecutor Larry Krasner's reelection in Philadelphia. And then
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: what you just talked about, which is the special house
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: election the Democrats just won in New Mexico.
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: I think the answer is that it's complicated. There is
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: such an attempt to drive a simplistic political narrative or
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: outcome from these sets of things, right? People can go
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: find a data point to prove their prior views if
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: they want. If you think that there's very good politics
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: in pushing very, very hard on police reinvestment, then you
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: look at Buffalo. But then someone else looks at that
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: and says, that was a mayor's race with a 20,000-person
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: turnout in a city with more than 200,000 residents. You
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: could look at New York and say, here we are
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: a year after the murder of George Floyd in a
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: massive uprising in America against structural racism and police violence,
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: and the a former cop on the Democratic primary in
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: one of the biggest, bluest cities in the country. But
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: you can then also look at, and I think Alex
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: Perrine of the New Republic had a very good article
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: on this the other day. Eric Adams' story is much
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: more complicated than just being a former cop. Yes, he
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: was a former cop. Yes, he talked about crime a lot,
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: and particularly how it affected poorer New Yorkers. There's a
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: really interesting anecdote from the campaign where There was a
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: shooting in Times Square and Andrew Yang rushed there to
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: talk about it. And Eric Adams went and he took
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: on Andrew Yang and said, these sort of things have
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: been happening in my community for a long time, not
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: just here in Times Square. It just took everyone else
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: too long to notice. But Eric Adams has also, who's
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: been in politics a very long time, been a fierce
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: critic of the New York Police Department in a lot
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: of specific incidents. He has pushed for the ending of
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: qualified immunity. He is a former cop, but he's also
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: someone who was seen by a lot of people as
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: a critic of of the New York Police Department. So
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: it's all very.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: Also, what I hadn't realized is that he himself had
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: been a victim of police brutality. And it's one of
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: the reasons he joined the police force, because he thought
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: that he could, you know, push for reform from the inside.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: You can debate how much he actually accomplished there. But
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: he has been talking about police reform for quite a while,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: because he's been on the outside as well. So I
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: do think there was this sort of overly simplistic narrative
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: about Eric Adams that he was just like, tough on crime, pro-police,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: but it's actually much more nuanced than that, his message
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: and his background.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you're going to try to draw any
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: larger lesson from these elections in these very democratic cities,
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: the one that I would at least take is you
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: have to talk about crime, have a problem to deal
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: with rising crime rates because voters, including democratic voters, are
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: very concerned about them, but also have a plan for
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: police reform because voters are and including Democratic and some
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: Republican voters are concerned about police violence. So you have
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: to talk about both. That's the only that if we're
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: going to try to draw a lesson from it, that
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: is the lesson.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: I also think it's like people don't only want to
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: be told like what you're going to take away from them,
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: which I think is when you shorten it to just
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: defund the police, all it sounds like is you're defunding
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: the police. I think what a lot of advocates and
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: reformers really want to do is They want to fund
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: alternatives to policing like mental health services, addiction services, et cetera.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: And I think the candidates who've been successful have said, yes,
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: we want to have a police force that, by the way,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: is held accountable for misconduct and brutality. And we want
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: to reform the police force to do that. But we
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: also want to fund alternatives to police so that police
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: aren't responding to every call. And then it's about both
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: how you're protecting the public and how you're improving public
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: safety and how you're reforming a broken system. And when
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: you just shorten it to defund, which again, not a
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: lot of Democratic candidates are doing. So it's something that
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: the right says that we're doing, but the Democratic candidates
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: themselves aren't really talking about defund. Some activists are. But
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: when you're willing to talk about both of those things,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: you're going to be more successful. And that's been true for,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: you know, whether it's India Walton, who just won in Buffalo,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: whether it's Larry Krasner, whether it's in the special house
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: election in New Mexico, like that's sort of what the
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: Democrats who've been winning have have been doing on this
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: is sort of talking about the issue as a whole. Like,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: you know, Eric Adams at one point in a debate
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: told Maya Wiley accused her of defunding the police. And
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: she had basically been for that in the past. But
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: she said, no, I'm not for defunding the police at all.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: And she was backed by AOC. All right. Like she
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: got the AOC endorsement. So it's not like there's any
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: Democratic candidates running around out there anymore saying that they
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: want to defund the police. It's just not happening.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: I think there's one other element. This is we can't
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: let the Republicans off the hook for what they're trying
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: to do here. This is a central piece of the
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: Republican political strategy going back to 1968, when Nixon ran
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: as a law and order president. They focus on crime
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: as an issue, particularly at times in which there is
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: a conversation and progress on moving closer towards being a
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: multiracial democracy. It is to say that advances in civil rights,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: advances in political power, in economic power for black and
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: brown and and other non-white voters comes at a cost
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: to you, white Christian voters, right? We talked about this
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: with Jelani Kyle. But this is the central story. And
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: we should not ignore that story. We should recognize that
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: the efficacy of that crime attack goes up when crime
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: rates go up. And even if it's not happening in
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: your city, and you know this as a nervous flyer,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: people's ability to calculate their own risks of danger are
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: quite small, right? Like you drive your car every day
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: without being afraid. I've seen you literally rip an armrest
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: off of a regional jet at the slightest bit of turbulence,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: even though like I can tell you a thousand times
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: intellectually that, which is- Yeah, no, and I get it. Yeah,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: and this crime is the same way, right? You can
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: tell people it's not in their community. It doesn't mean
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: they're not going to worry about it in their community.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: So the salience in the political power of the issue
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: goes up. But with everything, you have to call Republicans
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: out on it.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: You have to. And this is why crime rates should
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: bother Democrats and progressives, right? Because last time we saw
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: sort of the politics of crime take hold in the
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: 70s and early 80s, we ended up with over-policing, draconian
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: crime measures, mass incarceration, right? Like the policies that come
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: from rising crime rates and the resulting politics are bad substantively, right?
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: And they hurt people. And crime, by the way, crime
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: in communities exacerbates inequality, exacerbates poverty, hurts children, you know,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: gives people trauma for generations, right? So, like, it shouldn't
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: just be something that Democrats say, oh, we have to
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: take on crime because Republicans are going to use it
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: to bludgeon us. Like, we should want to take on
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: crime because a progressive vision of America includes making sure
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: that every community can feel safe, right? Especially communities that
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: are majority black, majority brown, impoverished, right? Like that's where
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: crime tends to hit the worst. And we should be
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: saying like, no, no, we want those communities to be safe, right?
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: So like, I do think there's a substantive issue here
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: as well as a political issue that we should be
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: pushing on. Dan, before we go, I just want to
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: get your thoughts on two words that have echoed across
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: the right-wing media ecosystem this week. Speaker Trump.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: In an interview with MAGA grifter Wayne Allen Root, Trump
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: was asked if he'd be willing to run for speaker
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: if Republicans take back the House in 2022. Here's what
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: he said.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: Why not run in 2022 for the United States Congress,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: a House seat in Florida, win big, lead us to
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: a dramatic landslide victory, taking the House by 50 seats,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: and then you become the Speaker of the House, lead
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: the impeachment of Biden, and start criminal investigations against Biden.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: You'll wipe him out for his last two years, and
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: then you'll be president.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Do it.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: Do it.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: You'll be a folk hero. You'll be a folk hero
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: to conserve. People have said run for the Senate. OK,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: run for the Senate.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 5: But you know what?
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: Your idea might be better. So not a denial, though.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: Jason Miller, Trump's paid liar and all around horrible human being.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: He did say later that Trump has, quote, zero desire
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: to be speaker. What do you think? Is this a
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: Trump story that should make us laugh or make us worry?
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: Before I get to that, we don't hear Trump's voice
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: as much anymore. And so I'd sort of forgotten his
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: habit of agreeing with literally any idea which is based
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: in some sort of underlying compliment.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: If someone was like, former President Trump, you have just
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: a great nose. have you thought about cutting it off
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: and putting it in a museum? He'd be like, you know, I,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: a lot of people have been talking about my nose.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: Kind of seems like a good idea.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: It's an interesting idea.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: It's a very interesting idea.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: I hear a lot of people are saying it. A
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: lot of people are saying it.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: But like, look, has there ever been a person better
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: designed for a job than Donald Trump, a speaker? He
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: is someone with a mastery of details and, Deeply engaged
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: in the nuts and bolts and the intricate rules of legislating.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: A real people pleaser trying to make sure that he's
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: a real diplomat trying to get everyone in a caucus
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: on board.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: Great manager. I am told that he is a student
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: of Lyndon Johnson. He can recite. whines from Robert Caro's
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: Master of the Senate from heart. Like, this is the perfect, like,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: this is a man finding his passion in the House. No,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: it's fucking absurd. He would be truly a worse speaker
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: than Kevin McCarthy, which is saying a lot. And, but
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: there is like- What.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: About your friend Paul Ryan? I put you in a
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: tough position there.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to– I think Donald– I'm not going
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: to take the bait. I'm just not going to take
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: the bait today. We're running long here. No one's got
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: time for a 17-minute Paul Ryan rant circa 2018. Can't
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: blame you for trying. It's not going to happen, although
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: it's notable even Wayne Allen Root is too stupid because
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: to notice Donald Trump could be speaker without running for
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: the House because there's nothing in the Constitution that says
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: a speaker of the House has to be a member
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: of the House. which is why.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: Which is crazy, by the way, but yeah.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: It seems like a... It turns out those founders had.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: It seems like.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: A loophole.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: They made some errors early on.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: But it is.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: The cry part is, if Donald Trump said he wanted
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: to be Speaker tomorrow, the House would vote out Kevin
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: McCarthy by lunch, right?
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: That is the level of support he has. He could
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: do it if he wants to, and that's... That's the
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: scary part about if he just said he wanted it,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: they would give it to him. And it just speaks
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: to the larger fact that Trump may be off the
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: main stage, be forced to do interviews with Wayne Allen Root,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: but he still is the most dominant figure in Republican
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: politics and calls the shots.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: I think you told me that you did get a
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: DCCC fundraising email about this, though. Is it something to
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: get people riled up about in advance of 22 that
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: if the Republicans take over the House? that we could
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: see Speaker Trump trying to investigate and impeach Joe Biden?
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: I will say I was unfamiliar with, you know, I'm
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: a regular listener of the Wayne Allen Root Show, but
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: I missed it.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: On this day.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: So when I got the email, I thought they just
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: like made it up out of whole cloth. And I
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: was like, legitimately mad at the ACCC. It's like, come on,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: be better than that. You're not a scam pack. But
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: it turned out he did actually, the words did come
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: out of his mouth. And Kevin McCarthy was later on
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: forced to talk about it on a Sunday show, which was,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: you know, a particularly bit of a disgrace for, uh,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: speaker McCarthy. Um, I do not think you can sell
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: photos are smarter than thinking Donald Trump's going to be
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: the speaker of the house. Like one, they don't mostly
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: don't know that Donald Trump doesn't have to be in
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: the house. So it seems incredibly stupid and crazy. But
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: I think there's a bigger question about, you know, whether
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: Democrats should, uh, keep Trump front of mind heading into 2022.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: Whether that's his speaker, because he's doing this rally apparently
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: this weekend, his general influence in the party. That's a
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: different strategic thing. Whether the speaker thing itself is too
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: narrow and absurd to be a credible argument for donations, volunteers,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: and votes. But the fact that Trump could become speaker
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: is the larger issue that probably has to be addressed.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the guy is a threat, whether he's sitting behind
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden during the State of the Union, scowling at him,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: which is what would happen.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, that would be worth the price of admission
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: right there, right?
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: But don't you, like, I was going to say, like,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: Trump knows that. You can imagine it, at least it's
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: entered Trump's mind, that image, thinking to himself, maybe I
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: do want to be speaker just for that. So it
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: definitely entered his mind. But no, I think, look, the
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: threat is there. And I do think that's going to
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: be a big part of, look, the challenge is you
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: do want Trump sort of front and center in people's
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: minds heading into the midterms for a very substantive, serious reason,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: which is that he's the front runner for the Republican
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: nomination in 2024, probably can get that nomination if he
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: wants it and runs for it. And then because of
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: the polarized closed country, he's like, you know, 40,000 or
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: so votes away from being president again, right? And people
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: should fucking understand that that's the reality. Of course, the
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: challenge is we don't really hear him that much anymore,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: like you just said. And even though he's all over
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: conservative radio and podcasts and OAN and Newsmax, most of
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: the country isn't watching that. And so I do think
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: for most voters heading into 2022, they're not necessarily going
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: to be thinking about Trump all the time because Trump
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: isn't getting the coverage he used to get in mainstream media,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: which is a good thing in some ways, but also
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: I wonder if people are going to really understand the
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: threat that's still persist, the threat that's still out there from, um,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: you know, Republicans taking the house and then Trump potentially
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: winning in 2024.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: It's an open question as to whether he's going to
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: be much more front of mind when people start campaigning
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: at 2022, there's going to be a bunch of primaries.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: He starts campaigning too.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: And he's out there. Um, Fox will start, he'll be
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: on Fox more, um, But it certainly won't be like
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: 2018 or 2020 for sure. He's not tweeting, right?
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: But that's why, Dan, we have this bipartisan infrastructure deal.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: And people are going to go to the polls and
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: they're going to say, there's a road coming in a
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: couple months. And that's enough for me to vote for Democrats.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: We went on a long car trip this weekend down
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: the coast to the beach. And on the way there,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: there was tremendous traffic because of road construction. And I
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: became an ardent opponent Of infrastructure. Two small children in
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: the car.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: That's tough. Backlash for infrastructure.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: But then on the way home, we finally got Jack asleep.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: He does not like his car seat. And then we
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: hit a pothole and he woke up. And I became
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: a huge proponent of the infrastructure deal.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: Fixing the damn roads. There you go.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: So Ron Klain, I'm going to send you an email
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: with a very specific pothole on 101 North that you
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: should take a look at.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: That's real power, Dan. That's the influence that you've been
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: hoping for ever since you left the White House. Okay,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: on that note, thank you to Amy Klobuchar for joining
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: us today. Everyone have a great weekend. I am off
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: next week on vacation. So I'll see you guys the
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: week after. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producers are Jazzy Marine
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
• 1:12:12
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• 1:12:15
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• 1:12:19
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• 1:12:23
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• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: share our episodes as videos every week.